Could the Archbishop and the Pope really reunify the Church?

In the week that Francis called for ‘full unity’, Paul Vallely asks whether he’s got a prayer

The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, seen at the Vatican this week, have much in common and are clearly not content to ‘agree to disagree’ (AFP/Getty Images)

Something significant happened in Rome this week when the Archbishop of Canterbury met the Pope for the second time since the two men took office, within days of one another, just over a year ago.

They have agreed a joint project to use the worldwide reach of their churches to combat the global trade in human trafficking. They discussed how to pressurise 50 top multi-national companies to render their supply chains free of forced labour by 2020 – and ensure they “slavery proof” the investments and purchasing of their own churches. There were other areas of practical co-operation, including peace-building in areas like South Sudan. As he left Rome, Archbishop Justin Welby hinted that other new initiatives had been discussed.

But what was also striking was the renewed commitment the two men made to the idea that their two churches should merge. Pope Francis said that “the goal of full unity… remains the aim which should direct our every step along the way”.

This is a process which many assumed had stalled. The decision by the Church of England to ordain women in 1992 caused a theological rift between Canterbury and Rome. The ordination in the wider Anglican communion of openly gay bishops, like Gene Robinson in 2003, created another obstacle. And next month the General Synod is likely to vote for women bishops – something Rome sees as a greater theological problem even than female priests.

Yet in the background heavyweight theological discussions, on what unites rather than divides the two churches, have been continuing. One of the purposes of Archbishop Welby’s visit to Rome was to launch a new website (www.iarccum.org) dedicated to implementing better ecumenical relations.

Such a small step is a far cry from the early heady days of ecumenism when it was widely assumed that unity was just a few years away.

Things had moved swiftly after the meeting by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher and Pope John XXIII in 1960 – the first time an Archbishop of Canterbury had visited to the Vatican for 600 years. Pope John asked when the Anglicans would return to the Catholic fold. Archbishop Fisher replied: “It is not a question of returning, but going forward together.” His words became the model for a new relationship which was affirmed when John XXIII’s revolutionary Second Vatican Council (1962-65) recognised the validity of baptism by other Christian denominations.

In a gesture of massive significance, in 1966, Pope Paul VI gave an episcopal ring to Archbishop Michael Ramsey – which Archbishop Welby wore this week on his visit to Rome. A year later an Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) began unity talks. By clarifying old misunderstandings and embracing new scholarship it resolved many of the divisions which had bedevilled the two churches since the Reformation.

Much of ARCIC’s work is safely banked. When Rome’s top ecumenist, Cardinal Walter Kasper, called a meeting of Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Reformed churches in 2010 it found, one insider said, “not one single area of theology in which we do not have some measure of agreement”. This was not just a clever repackaging of old disputes. It is a real growth in understanding.

But until recently ARCIC had hit the buffers. When Rome took an extraordinary 10 years to respond to one key ARCIC agreement many Anglicans lost patience and went ahead with the ordination of women and more liberal attitudes to gays.

In response the Vatican pulled the plug on the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). Pope Benedict XVI’s unilateral decision in 2009 to set up an Anglican Ordinariate to poach dissident Anglicans to Rome caused further resentment.

Yet things have clearly begun to change. Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby have similar visions. Both are no-nonsense characters with a “sleeves rolled up” approach to making change happen. Yet both see theological union as crucial. They have no patience with the “let’s agree to disagree on theology and just open a food bank together” approach.

In Rome Archbishop Welby – who despite his evangelical background, has a Benedictine spiritual director and has invited a French Catholic religious community, Chemin Neuf, to live in his home in Lambeth Palace – said that Anglicans and Catholics had to “get away from being quite comfortable with the fact we live separately”. Without theology, he said, the churches will become “just another NGO with a lot of old buildings”.

The renewed talk of unity is more than a pious aspiration. A third round of ARCIC talks has had meetings so far in Bose, Hong Kong, Rio and Durban. They have shifted the focus away from what divides the two churches to “receptive ecumenism” – what each side has to learn from the other.

At the heart of their discussions is how the two Communions go about making decisions. There are huge contrasts: Catholicism is heavily centralised whereas in Anglicanism authority is dispersed between many churches in many nations. Division is part of the Protestant DNA. And Anglicans are more divided among themselves now than ever before.

But Pope Francis clearly wants to change the governance of the Catholic Church so it is less like a mediaeval monarchy and more open to the wisdom and insights of all its members.

Given the practical difficulties posed by issues of gender and sexuality it is hard to see what unity between Catholics and Anglicans might look like – certainly not uniformity. But if the intellectual difficulties are greater now than 50 years ago, emotionally the two churches are closer than at any time since the reign of Henry VIII.

Archbishop Welby this week presented Pope Francis with a cutting from the giant fig tree planted in Lambeth Palace by the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole (1500-1558). What fruit it will bear, and when, is hard to predict. But hope is a theological virtue. For the past five decades the two churches have been moving on parallel lines. It feels as though, at last, those lines may be once more converging.

Paul Vallely is the author of ‘Pope Francis – Untying the Knots’