Archbishop: Pope’s offer is not a solution
By Anna Arco

18 December 2009

Dr Williams delivers a homily at an ecumenical vespers service during a stay in Rome last month when he also met Pope Benedict XVI (AP Photo)

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the Pope's new Anglican provision is not a "solution" for Anglo-Catholics.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph Dr Rowan Williams criticised the idea that English Catholicism is about to experience a "second spring" and said that some Anglo-Catholics would think the theology behind the Pope's offer is "eccentric".

He also said that he thought the release of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus would have an impact on the committee working on a provision within the Church of England for those Anglicans who cannot in good conscience accept a woman bishop, but argued that a number of Anglo-Catholics might have good reasons for staying in the Church of England.

Dr Williams said: "I would guess that the papal announcement had some impact on the way some people thought and voted on the committee.

"But actually I don't think it is a solution. A great many Anglo-Catholics have good reason for not being Roman Catholics. They don't believe the Pope is infallible. And that's why they're still pressing for a solution in Anglican terms, rather than what many of them see as a theologically rather eccentric option on the Roman side."

British Catholicism, he said, had "a kind of resurgent - no - recurrent cycle of the 'second spring', in Cardinal Newman's imagery, and in the wave of distinguished converts in the inter-war years. Evelyn Waugh and so on.

"There was just a hint of it when Cardinal Hume uncharacteristically talked about the re-conversion of England - and I think he regretted that actually. And a few people in the last round," he said.

"It's a pattern, the sense that the Reformation wounds are going to be healed in favour of Rome. And it just keeps coming back - I think this has been the occasion for another little bit of that. It's bits of the repertoire."

While Dr Williams refused to say what he had discussed with the Pope during his visit to Rome in mid-November, he suggested that there had been a shift in the understanding of papal authority since the death of Pope John Paul II.

He said: "Nothing entirely new about that of course. At the end of John Paul II's pontificate you have that discussion of how papal authority is meant to be understood, how it might be received by others. I think that's treading water at the moment. I'd like to see that revived and that's part of what I was nudging at in Rome."

When Dr Williams was asked about the October press conference at which he and Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster announced the publication of the papal decree for disaffected Anglicans wishing to be in full communion with Rome, he said the conference was "not ideal".

"Everyone on the platform was a bit uncomfortable," he said. "I know the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the whole doesn't go in for much consultation - we were just on the receiving end of that".

Archbishop Nichols and Dr Williams announced the publication of Anglicanorum coetibus together to signal the unity between the Church of England and the Catholic Church. At the press conference it emerged that Dr Williams had been told about the Vatican document which offered new structures for Anglicans within the Catholic Church, at a late stage.

At the time, both men were keen to stress that the papal decree would not damage ecumenical relations. During the press conference Dr Williams rejected the suggestion that he saw the apostolic constitution "as an act of aggression or a vote of no confidence precisely because the routine relationships that we enjoy as churches continue".

He has continued to insist, as have prominent Catholics involved in the ecumenical movement, that the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) is not dead as a result of Anglicanorum coetibus. He said that the third round of ARCIC talks have been set for next year in Rome, which he described as a "small miracle".

He said: "I think reports of the death of ARCIC have been much exaggerated. There are a lot of Roman Catholics who want a chance to talk. They need an ecumenical forum to do that."

Last month Dr Williams addressed a symposium of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on November 19. In his speech he discussed ecclesiology and focused on questions of authority, primacy and the universal versus the local Church.

Dr Williams's comments regarding the "eccentric" theology of Anglicanorum coetibus were criticised in the Catholic blogosphere, but the Anglo-Catholic blogger Fr John Hunwicke SSC defended the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He said: "The ecclesiology of Anglicanorum coetibus does diverge from the norms to which we are accustomed and which he himself has lucidly expounded: that a 'local church' is not a denomination or a province but bishop-and-presbytery-and-diaconate-and laos (laity).

"Perhaps his words indicate that he is going to make one last herculean effort to secure just such an uneccentric provision for us from General Synod."