By Robert England
Special to VirtueOnline and The Christian Challenge
www.virtueonline.org, www.challengeonline.org
September 15, 2008
Revisionism within the Anglican Communion has caused a serious decline in ecumenical relations with Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and a range of other Christian bodies, Quincy Bishop Keith Ackerman told a gathering of conservative Anglicans on September 13.
Comments from ecumenical partners at the 2008 Lambeth Conference made it “obvious the ecumenical relationships are eroding rapidly in many places,” Ackerman told some 100 persons attending the Festival of Faith at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Bladensburg, Maryland.
The Quincy prelate, who leads Forward in Faith, North America, was joined at the day-long event by West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez, chairman of the panel that is formulating an Anglican Covenant designed to help ensure greater unity among historically autonomous Anglican provinces. (See a separate VOL/TCC story on Archbishop Gomez’s remarks.)
Ackerman said Anglican ecumenical relations have been impacted in part by the fact that, increasingly, there are people who call themselves Anglican who share very little, if anything, with traditional Anglicanism.
Hence, he also underscored the need for a covenant so that others know exactly what Anglicanism does, in fact, believe and mean, given all the deviations from classical Anglicanism that have been expressed or enacted, chiefly in Western provinces.
Anglicanism has developed covenants with some ecumenical partners, so “is it not odd there is not such a covenant with ourselves, as we discuss ourselves with other people?” he asked.
The dialogue between Rome and Canterbury has been repeatedly hampered over decades, lately by the Communion’s failure to discipline breaches of orthodox teaching on homosexuality, but also recently by the decision of the Church of England’s General Synod to move toward the consecration of women bishops. Ackerman noted that Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads Rome’s Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told the English Synod, “You’ll have to decide whether you are going to be Catholic or Protestant” (with the clear answer now being the latter).
Ackerman also noted Kasper’s indications at Lambeth this past summer that Roman Catholicism has downgraded the expectations it once had for dialogue with Anglicans. He quoted Kasper as saying that, in 1966, “we spoke of a restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life, but it seems now that full visible communion as an aim of our dialogue has receded further, and that our dialogue will have less ultimate goals and therefore will be altered by its charter.”
Ackerman noted that Cardinal Ivan Dias, another speaker at Lambeth, made it clear that Anglicans had, in effect, “succumbed to spiritual Parkinson’s and spiritual Alzheimer’s, as it relates to our faith.”
The bishop also read recent statements from a number of Orthodox leaders - including the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Archbishop of Athens, the Archbishop of Cyprus, and others – that reflect a further deterioration in relations with Anglicanism..
“We must not forget who we are and why we are a church, and, if we are a church, how we live out the implications of the embodiment of the church,” Ackerman said.
He encouraged those at the Festival of Faith to not become too comfortable in their buildings and to find ways to enter into dialogue for the reunification of the Catholic Church. Failing to finding agreement with other Christian bodies could have dire consequences, he said.
“One day we will discover what we were treating as a nice concept has become a lost opportunity,” Ackerman said.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment