Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Richard John Neuhaus on the election of Schori:

The election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) is an occasion of great sadness for all who care about the unity of Christians. Those who have always been skeptical of the ecumenical effort may well say, “I told you so,” and indulge in a measure of schadenfreude. That is not, I would suggest, a faithfully Catholic response.

The Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to Christian unity understood as full communion in faith, ministry, and sacramental life. That commitment is grounded in the prayer of Our Lord “that they may all be one” (John 17), as magisterially elaborated in the encyclical of John Paul the Great, Ut Unum Sint. The ecumenical vision of the Second Vatican Council has repeatedly been reaffirmed and strengthened by subsequent popes. Going back long before the Council, there was thought to be a special relationship between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. In the theological dialogues following the Council, great hopes were vested in the possibility of ecclesial reconciliation with Anglicanism. Those hopes, some suggest, have now been blasted and are probably beyond repair. At the same time, the actions of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church may mark its definitive break from the worldwide Anglican Communion of more than seventy million members. That would leave the Episcopal Church with its two million members isolated as simply one among many mainline/old-line American denominations.

the rest at First Things

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