Saturday, July 26, 2008

Anglican tensions not welcomed by Catholics, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor says at Lambeth

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13363

[Catholic News Agency] 26 Jul 2008--The Catholic Church takes no pleasure in the tensions within the Anglican Church, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said in a Friday address to Anglican bishops at the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury.

Discussing the progress of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) on Church unity, the cardinal suggested that ARCIC’s work on the nature of the Church is relevant to present Anglican disputes. While voicing his confidence in the commission’s work, he said the path to church unity “might be longer than we had imagined at first.”

The cardinal, who is now the Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, noted that he had co-chaired ARCIC for 26 years until 1999 and continued to be involved with the commission after stepping down. He recounted the early years of the commission, which he described as “heady days.”

“All this was very new. Engaging in this sort of dialogue was itself new, and people were genuinely amazed and delighted by what had been done over twelve short years,” he said.

No comments: