VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The establishment of special structures for Anglicans who want to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church absolutely is not a signal of the end of ecumenical dialogue with the Anglican Communion, said the Vatican’s chief ecumenist.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said the visit Nov. 19-22 of Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, primate of the Anglican Communion, to the Vatican “demonstrates that there has been no rupture and reaffirms our common desire to talk to one another at a historically important moment.”
Archbishop Williams was scheduled to speak at a conference sponsored by Cardinal Kasper’s office and to meet privately Nov. 21 with Pope Benedict.
The Vatican announced Oct. 20 that Pope Benedict was establishing a special structure for Anglicans wanting to enter the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining some of their liturgical, spiritual and pastoral heritage.
The Vatican said the establishment of the “personal ordinariates” — structures similar to dioceses — was a response to repeated requests from Anglican individuals and groups, who saw their hopes for full Anglican-Roman Catholic unity blocked by the acceptance of women priests and bishops, the ordination of openly gay bishops and the blessing of homosexual unions in some provinces of the Anglican Communion.
In an interview published in the Nov. 15 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Cardinal Kasper said that the papal provision is not anti-ecumenical.
