What Does The Prayer Really Say?
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You should definitely go over and visit the site of the gentlemanly Sandro Magister.

Today he has provided us with an English version of the speech Walter Card. Kasper delivered at the Anglican Lambeth meeting in his capacity as President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

Let’s have look at what he has to say with my emphases and comments, but you need to go to the site and explore.

The speech itself is quite long.  It is preceded by Magister’s good comments.

At Lambeth, Cardinal Kasper Calls for Another Newman

He was the most famous of the converts to the Church of Rome. The pope’s representative at the conference of Anglican bishops asks them to return to the model of the apostolic Church. No to women bishops, and to gay bishops. The complete text of the address

by Sandro Magister


ROMA, July 31, 2008 – The Lambeth Conference, the meeting held once every ten years among the bishops of the Anglican Communion from all over the world, heard yesterday from Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the pontifical council for promoting Christian unity.

The complete text of his address is presented further below. Kasper highlighted the growing distance between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, especially since some of the Anglican provinces began ordaining women to the priesthood in 1974, and to the episcopate beginning in 1989.

Another reason for the estrangement emphasized by Kasper concerns the authorization to bless homosexual unions, and the ordination as bishops of persons in same-sex relationships.

But apart from relations with the Church of Rome, these decisions have created dramatic divisions above all within the Anglican Communion itself. The strongest opposition comes from the developing world, especially from Africa. Of the 44 provinces that make up the Anglican Communion – Kasper noted – 28 ordain women to the priesthood, and 17 allow the ordination of women to the episcopate as well. The others do not. Each province decides for itself, and opposes those that decide differently. To such an extent that – in Kasper’s words – "we now need to take account of the decision of a significant number of Anglican bishops not to attend this Lambeth Conference."

The fragmentation within the Anglican Communion is so serious that Casper asks:

"In such a scenario, [...] who will our dialogue partner be? [Exactly!] Should we, and how can we, appropriately and honestly engage in conversations also with those who share Catholic perspectives on the points currently in dispute, and who disagree with some developments within the Anglican Communion or particular Anglican provinces?"

In effect, those in the Anglican Communion who do not accept the ordination of women and the legitimization of homosexuality often enter the Catholic Church.

But the attraction to Catholicism is also of a more general nature. It has to do with an overall understanding of the Church and of Christian tradition since apostolic times until today, which some see as being more faithfully realized in the Catholic Church.

In his address, Cardinal Kasper recalled the "ecclesiological arguments" that convinced the most famous of the 19th century converts, Cardinal John Henry Newman, to embrace Catholicism. And he expressed the hope that there might emerge in the Anglicanism of today a new Oxford Movement, [Interesting.  This as perhaps Holy Church is readying itself for the beatification of John Henry Newman.] the movement of return to the tradition of the apostolic Church inspired by Newman.

Since 1980, when the Church of Rome established rules for men ordained to the priesthood or episcopate in the Anglican Communion to enter the Catholic Church, it is calculated that more than 80 of them have taken this step, often followed by large portions of their respective dioceses and parishes.

The latest ceremony to welcome an Anglican minister into the Catholic Church took place privately, last December 1 in Rome, in the papal basilica of St. Mary Major.

On one side was the American cardinal archpriest of the basilica, Bernard Law. On the other was the former Anglican (or Episcopalian, as they are usually called in the United States) Jeffrey Steenson, former bishop of the diocese of Rio Grande, which covers New Mexico and part of Texas, accompanied at the ceremony by the Catholic archbishop of Santa Fe, Michael J. Sheehan.

Steenson, 55, married with three children, was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church, which does not recognize Anglican orders as valid. He will teach patristics at the seminary, a subject in which he is an expert.

About a dozen other Episcopalian ministers from the United States are waiting to be welcomed as priests into the Catholic Church. Three of them are bishops emeritus: John Lipscomb, of the diocese of southeast Florida, Clarence Pope, of Fort Worth, and Daniel Herzog, of Albany.

But within the Anglican Communion, there are many more who are sympathetic toward the Catholic Church than those who "cross the Tiber" and convert.

For example, these Anglo-Catholic sentiments were expressed in Sydney by the Anglican bishop Robert Forsyth, who last July 18, welcoming Benedict XVI to his city, described the Church of Rome as "a rock in the rapids." And he explained:

"Were it not for Rome’s strong insistence upon Christ as the only Saviour of the world, upon the ‘Catholic faith’, the nature of the Triune God, the divinity of Christ, the importance of sacred Scripture and of the objectivity of Christian morality, then the life of other Christian churches would have been so much more difficult, certainly for us here in the West."

Another Australian, Archbishop John Hepworth, is primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a branch of Anglicanism that has made the formal proposal to the Holy See to enter into a "corporate reunion" with the Catholic Church. On July 25, the apostolic nuncio in Australia, Giuseppe Lazzarotto, delivered to Hepworth a letter from Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, pledging that the Holy See will examine the proposal with "serious attention." The Traditional Anglican Communion numbers about 400,000 members, in many countries.

Here follows the address from Cardinal Kasper to the Lambeth Conference, delivered on July 30, 2008:


Roman Catholic Reflections on the Anglican Communion

by Walter Kasper


It is my privilege to bring to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to each of you here present, and to all the participants of this highly significant Lambeth Conference, the greetings of Pope Benedict XVI and of the whole staff of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. All of us are with you in these days; we are with you in our thoughts and in our prayers, and we want to express our deep solidarity with your joys, and with your concerns and sorrows as well.

Permit me to begin by extending my thanks to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the staff coordinating ecumenical relations at Lambeth Palace and at the Anglican Communion Office, for the invitation to take part in this important gathering and for the opportunity to offer some reflections on our common concerns. It is a strength of Anglicanism that even in the midst of difficult circumstances, you have sought the views and perspectives of your ecumenical partners, even when you have not always particularly rejoiced in what we have said. But rest assured, what I am about to say, I say as a friend.

When I saw what you proposed as subject, "Roman Catholic Reflections on the Anglican Communion", [So the topic came from the Anglicans.] I thought that you could have chosen an easier one. This is a wide open title encompassing many aspects of history and doctrine, and I can only touch upon some of them. But it seems to me that there is a hidden question in the title, asking not so much what Catholics think about the Anglican Communion, but about the Anglican Communion in its present circumstances. I could imagine a less uncomfortable question. [From the onset he is not dodging problems.]

My paper will be divided into three sections: [1] an overview of our relations in recent years; [2] ecclesiological considerations in light of the current situation within Anglicanism; [3] and a brief reflection on underlying questions beneath current controversies and points of dispute within Anglicanism, especially those which have also had an effect on your relations with the Catholic Church. In the conclusion, I will offer a response to a quite unexpected question posed to me a few months ago by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which puzzled me a great deal, namely, what kind of Anglicanism do you want? – what a question! I hope that you yourself know the right answer – and what are the hopes of the Catholic Church for the Anglican Communion in the months and years ahead? Here the answer is easier: We hope that we will not be drawn apart, and that we will be able to remain in serious dialogue in search of full unity, so that the world may believe.  [Bottom line: if you split into various groups, it will in the long run be harder to attain unity.  However, I wonder sometimes if that is the case.  For example, if the Traditional Anglican Communion enters into full unity with Rome, would that not create a serious challenge to the rest of the Anglicans of various stripe in the world?  Could that not poke the process along?  Sure there is value to having one body with which to dialogue, but is that value overriding?  I don’t know.  I remember, however, that some years back a poorly thought through move was made in signing a joint statement with some Lutherans about justification.  Just who were those Lutherans?  For whom did they speak?  When groups start to split, they tend to fragment again and again and again.  So, what Card. Kasper is indicating here, something presaged by Pope Benedict on the airplane to WYD, has serious impact.]


I. Overview of Relations in Recent Years


Let me in this first section refresh our memories, [This is so German.  He starts with a status quaestionis.] lest we forget what and how much we have already achieved in the last 40 years. When the Second Vatican Council, in its Decree on Ecumenism, turned its attention to the “many Communions (which) were separated from the Roman See” in the 16th century, it acknowledged that “among those in which Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist, the Anglican Communion occupies a special place” (Unitatis redintegratio §13). This statement is grounded in an ecclesiological understanding that from the Catholic perspective, the Anglican Communion contains significant elements of the Church of Jesus Christ. [But not all.] In their 1977 Common Declaration, Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan and Pope Paul VI identified some of those ecclesial elements when they wrote:

"As the Roman Catholic Church and the constituent Churches of the Anglican Communion have sought to grow in mutual understanding and Christian love, they have come to recognize, to value and to give thanks for a common faith in God our Father, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; our common baptism into Christ; our sharing of the Holy Scriptures, of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the Chalcedonian definition, and the teaching of the Fathers; our common Christian inheritance for many centuries with its living traditions of liturgy, theology, spirituality and mission."  [Not, however, valid priesthood or Eucharist or Apostolic Succession.]

In this text, we can hear Archbishop Coggan and Paul VI pointing to what is the common ground, the common source and centre of our already existing but still incomplete unity: Jesus Christ, and the mission to bring Him to a world [Common mission.] that is so desperately in need of Him. What we are talking about is not an ideology, not a private opinion which one may or may not share; it is our faithfulness to Jesus Christ, witnessed by the apostles, and to His Gospel, with which we are entrusted. From the very beginning we should, therefore, keep in mind what is at stake as we proceed to speak about faithfulness to the apostolic tradition and apostolic succession, [There Kasper introduces what was not in the list of common points.] when we speak about the threefold ministry, women’s ordination, and moral commandments. [valid Holy Orders, the impossibility of ordaining women, and the situation of homosexuals in relation to Holy Orders] What we are talking about is nothing other than our faithfulness to Christ Himself, who is our unique and common master. And what else can our dialogue be but an expression of our intent and desire to be fully one in Him in order to be fully joint witnesses to His Gospel.  [He has set up an argument: in order to be faithful to Jesus Christ in a full ecclesiological sense, you must work toward having vaild Orders, rejecting ordination of women, and sort out a correct position on homosexual