17. til 27. mai i år skal tredje hovedrunde for ARCIC (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission) begynne – første runde gikk fra 1970 til 1982 og andre runde fra 1983 til 2005. Men når spør William Oddie i the Catholic Herlad hva som er poenget med denne tredje omgangen, for alt håp om enhet mellom de to kirkene er vel oppgitt forlengst? Fra katolsk side vil jeg selv mene at vi ikke kan la være å arbeide intenst for kristen enhet (som Jesus selv ber oss om), så lenge det er noen som helst mulighet for å komme videre.
Men Oddie (tidligere anglikaner) er ganske så oppgitt og skarp i sine kommentarer:
And now, ARCIC III: isn’t it time to bring this ecumenical farce to an end? …
… I remember as a Catholic-minded Anglican desperately hoping, back in the 70s, in the early days of ARCIC, that a series of statements would somehow emerge which would uncover a common faith, on the basis of which corporate reunion might be a distant prospect. The statements did emerge, on Ministry, Sacraments and so forth: but they were never officially accepted by Rome as being a sound or adequate representation of Catholic belief, and nor were they.
The trouble with ARCIC always was (as a former Catholic member of it once explained to me) that on the Catholic side of the table you have a body of men (mostly bishops) who represent a more or less coherent view, being members of a Church which has established means of knowing and declaring what it believes. On the Anglican side of the table you have a body of men (and it was only men, on both sides, in those days) the divisions between whom are just fundamental as, and sometimes a lot more fundamental than, those between any one of them and the Catholic representatives they faced: they all represented only themselves. …
…Can anybody explain to me why we carry on with ARCIC? Is there any real intention, as 30 years ago there undoubtedly was, of actually acheiving something? Is it a continuing self-delusion on the part of those participating? Or is ARCIC III just a PR exercise, designed to avert attention from the fact that we have now, inevitably but finally, come to the bitter end of the ecumenical road?