Word: anglicanism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...world's 825 million Roman Catholics and 65 million Anglican Christians (known in the U.S. as Episcopalians), the pursuit of church reunion has been a lengthy and delicate exercise. In 1966, Rome and Canterbury authorized talks leading to the formation of a commission to examine the religious schism that originated so dramatically in the marital frustrations of King Henry VIII. In 1982, on the eve of Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Britain, the commission issued a report saying that "substantial agreement" was possible on the major issues stemming from the 16th century rupture. The Pope and Archbishop...
Last week, however, Rome provided a strong signal that reunification is still very much a live topic and unveiled a specific suggestion on how to proceed. The information came in a four-page letter from the Pope's top ecumenical adviser, Jan Cardinal Willebrands, to the 24-member Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, which is studying reunion. The Cardinal indicated that the Vatican is prepared to end centuries of refusal to recognize Anglican priests as legitimate, a stance that was formalized in Pope Leo XIII's 1896 decree that Canterbury ordinations are "absolutely null and void." If accomplished, that change...
...tactical significance in the ongoing reunion negotiations. For 17 years the president of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, Willebrands may have had an eye cocked at the five-day in-camera meeting this week in Toronto of the heads of all 28 autonomous branches of world Anglicanism. By releasing the document now, Rome also seeks to provoke hard ecumenical thinking in advance of the 1988 Lambeth Conference, the once-a- decade meeting that embraces some 600 Anglican bishops around the world...
Willebrands' letter addressed what the Cardinal called "the most fundamental" obstacle to Roman recognition of Anglican clergy, Pope Leo's emphatic 1896 decree. Leo's papal bull, titled Apostolicae Curae, laid out the doctrinal basis for the previous centuries of traditional rejection of Anglican ordinations...
...body-and-blood "sacrifice" of Jesus Christ. Beginning in 1552, argued the papal bull, the ordination ritual in Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer erased all mention of the priestly commission to offer sacrifice. Without such a commission, Leo ruled, in Roman Catholic terms the Anglican ordinations were defective both in the form (words) of the ritual and in the intention of the original celebrants of the rite. To this day, Anglicans themselves remain divided on the sacrifice issue, but acceptance or rejection of the concept has not been considered a grave ecclesiastical question...