CHURCH OF ENGLAND BISHOP CALLS ANGLICANS TO ACCEPT PETRINE PRIMACY

New Orleans - French Quarter: St. Louis Cathedral - Nave Ceiling painting depicting Jesus bestowing Primacy to St. Peter.

Anglicans must look to the Pope for Unity: Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali

May 9th, 2009 Posted in News Ruth Gledhill reports on her blog:

As the Covenant process seemed to sustain something of a blow in Jamaica I was enjoying a the kindly light of Oxford’s Newman Society at the Catholic Chaplaincy, where Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester who recently announced he is to retire to work with persecuted Christians, was speaking about the future of the Anglican Communion. The bishop was interviewed before he spoke by Michael Webb. Read on for some of my notes on his speech (to be updated later when I’ve time after my weekly trip to the Royal Academy).

Bishop Michael Nazir Ali spoke about the equal and opposite pulls in Anglicanism, towards the ‘logic of Catholicism’ or the ‘logic of fragmentation’.

‘The question now arises, which logic will prevail. It is quite possible that the logic of fragmentation will prevail and people will go their own way. Or it may be that the Anglicans will see their way to the Catholic Church, to God’s will as expressed in Christ’s highly prescient prayer for the unity of Christians across the ages and throughout the world.

‘Anglicans to their credit have never claimed to be the one, true Church.’ He noted that successive Lambeth Conferences had accepted that Anglicanism stands ready to disappear in the cause of Catholic unity, ‘that is, it [Anglicanism] is not an end to itself but a means towards the greater Catholicism which is God’s will.’

Nazir-Ali, a member of Arcic, which is to reconvene soon, said he believed Anglicans still had gifts to bring to the ecumenical table, ‘aspects which would be an enrichment to the worldwide Church.’

And there was also, of course, the question of how these gifts would be received by the Church.

He said the Roman Catholic Church was not monolithic. There was plenty of room for diversity within it. But he described an ‘ecclesial deficit’ in Anglicanism which it had not yet addressed properly. It has to do with confessing the faith together, decision-making, common discipline, a universal ministry for maintaining unity. The temptation for Anglicans, he said, was to invent such a universal ministry. But he warned against this.

‘Robert Runcie used to say he did not want the Archbishop of Canterbury to be turned into a Pope because one Pope was sufficient.

‘What we need is first of all to recognise that there is a proper universal ministry for unity, that it is the Bishop of Rome that exercises that historic ministry for today, and to find a way for all Christians to accept that ministry.’