Content provided in partnership with

Windsor Report and Ecumenical Dialogue, The

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Flynn, Kevin

This essay notes points of continuity between the Windsor Report's understanding of communion and authority and the work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission on the same topics. In addition, features of the process of ecumenical dialogue are identified-especially respect, detachment, and common prayer-as ways of interaction that are essential for continued relations within the Anglican Communion. Finally, the author points to elements of the church's liturgical life that ground those features.

Most Popular Articles in Reference: The importance of understanding organizational culture; Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students; What factors attract foreign direct investment?; Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...; How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques; More »

While attending a recent meeting of the Canadian Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue, I found myself wondering whether a similar meeting might be held some 450 years from now at which people would be trying to put back together the broken shards of what once was the Anglican Communion. If so, among the tasks of such a future dialogue would be the effort to "get behind" the controversies that led to the break in order "not to evade the difficulties, but rather to avoid the controversial language in which they have often been discussed." Such a dialogue would seek solutions by "re-examining our common inheritance, particularly the Scriptures."1

While the Windsor Report is intended primarily for an Anglican audience, it has significance as well for the larger Christian world. The issues of authority, of the relations between the local and the universal church, and of the nature of communion itself, are not issues for Anglicans alone. As the Virginia Report observed, theological reflection on these matters is intended to serve not only the Anglican Communion but also the "ecumenical goal of full visible unity."2 To what extent, then, does the Windsor Report build on or reflect the theological consensus on these issues that Anglicans have achieved with other churches? In this essay, I will focus on the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), a dialogue that has been going on for close to forty years. The experience of participation in ecumenical dialogue can be instructive for the way Anglicans carry forward their own conversations today.

It must be said at the outset, though, that the Windsor Report refers to the Roman Catholic Church in ways that make me wonder if anyone had noticed that the dialogue has been taking place at all. Working as I do in a Roman Catholic University, and serving on the Canadian Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue, it is embarrassing to have to account for the statement that in the Roman Catholic Church, "the Pontiff, with the support of the Curia, enjoys 'supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power,' which he can always freely exercise" (para. 70).3 This is contrasted with the Anglican way in which supreme authority is given "to scripture as the locus and means of God's word." Another blunt contrast appears in paragraph 42: "The Anglican Communion does not have a Pope. . . . The Anglican Communion has always declared that its supreme authority is scripture." This contrast ignores, for example, the teaching of Vatican II in Dei Verbum (November 18, 1960):

The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the Body of the Lord, in so far as she never ceases, particularly in the sacred liturgy, to partake of the bread of life and to offer it to the faithful from the one table of the Word of God and the Body of Christ. She has always regarded, and continues to regard the Scriptures, taken together with sacred Tradition, as the supreme rule of her faith (para. 21).

The very first ARCIC document on authority asserted, in its 1981 elucidation, that "since the Scriptures are the uniquely inspired witness to divine revelation, the church's expression of that revelation must be tested by its consonance with Scripture."4 Subsequent documents of ARCIC have never departed from this foundation.

Another instance of the Windsor Report's careless approach to Roman Catholic theology appears in the important section on adiaphora (para. 87-96) where the principle is opposed to "those schools of thought, both Roman and Protestant, in which even the smallest details of belief and practice are sometimes regarded as essential parts of an indivisible whole" (para. 88). It is generally considered a courtesy in ecumenical dialogue to refer to your partners by the name they call themselves. Note that Roman Catholics do not call themselves "Romans." Although the authors of the Windsor Report were undoubtedly working under pressure of time, these blunt descriptors are unworthy.

More important is the apparent opposition between adiaphora and the Roman Catholic attention to "the smallest details of belief and practice." Roman Catholic theology acknowledges mutual connections and coherence between the dogmas of the faith that is expressed as a "hierarchy of truths." This "hierarchy" is intended to relate doctrines to one another as "they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian faith."5 One may fairly criticize recent tendencies on the part of the Roman Catholic magisterium to try to define too much, but even then distinctions are made between the varying degrees of importance of different pronouncements, which range from dogmas all the way down to "prudential judgements." The Windsor Report actually seems to require the elaboration of similar nuances among Anglicans when it refers to a need to introduce some "level of distinction" between different kinds of motions at Lambeth Conferences: some might "touch upon the definition of Anglicanism"; others might refer to "the authentic proclamation of the Gospel" (Appendix One, para. 4). These infelicities notwithstanding, the Windsor Report builds on the substantial work of ARCIC on two key concepts: communion and authority.

Windsor Report and Ecumenical Dialogue, The

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Flynn, Kevin

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Reference

Most Popular Publications in Reference