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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER
2 ,
1986
PAGE
17
565-member parliament of clergy, laity and bishops, voted 344-
137 for the church to engage in more exploratory talks with
Rome on the issue of papal authority and primacy.... The
churches split when England repudiated Rome's authority in
1534.
The General Synod, which meets three times a year, had before
it two reports from the Anglican-Roman Catholic International
Commission that su ested the
o
e should act as .universal
During a
b e s heated debate several speakers questioned how the
Church of England, the mother Church of the 70-million
worldwide Anglican Communion, could ever accept the authority
.of Rome.... But the Archbishop of Canterbury...Robert Runcie,
spiritual head of both the Church of England and the-Anglican
Commun'ion, spoke in favor of the motion and said that
Anglicans could
no
longer ignore the reality of the papal
scene
.
Recalling the gathering of religious leaders with Pope John
Paul I1 in Assisi last month, Archbishop Runcie added, 'The
other great communities of faith regard the pope as somehow
-
the main s okesman for Christianit whether we like
&
or
not
.'
A r c h u n z s & s t m n s i n n h e
my=
that Rome never changes but he said that in Assisi he had seen
the possibility of a new style of papal leadership.
rimate. in any un on
3 - T -
etwxn
t
e t w ouxe s .
-
- -
About four years ago, around the time of John Paul's visit to Britain, a
top official on the staff of Archbishop Runcie admitted that the Pope
could well play a unique role as a front-line ecumenical spokesman. "We
Christians,' he said, .need to see a personal figure of unity.... We are
beginning to see the point of a Pope for the worldwide Christian
churches--just so long as their traditions are not swallowed up on Roman
Catholic traditions..
Summing up the information in this .Pastor General's Report. and in the
last issue (Vatican disaffection with American Catholicism and the Single
European Act), certain conclusions might seem logical:
1) Europe is being unified at the economic and social level to a degree
most outsiders do not yet perceive. It is being harmonized and
standardized (homogenized?) in the areas of product design,
specifications and safety, combined with Community-wide approaches toward
service industries, social legislation and labor policies. It doesn't
take a leap of imagination to see that, someday, the Church 'sitting [in
control1 on the scarlet beast" (Revelation 17:3) may take this
harmonization process one step further and demand that the secular
authorities legislate on which days work may or may not be done. Check
Revelation 13:16-17.
2)
The Vatican's recent crackdown on wayward Catholics in the United
States may not work.
U.S.
Catholicism has been. affected too much by
American Protestant attitudes, including the heretical (to the Vatican)
concept of the separation of church and state. Watch the activities of
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican's top "doctrinal watchdog.'
As
head of the Congregation of the Faith, this Bavarian theologian sums up