Vatican threanens: "Lambeth Conference: Time of reckoning for ecumenical dialogue"

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- This summer's once-a-decade Lambeth Conference marks a potentially defining moment for the worldwide Anglican Communion and a time of reckoning for ecumenical dialogue.

The Vatican, which is sending representatives to the July 16-Aug. 4 gathering of the world's Anglican leadership, will be closely following its deliberations to see what direction it takes on such crucial questions as internal unity, authority, the role of the bishop and Anglican identity.

What has pushed these questions to the forefront is the ordination of openly gay clerics, the blessing of gay unions and the ordination of women bishops in some Anglican provinces.

Those developments have threatened to split the Anglican Communion. For the Vatican, they have raised new questions about the future of the 40-year-old dialogue with the Anglican Church.

"It's very important for Anglicans to understand the depth of the change in our relationship that, in a sense, is being forced on us by the positions they are taking," said one Vatican official, who asked not to be named.

In the Vatican's view, it's not just a question of ethical and sexual issues. Above all, it is seen as a problem of ecclesiology, as the new tensions in the Anglican Communion have weakened the bonds among the provinces.

The tensions directly have involved the U.S. member of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church, which ordained its first women priests in 1974 and its first woman bishop in 1989. More of Lambeth Conference: Time of reckoning for ecumenical dialogue
Catholic Weekly, MI