“The Anglican Communion’s civil wars over women and gay bishops are the primary obstacles to Catholic-Anglican ecumenical dialogue” - not to mention the “teaching” and “theology” underlying these innovations and abandonments of the Church Catholic in Orthodoxy and Rome for two millenia.

The same sort of distancing between Anglican and Orthodox occured with the ordination of women. Since then, “ecumenical dialog” with Rome and Constantinople has become “mere talk”—the occasion for Anglican, Roman and Orthodox theologues to travel to foreign venues on their churches’ dime to chat. The possibility of sacramental unity is no longer on the table, as it was back in the 60s. Anglicans have closed that door.

Let’s lay ALL of the blame right squarely where it belongs:  At the doorstep of 815 Second Avenue, in New York.

Wow, those are strong words from somebody like Kasper, whose usually pretty muted when talking of ecumenical relations to the press.

This is a reiteration of what Cardinal Kaspar said at Lambeth (if one reads what he actually said).  But of course, at Lambeth, he did not meet with the press, that was done by the spin doctors, so they relayed what they wanted the press to think he meant.

Each ARCIC meeting has been followed almost immediately by members of the Anglican Communion moving in the opposite direction.  So, at each meeting, the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion are farther apart than at the previous meeting.  For 40 years, whenever there is a glimmer of agreement, the Anglican Communion moves the goal posts.

It does seem weird that the Anglican ARCIC folks agree things with the RCs that are far from settled within Anglicanism. Thus these words of the ARCIC report The Gift of Authority (1998) seem to reflect either theological ideals, or aspirations rather than the actual structures of the Anglican Communion.

37. The mutual interdependence of all the churches is integral to the reality of the Church as God wills it to be. No local church that participates in the living Tradition can regard itself as self-sufficient. Forms of synodality, then, are needed to manifest the communion of the local churches and to sustain each of them in fidelity to the Gospel. The ministry of the bishop is crucial, for this ministry serves communion within and among local churches. Their communion with each other is expressed through the incorporation of each bishop into a college of bishops. Bishops are, both personally and collegially, at the service of communion and are concerned for synodality in all its expressions. These expressions have included a wide variety of organs, instruments and institutions, notably synods or councils, local, provincial, worldwide, ecumenical. The maintenance of communion requires that at every level there is a capacity to take decisions appropriate to that level. When those decisions raise serious questions for the wider communion of churches, synodality must find a wider expression.

6. driver8 wrote:

It does seem weird that the Anglican ARCIC folks agree things with the RCs that are far from settled within Anglicanism.

I don’t find it particularly surprising. I think what happens is that it is catholic minded Anglicans who tend participate in the Anglican-Roman dialogues. (It’s also the orthodox minded Anglicans who tend to participate in the Anglican-Orthodox dialogues.) Meanwhile it is the protestant minded Anglicans who tend to participate in dialogues with Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples and the like. (Probably there is a converse tendency from the “other sides” of these dialogues.) The result is that things get agreed upon which are, as you say, far from settled within Anglicanism.

I recall that it was the catholic minded seminarians when I was in seminary who insisted that the Roman Church seminarians be invited to our regional InterSeminary Movement meetings so that it wasn’t just Disciples, Presbyterians, Methodists and Episcopalians. And probably those catholic minded Episcopalians found more agreement on matters such as ecclesiology, order, sacraments and even the role and authority of tradition with the Romans who started coming than with the broad church Episcopalians, Disciples, Presbyterians and Methodists.

And certainly the ELCA-TEC Covenant did not sit well with those catholic minded Episcopalians who held a high doctrine of orders. Most of them have since gone elsewhere.