25th October Unity: St Mary Abbots

I am going to talk a little bit tonight about the news story we raised at Wednesday's breakfast re the Vatican overture.

My headings for tonight include insights of three recent ABC's on the question of Anglican/Roman Catholic unity.

Heading being: future of our Church and Communion again in news focus

What does history teach us?

Current situation: Archbishops' Council, House of Bishops and General Synod all picking their way through the question of women in the episcopate.

Roman Catholic Church makes overture

Consequent questions raised again about "state" of the CofE and CofE/RC relations

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Tomorrow (though terribly missed off our church calendar!) we remember Cedd of Lastingham
After a Pope from Rome sent Augustine to convert the English - there were controversies and disagreements amongst all the commonality across the Christian Church in Bede's well attested world.

Cedd joined in the debate: urged the Irish and Roman ways to co-join

Recent Archbishops have all had their unique way of dealing with the dilemma which is the main news story of the weekend re our Church

Owen Chadwick - in his book - Michael Ramsey (A Life) found a welcome not as a stranger
"Pope Paul VI included this general sentence as Ramsey arrived: "as you cross our thresh hold we want especially to feel that you are not entering the house of strangers, but that this is your home, where you have a right to be".

Robert Runcie saw the quest for unity not in terms of supremacy - but humility - agreeing with Gregory the Great.
"An Archbishop of Canterbury cannot but have respect for the Pope who sent Augustine to England,a Pope who exercised the sort of Primacy that ARCIC commends to us today. Gregory the Great asked for 'no honour which shall detract from the honour of belonging to my brethren' and believed that it was through 'himility rather than supremacy that the unity of the church is preserved.'

Ended with Rowan Williams
uncomfortable, at the centre of another story on the unity front:
it is his conviction (writing in The Truce of God) that "a catholic church is one whose loyalty is to a vision of humanity as a single , though endlessly various, whole, a single pattern centred on Jesus."