Blueprint for Union

By Richard N. Ostling

Anglicans and Catholics negotiate the role of the papacy

After the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church dropped its aloof attitude toward the ecumenical movement and began discussions with numerous other Christian churches. The most promising negotiations of all were with the Anglican Communion, which originated when King Henry VIII broke with Rome but which still considers itself a bridge between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. For more than a decade a joint Anglican-Roman Catholic commission has been working to develop a theological basis for reunion. Next week Rome and Canterbury are expected to issue the group's final proposals. In the report both sides agree that there is no doctrinal barrier to reunification, and that even the most difficult problem--the office of the Pope--need not stand in the way.

The negotiations were authorized in 1966 by Pope Paul VI and the then Anglican leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. Meeting under the joint chairmanship of the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, H.R. McAdoo, and Roman Catholic Bishop Alan Clark of Great Britain, the participants in the talks included other bishops, theologians and two officials of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

The negotiators first developed statements of consensus on the theological meaning of both the Eucharist and of the priesthood. By 1976 the Anglicans had agreed that in a future union it would be "appropriate" to have the center of the universal church in the See of Rome. That, of course, was only the beginning for the touchy issues involving the papacy. After years of further labor, the negotiators polished their final recommendations late last summer on the grounds of England's Windsor Castle, where Henry once walked.

To avoid old angers, the new document shuns the word Pope altogether. Instead it speaks of the "Bishop of Rome" acting in the role of "universal primate." If the terminology is unfamiliar, so is the result. The report describes a leader who is more of a Pope than Anglicans are accustomed to, yet less of a Pope than Roman Catholicism--and Pope John Paul II--may find acceptable.

The text begins with the Catholic belief that Jesus Christ established Peter as the first Pope, and that this authority was passed to Peter's successors. Even if Anglicans do not find New Testament support for that version of history, the new document says, they can still accept the concept of a single head of the church in Rome, both as a gift of God and as a practical necessity.

The knottiest troubles came from the extension of papal powers by the First Vatican Council of 1870, necessitating the most important, and most intricate, wording of the new accord. Vatican I had proclaimed that the Pope has personal and direct jurisdiction over all church members. The negotiators offer grudging acceptance of the idea that a universal primate of the church has a responsibility, now and then, to speak and act on behalf of the entire church, or to involve himself with the affairs of local bishops and dioceses. That is considerably less than what Vatican I said, but it is still a major concession by the Anglicans.

The other big hurdle was Vatican I's declaration that the Pope has the power to define teachings of faith and morals infallibly. Here the two sides could not reach unanimity. But once again the Anglicans were remarkably open to papal authority. The accord concedes that there are occasions when the primate may need to state the judgment of the church without consulting a synod involving other leaders. But to do so, says the report, he must first seek to "discover the mind of his fellow bishops and of the church as a whole," a requirement which is light-years away from Vatican I's emphasis on one-man rule. The report avoids the term "infallibility," but the Anglicans were willing to grant that such personal decrees might be "preserved from error." The two sides differ, however, on whether this errorless quality is conveyed automatically (the Catholic view), or depends on later acceptance by the church.

Many emotional controversies were not addressed, among them the Catholic ban on birth control; acceptance by some Anglican churches of abortion, divorce and women priests; the role of the laity in church government; the powers of the Vatican Curia; the question of who will choose bishops; and the rigorously Bible-based views of Anglican Evangelicals.

The commission believes such matters can be settled more easily once a broad commitment to reunion is under way. To that end, the commission calls for the "establishment of a new relationship between our churches," and Pope John Paul and Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie have been asked to appoint a follow-up group to work out the practical steps necessary to produce reunion. One likely form of such a reunion would involve not an absorption of Anglicans into the existing Church of Rome, but a confederation of distinct, spiritually united, sister churches.

Of course, the world's 750 million Roman Catholics and 65 million Anglicans may never merge. Despite the commission's optimism and its best efforts to deal with the general nature of the papacy, there is the particular nature of John Paul to contend with. Whatever his own ecumenical design, he is centralizing and strengthening papal authority, rather than moving it in a direction that would attract Anglicans.

One Roman Catholic commission participant says it will be difficult "to win grass-roots approval of what has been done." An early test of that, on the Anglican side, will come in two months when John Paul goes to England, the first visit ever by a Pope. With news of the reunion proposals having leaked, there are already signs of resistance. Last week Archbishop of Canterbury Runcie was forced to abandon a speech on Catholic relations when 150 members of the Liverpool congregation he was addressing staged a noisy protest.

But for all the trouble and debate that clearly lies ahead, the commission's accord is still a major milestone on the ecumenical road. Said Cambridge Religion Professor Henry Chadwick, one of the Anglican negotiators: "This is not an agreement to differ -- it is an agreement. We have agreed that the papacy should be the focus of Eucharistic communion of all the churches."

-- By Richard N. Ostling

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