c. 1998 Religion News Service

CANTERBURY, England _ Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the Vatican’s top ecumenical official, warned Anglican prelates that any change by Anglicans toward greater acceptance of homosexuals could do further damage to relations between Rome and Canterbury.

Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, made his comments in a carefully worded sermon preached at an ecumenical vespers service Monday night (July 20) at the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world.”Are we not experiencing, in fact, new and deep divisions among Christians as a result of contrasting approaches to human sexuality, for instance?”Cassidy asked.”When such attitudes are in the ascendant, disunity between Christians will remain unresolved,”he added.”Moreover, disunity becomes an increasingly grave matter within the still-separated churches as well. Authoritative proclamation of the gospel of Christ is diminished.” While Anglicans and Roman Catholics share much common theology and doctrine, relations between the two churches have been strained in the past two decades by the decision of many Anglican churches, including the Episcopal Church in the United States, to ordain women as priests and bishops. Eleven women bishops are attending the Lambeth Conference.

The issue of homosexuality and the role gays and lesbians should be allowed to play in the church and under what circumstances is expected to be fiercely debated during the three-week meeting of Anglican bishops, which began Sunday (July 19). That debate could begin as early Wednesday.

Cassidy, in his homily, said the commitment to ecumenism is now taken for granted by most churches.

But he said new risks are emerging that threaten the drive for unity, including, on the one hand, the willingness to settle merely for greater understanding and cooperation _ peaceful coexistence _ rather than full visible unity.

A second threat arises, he said, when ecumenism becomes compartmentalized and sealed off from other areas of church life and decision-making, in what appeared to be a reference to such issues as making decisions about the ordination of gays without regard to their ecumenical implications.”The commitment to unity is relativized if diversity and differences that cannot be reconciled with the gospel are at the same time being embraced and exalted,”Cassidy said.”It is put in question when pluralism in the church comes to be regarded as a kind of `post-modern’ beatitude.” Cassidy also delivered a coded, although not new, rebuke to the Anglicans over the ordination of women priests and bishops, which Pope John Paul II has in the past labeled a”grave obstacle”to church unity.”I want to express in Christian love the concern of the Catholic Church when new and conflicting interpretations of the gospel result in fresh disagreements, especially where these touch ministry and strain ecclesial communion, above all at the Eucharist,”he said.

He quoted a report by the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, which argued that”at all times the theological praxis (actions) of the local church must be consistent with the truth of the gospel which belongs to the universal church”and that sometimes the universal church”has to say with firmness that a particular local practice or theory is incompatible with Christian faith.””Is not some form of universal authority the necessary corollary of communion at a universal level, even while Christians are on the way toward full communion?”he asked.

The cardinal noted the current Lambeth meeting is scheduled to give considerable attention to the report, which discusses how the Anglican Communion, without a pope and with each church within it having considerable autonomy, makes authoritative decisions.”From the beginning of Anglican-Catholic dialogue authority in the church has had a prominent place in our discussions,”he said.”In fact, it lies at the heart of how and why we have diverged.”

DEA END NOWELL