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Windsor Report and Ecumenical Dialogue, The
Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Flynn, Kevin
The Gift of Authority9 gives still greater emphasis to the role of the College of Bishops in maintaining the unity of the church:
The mutual interdependence of all the churches is integral to the reality of the Church as God wills it to be. No local church that participates in the living Tradition can regard itself as self-sufficient. . . . The ministry of the bishop is crucial, for his ministry serves communion within and among local churches. Their communion with each other is expressed through the incorporation of each bishop into a college of bishops. Bishops are, both personally and collegially, at the service of communion (para. 37).
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The ministry of bishops in discerning what is or is not an authentic expression of the apostolic faith is set within synodality "in all its expressions." In practice, this requires that all the faithful participate through the "wide variety of organs, instruments and institutions, notably synods or councils, local, provincial, worldwide, ecumenical" (para. 37). Importantly, the faithful have to be able to recognize and receive such teaching (see The Gift of Authority, 43; Church as Communion, 32; Windsor Report, para. 67, 68).
Although the Windsor Report outlines various ways in which greater authority might be ascribed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is silent on some of the challenges issued by The Gift of Authonty. These include concrete, local aspects of oversight shared by Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops together (para. 59). More challenging still is the invitation to Anglicans to recover and re-receive a renewed form of the universal primacy of the Bishop of Rome (para. 62). It may be that our Communion s efforts to understand and develop our own versions of primacy will sketch the outline of what a renewed form of the Petrine office might be.
The present situation requires Anglicans to work to a clearer, more realistic reflection on the connections between the theological work of the dialogues and the realities of history. The Windsor Report effectively recognizes that our crisis calls into question the agreements ARCIC has reached (section D). A healthy reality check is no bad thing for such theological statements. The Gift of Authonty, in particular, has some of the character of an ideal that is unsullied by the concrete lived experience of believers. For Canadian and American Anglicans, this includes the reality of a cultural context in which the notion of authority itself is suspect. Given the Windsor Report s rather brief treatment of communion, we would do well to revisit especially Church as Communion as a way of discovering a more compelling link between the Trinitarian life and ecclesial communion. Without such a link, people will find it impossible to see submission to the Instruments of Unity either as a means to liberating love or the fulfilment of unity with God and one another.
Both the Windsor Report and The Gift of Authonty acknowledge the crucial role of the laity in decision-making within the life of the church. The Gift of Authonty fails to acknowledge the absence of structures within the life of the Roman Catholic Church whereby bishops can effectively hear the voice of the laity. The Report raises questions about the further development of the structures of unity, including the place of the laity, but without resolving them. Given that the February 2005 Primates' Meeting requested that the Canadian and American churches consider not attending the Anglican Consultative Council in 2005-the only forum for lay participation-there is a very real danger that the way forward envisaged by the Windsor Report will not adequately include laity.
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