Wikileaks: Archbishop Williams’ “Impossible Situation” · December 23, 2010
According to a recently released cable on Wikileaks, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, met with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on November 21, 2009. This meeting was actually planned prior to the papal invitation to “disaffected Anglicans to convert to Catholicism,” through provisions created by the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus released on November 4, 2009. The Constitution provides for creation of personal ordinariates for whole Anglican Churches or groups of churches entering into full communion with the Catholic Church.
Miffed at the papal invitation to discontented Anglicans, Archbishop Williams “made it clear that the Vatican should have consulted with him before reaching out to the Anglican community.”
Despite the seeming fall-out between the Pontiff and the Archbishop over certain sticking points, the meeting was described as “cordial” by Vatican officials in an official statement. The discussions also focused on recent events affecting relations between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, and the two institutions reiterated the “shared will to continue and to consolidate the ecumenical relationship between Catholics and Anglicans.”
The Archbishop really had no choice but to continue the deep-seated ecumenical collaboration between the Catholic and Anglican communions toward full, visible, sacramental union. If he didn’t agree to continue the dialogue, he would have undone many, many years of investing in a working relationship, and a strong commitment to eventual union.
“Speaking with Vatican Radio shortly after the meeting, Williams stressed his prior good relations with the Pope and downplayed the importance of the Vatican’s new procedure for receiving Anglicans into the Catholic Church. However, he did express misgivings about how the new procedure was announced.”
The cables further reveal that Williams was the guest of honour at a dinner hosted by British ambassador to the Holy See, Francis Campbell for senior Vatican officials on November 20, 2009. Campbell believed the “Vatican’s move shifted the goal of the Catholic-Anglican ecumenical dialogue from true unity to mere cooperation.”
Mere cooperation is not the intent of the ecumenical movement. It is nothing short of full, visible, sacramental unity with the Catholic Church under the Pope. The Anglican Church has been splintering for some time, with individual Anglican’s converting to Rome, Anglican churches and communities of churches realigning under conservative branches of the Anglican Church, and some communities of churches asking for a way to fully enter Rome while keeping their Anglican rites and bishops.
It is the view of Keep the Faith that Vatican/Anglican ecumenical dialogue has stagnated over the ordination of woman and openly gay priests and bishops, while the splintering of the Anglican Church has created an opportunity that the Catholic Church could not pass up. The Vatican is therefore attempting to glean as many Anglicans as possible and further weaken the Anglican Church.
The Vatican’s decision to invite disaffected Anglicans to convert to Rome seems to have been “aimed primarily at Anglicans in the U.S. and Australia, with little thought given to how it would affect the center of Anglicanism, England, or the Archbishop of Canterbury,” said the cable, quoted in the UK Guardian.
On the contrary, we think the Catholic Church is narrowing the scope of the Anglican Communion, and attempting to isolate the center of Anglicanism so that it can further press for an ecumenical collapse of a distinct Anglican Church.
Campbell remarked that Benedict XVI “had put Williams in an impossible situation.” If Williams reacted more forcefully, he would destroy decades of work on ecumenical dialogue; by not reacting more harshly, he has lost support among angry Anglicans” that could result in more conversions to Catholicism.
In our view, Williams’ “impossible situation” is a brilliant Vatican maneuver to subordinate the Anglican leader to Rome’s manipulation. Ecumenical dialog with the Vatican has put him in a position where he can’t speak out against the papal maneuver on one hand, while on the other he loses more conservative support from within his church which contributes to further splintering. Rome keeps a friendly dialogue with the Anglican Primate while at the same time stripping him of “equality” in the ecumenical dialog, and further weakening his influence among his followers.
Williams’ previously planned meeting with Benedict XVI, unquestionably came at an “awkward time,” but was also important that it happen in order to “start healing the damage caused by the Vatican’s outreach to Anglicans,” said the cable.
Dealing with the Vatican is dangerous, even fatal, to churches that have lost their biblical moorings. In spite of the hurdles faced by Catholicism and Anglicanism in the ecumenical journey, progress to full sacramental unity takes surprising twists and turns. Bible prophecy tells us that the Anglican Church will worship at the feet of Rome (Rev. 13:8). It is most assured that the Vatican will eventually “sit a queen” above all religious systems of the world. (Rev 18:7).
Denford Ntini substantially contributed to this article.
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