The Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference began a process for addressing issues that divide Anglicans and pose challenges for dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, a Vatican official said."The dialogue will continue," said Canadian Monsignor Donald Bolen, who deals with Catholic-Anglican issues at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and who attended the conference.
In an August 7 interview, he said that the shape the future dialogue would take depended on how the Anglican Communion eventually implemented suggestions that garnered support at the Lambeth Conference, which is held every 10 years.
The suggestions included the development of a formal covenant agreement by which individual Anglican provinces would promise to act in union with the Anglican Communion as a whole on fundamental matters of faith and morals; the establishment of a "faith and order commission" that would provide guidance on matters of doctrine and morality; and the establishment of a "pastoral council" to address conflicts between provinces.
The outcome of the July 16-August 3 Lambeth Conference "in many respects was positive", Msgr Bolen said.
"A sense of direction emerged which was largely, but not universally agreed, and which should translate into greater cohesion within the Anglican Communion, giving it stronger boundaries and a stronger sense of identity."
In addition, he said, the Catholic participants at Lambeth were encouraged by the "strong support" shown for the call for moratoriums on blessing same-sex unions, on ordaining openly gay bishops and on violating the structure of the Anglican Communion by naming bishops outside one's own jurisdiction.
The practice has occurred when conservative Anglican provinces have named bishops for traditionalist Anglicans in the United States, where the US Episcopal Church has shown greater openness to homosexuals and has ordained women priests and bishops.
Because the Anglican Communion has no strong central authority like the Pope, because the Lambeth Conference does not have legislative powers and because the jurisdictional authority of the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury is limited, "at best the conference indicates a direction," Msgr Bolen said.
"We went into the Lambeth Conference in a wait-and-see mode and we came out of it with some encouragement, but still waiting," he said.
But in addition to dealing with current issues of tension, he said, the Lambeth Conference was an opportunity to look back at developments that occurred over the past 10 years and, as the head of the unity council told the Anglican bishops, one development was a greater acceptance of women priests and indications that more and more Anglican provinces would ordain women bishops.
Unity council president Cardinal Walter Kasper told the Anglicans that ordaining women, especially as bishops, created an obstacle to the Roman Catholic Church recognising Anglican ordinations, a key step toward full unity.
The Catholic Church believes that because Jesus chose only men to be his apostles, the Church has no authority to ordain women.
The inability to recognise Anglican priests and bishops as priests and bishops meant that full unity was no longer something the Catholic Church can see a clear path to, the cardinal said.
While full unity was still the long-term goal because Christ himself prayed for the unity of his disciples, the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue would have to focus on intermediate goals of greater co-operation and building on areas of faith the two hold in common, he said.
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