ARCIC III in the light of ARCIC II: A critical response to Life in Christ,Morals,Communion and the Church 1

Abstract

The Mandate of ARCIC II was to examine the differences which separate the Anglican and Roman Catholic communions. In the development of the Statement Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church, this Mandate worked against the possibility of an outcome which would lead to a shared understanding of Christian moral life. The major focus of the Statement, the two issues on which there were formal statements of disagreement between the two communions, led to a very narrow focus for Christian life in the light of the gospel and a sense that the differences were too great to allow for resolution. Further exploration of the implications of our shared baptismal call in Christ and its implication for Christian living could have provided a much stronger basis for the consideration of particular moral issues and ethical reasoning that is an expression of “Life in Christ”. The process of ARCIC III may facilitate a broader understanding of Christian moral life and a more nuanced articulation of ethical reasoning and moral culpability within the Roman Catholic moral tradition. These in turn may provide a more hopeful path towards communion with regard to the discernment of right ethical teaching.

Keywords

ARCIC II ARCIC III Discipleship Moral Life

The mandate of ARCIC III arises from the Common Declaration of Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Rowan Williams.² In this 2006 document they stated that ‘[i]t is a matter of urgency, therefore, that in renewing our commitment to pursue the path towards full visible communion in the truth and love of Christ, we also commit ourselves in our continuing dialogue to address the important issues involved in the emerging ecclesiological and ethical factors making that journey more difficult and arduous. In the light of this Common Declaration, ARCIC III has identified its mandate as a two-stage project: the first being that of examining ‘the Church as Communion, local and universal’ and the second as moving to an agreed statement about ‘how in communion the local and universal church comes to discern right ethical teaching’.³

With the proposed publication of an agreed statement relating to the first part of its work, Walking Together on the Way: Learning to be Church – Local, Regional, Universal, ⁴ it is reasonable to assume that the members of ARCIC III would be moving towards the work demanded to complete the whole of its mandate.

It is within such a context that this article offers a critical analysis of one part of the work of ARCIC II – the agreed statement on Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church.⁵

Introduction: The development of the document

It has been widely noted that the publication in 1994 of Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church marked the first agreed statement on Christian moral life to be developed from the work of ecumenical dialogue.⁶ While the need for ‘a joint study of moral theology’ had been recognized as far back as the Malta Report in 1968,⁷ the first time a working group was actually set up was in January 1989 – an attempt to respond to a part of the mandate of ARCIC II which had not yet been addressed by the Commission.⁸

Some insight into the workings of ARCIC II is gained by a glance at the geographical trajectory of Life in Christ. The meetings of the Commission were held in the following locations: 1989 Casa Cardinale Piazza, Venice; 1990 Gort Muire Carmelite Centre, Dublin; 1991 Paris; 1992 St George’s House, Windsor; and in 1993 back to Casa Cardinale Piazza, Venice. With the recent publication of the text, Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, some fascinating insights are offered into the ‘ARCIC II Story’ in the details which are recounted by Charles Sherlock in Part C of the volume. The work provides us with the following details with regard to the development of Life in Christ.

In Venice in 1989 a sub-group had outlined an approach to the theme which included a focus on the explicit reasons for the differences between the two traditions in relation to moral living. This outline gained support and that sub-group was asked to continue with further drafting.⁹

In Dublin the next year the work continued and, as Sherlock notes, the final draft of Church as Communion, the Statement the Commission had been working on, went through quite quickly and so ‘ample time was able to be given to the outline on morals prepared by the sub-group; this in turn led to the request that the same sub-group bring the first draft to the next full meeting in Paris’.¹⁰

As ARCIC II’s story shows, the Commission which met in Paris in 1991 was actually a re-formed Commission. With changed membership, previous work appears to have been put aside for a time. Sherlock notes that, given the new Commission’s mandate to work on moral life, time was spent initially on trying to understand the process of moral formation within each other’s tradition. He records that this ‘led to a few chuckles and the realisation that our perceptions of one another were dated and that each tradition faces similar new challenges’.¹¹ It is of interest to note too that some of the initial discussion around the work that resulted in Life in Christ was carried out on an afternoon train trip to Chartres, even if these discussions turned out to be, in the cryptic words of Sherlock, ‘infelicitous in the group as a whole’.¹² The work prepared for the Dublin meeting the previous year was studied in some detail with significant lacunae being identified and some proposed changes put forward with regard to the direction this new document should take.

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled notes an important and significant milestone was reached in this work during the meeting in Paris (1991):

Agreement was able to be reached on an outline in which scriptural perspectives, our common heritage, and our shared vision would set the context for considering the documented differences in moral practice, about which a good deal of ground was cleared. In sum what would become Section C of Life in Christ was sketched, Sections D and E commenced and the ideas in Sections A and F affirmed. The work was passed to a sub-commission ….¹³

The meetings in 1992 (Windsor) and 1993 (Venice) brought this work to a conclusion and Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church, the longest ARCIC statement yet, was published in 1994.

Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church in the context of 50 years of ARCIC

The mandate

The co-chairs of ARCIC II, in their preface to Life in Christ, specifically refer to the Common Declaration to the Final Report of ARCIC I by Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Robert Runcie: ‘The New International Commission [ARCIC II] is to examine … the outstanding doctrinal differences which separate us, with a view to their eventual resolution.’¹⁴ They go on to identify ‘a widespread belief that Anglicans and Roman Catholics are as much, if not more, divided on questions of morals as of doctrine’.¹⁵ The ‘Introduction’ to the statement itself makes the same point in its opening sentence.

The structure

Life in Christ consists of 105 paragraphs but to all effects is made up of two parts. The first 35 paragraphs form the first part and the following 70 paragraphs form the second. Not only are there two parts, but the second, much longer, part is headed ‘Paths Diverge’.¹⁶ My contention is that the mandate itself for this particular work undertaken by ARCIC II worked against the likelihood or possibility that we as Anglicans and Romans Catholics would work together in the future in relation to Christian moral life. The overwhelming sense of Life in Christ, as it comes to its final paragraphs, is that the differences are so great that the clock can’t be turned back.

The first part of Life in Christ is a reflection on the faith Anglicans and Roman Catholics share, the lives of discipleship to which they are called, and the shared mission of bearing witness to the gospel throughout the world. Paragraph 3 of the agreed statement, Life in Christ, declares: ‘We begin by re-affirming our common faith that the life to which God, through Jesus Christ, calls women and men is nothing less than participation in the divine life and we spell out some of the characteristics and implications of our shared vision of life in Christ.’¹⁷

At the time at which the Commission was working on what was to become Life in Christ there were formal statements of disagreement from the Anglican and Roman Catholic Communions on two issues. The first was divorce and remarriage, and the second was artificial contraception. Given the existence of formal positions by both communions in relation to these issues and the mandate to explore existing doctrinal differences, these were the two moral issues selected by the Commission for the work they had been directed to undertake on Christian moral life.

It needs to be conceded that Life in Christ endeavours to identify what is shared in common even in these disputed areas. However, by virtue of nominating these as disputed areas, a barrier was immediately raised between the Anglican and Roman Catholic communions and this made it very difficult for the Commission to engage with the deep theological realities that are shared across these communions even in relation to these issues. The outcome of the Commission’s work is a statement of 105 paragraphs, of which 70 are given over to the differences between the two communions relating in large part to the two issues on which official disagreement had been expressed by 1994 – divorce and remarriage, and contraception. This intense focus on matters that perhaps many would consider peripheral to the deep relationship shared in Christ proves to be detrimental to the Commission’s mandate.

Reception of Life in Christ

In Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, there is some commentary on official responses to Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church. In this the point is made that ‘responses … have been few, especially from ecclesial bodies’.¹⁸

In a paper entitled ‘Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations Since Vatican II’, given at the Fortieth Anniversary of Vatican II Symposium held in England in 2005, Sister Mary Cecily Boulding OP, herself a member of ARCIC II, remarks that: ‘ARCIC II then turned its attention to the stance of the two Churches on moral and ethical issues, and produced an impressive Common Statement on their differing approaches and points of agreement in Life in Christ in 1994.’¹⁹ This is a markedly brief comment from a member of the Commission on a document which was the focus of ARCIC II for almost six years, after having been on the agenda since The Malta Report more than 20 years earlier.

Further, even in the ecumenical context of the University of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia, it is of interest to note, in relation to the reception of Life in Christ, that neither Trinity Theological College, Yarra Theological Union nor Catholic Theological College have this agreed statement listed amongst the bibliography recommended for any of the Christian ethics units taught within the University. Given that these are the Anglican and Roman Catholic colleges within the University of Divinity, this would seem to be a rather telling factor with regard to the reception of Life in Christ.

An official Roman Catholic Commentary was written by Fr Tom Kopfensteiner, an American priest trained in Rome who was a professor at the Gregorian University in Rome.

Reflecting the structure of the statement itself to some extent, this commentary on the agreed statement, has 35 paragraphs. Eleven of these paragraphs were in relation to the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Shared Vision’, 22 were on the differences, and two final paragraphs presented his conclusion.

The official Catholic Commentary

There are several significant points to be made about this work of Kopfensteiner which comprised the official Roman Catholic Commentary.

First, Kopfensteiner does highlight some of the major lines of theological reflection in the early part of Life in Christ, but then moves to his main focus, which is the areas of disagreement between the two communions. In his conclusion to this commentary, Kopfensteiner comments that ‘Anglicans and Roman Catholics are not moral strangers’. This is hardly an observation that might engender an enthusiastic working together into the future.²⁰ He does speak positively of future discussions on the four themes he identifies but never really from within the framework of an open listening to the other that we have come to look for today in the process of receptive ecumenism.²¹

Second, in the early section of this official commentary Kopfensteiner notes the continual acknowledgment in Life in Christ that both communions ‘derive from the Scriptures and Tradition the same controlling vision of nature and the destiny of humanity and share the same fundamental values’.²² He goes on to state that this is evidenced most clearly where there is common witness in relation to war, peace, euthanasia, freedom and justice, and he notes that this is not an exhaustive list. However, he then, to all intents and purposes, dismisses the effectiveness of identifying these areas because he argues that when the focus of the moral life is ‘contraception, divorce and remarriage, abortion, or homosexuality, the popular “widespread belief that the Anglican and Roman Catholic communions are divided most sharply by their moral teaching” is legitimated’.²³

My serious concern at this point is the narrowing of the moral life to those four issues. The shared vision and values derived from the scriptures and tradition impel Christians to live in faithful accord with these in every aspect of their lives. To imply that the central focus of Christian moral life is around the issues of contraception, divorce and remarriage, abortion, or homosexuality, offers a very limited presentation of Christian moral life. Julie Clague, commenting on the statement in relation to Veritatis splendor,²⁴ argues that Life in Christ highlights that the differences in moral teaching within the two communions stem more from ‘the different structures in authority which have developed in the two traditions, and the ways in which this authority is exercised in the formation of moral judgements’ rather than from differences in moral values and sources of moral knowledge.²⁵

Third, Kopfensteiner’s commentary neither distinguishes between the objective moral act and the moral agent, nor discusses the matter of the reception of teaching in relation to moral issues. The impression is that moral teaching in the Roman Catholic tradition is a flat line of official teaching and automatic obedience to that teaching. It is much more hilly and nuanced than that. One has only to look at John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae to see a recent teaching on the interaction between the moral absolute and the moral agent.²⁶

In paragraph 58 of this encyclical, there is the following most direct and clear statement of the teaching of the Roman Catholic tradition in relation to abortion:

Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable ….

… [P]rocured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.

The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder and, in particular, when we consider the specific elements involved. The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenceless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby’s cries and tears. The unborn child is totally entrusted to the protection and care of the woman carrying him or her in the womb. And yet sometimes it is precisely the mother herself who makes the decision and asks for the child to be eliminated, and who then goes about having it done.

This is an unequivocal statement with regard to the moral quality of an act described in objective terms, and there are a number of actions which the Catholic tradition describes in such terms. In Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council, the following list of such actions is found:

whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed.²⁷

What is of significance in the context of this article is that while the act of abortion is so unambiguously categorized as a crime and therefore wrong, the Encyclical, Evangelium vitae, continues in the next paragraph with the following statement:

As well as the mother, there are often other people too who decide upon the death of the child in the womb. In the first place, the father of the child may be to blame, not only when he directly pressures the woman to have an abortion, but also when he indirectly encourages such a decision on her part by leaving her alone to face the problems of pregnancy: … Nor can one overlook the pressures which sometimes come from the wider family circle and from friends. Sometimes the woman is subjected to such strong pressure that she feels psychologically forced to have an abortion: certainly in this case moral responsibility lies particularly with those who have directly or indirectly obliged her to have an abortion.²⁸

The critical element here is human freedom, and the Encyclical goes on to identify a range of factors which might impinge on the human freedom of the mother. Personal moral culpability as understood within the Roman Catholic tradition is always in relation to the capacity to exercise personal freedom. Kopfensteiner does not mention the perspective of the moral agent in relation to the issues he discusses. While two of the issues Kopfensteiner discusses were those the Commission identified because there were formal statements about each, the official Roman Catholic Commentary on the agreed statement could have opened the way for a better understanding of the Roman Catholic moral tradition and its methodologies had it offered a richer and more nuanced presentation. A development of the claims made by Julie Clague, cited above, would lead to a similar view.

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled includes in the section on the responses to Life in Christ the following question and observation: ‘[D]o the Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions have sufficient commonality over whether some actions are always wrong, that is there are absolute values and moral norms that do not allow of exceptions? Life in Christ (52) maintains that both Anglicans and Roman Catholics typically include prudential factors in moral judgements but in different ways.’²⁹

Life in Christ: The first 30 paragraphs

Running in the background of Life in Christ one can detect two different understandings of what is being referred to when there is mention of Christian moral life. This is seen overtly in the text when the language moves from ‘moral life’ to ‘morals’. What needs to be vigorously argued is that if Life in Christ is studied from the perspective of ‘Christian moral life’ rather than from that of ‘Christian morals’, the statement becomes a source that both communions can really share and one by which all would be extraordinarily challenged in their daily lives as Christians, bearing witness to the gospel across and through the two Communions.

Christian moral life and Christian morals

Enda McDonagh, the Irish Catholic moral theologian who was a consultant to the Commission between 1990 and 1991,³⁰ argues that if theology is ‘faith seeking understanding’ then moral theology is ‘faith seeking understanding as a way of life’.³¹ In addition, the Second Vatican Council in calling for the renewal of moral theology gave as its guiding task, that of throwing ‘light on the exalted vocation of the faithful in Christ and their obligation to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the world’ (Optatam Totius #16). Veritatis splendor (published just prior to but without being able to influence Life in Christ) teaches that Christian morality is not just about listening to a teaching and obeying a precept. It is fundamentally about ‘following Christ’ (#19). In the light of these claims, Christian moral life refers to the daily living of the Christian as a disciple of Christ. Every aspect of the life of a Christian ought to reflect that call or vocation in Christ and the obligation inherent in it to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the world. It is about recognizing the essential identity which belongs to those baptized in Christ within the Christian community and called to a life of discipleship of Christ for the sake of the world.

This is a much wider perspective than that encompassed by the comment of Sister M. Cecily Boulding cited above that Life in Christ is a document about ‘the stance of the two Churches on moral and ethical issues’. Apart from the sense that moral and ethical are somehow different, this comment highlights the focus on particular issues and does not convey an understanding of moral life as a description of the whole way of life of a disciple of Christ.

If indeed the latter were to be the understanding of Christian moral life across the two communions, Anglicans and Roman Catholics would find much in the contemporary world to which together they could and should bring the witness of the gospel as people of hope in the tension between the present and the coming reign of God. Their concern would be about the kind of people the gospel calls them to become – individually and together. ³² This understanding of Christian moral life is articulated powerfully in Section B of Life in Christ.

A close examination of the first part of the agreed statement provides a rich source for mapping ‘how in communion the local and universal church comes to discern right ethical teaching’.³³

Paragraph 4 begins with the statement that ‘Christian life is a response in the Holy Spirit to God’s self-giving in Christ.’ If Christian life is understood in this claim as the good life or the moral life, then clearly discerning right ethical teaching requires adherence to the paradigm of living revealed in Christ Jesus.

Paragraph 6 states that ‘[t]he fundamental moral question, therefore, is not “What ought we do?”, but “What kind of persons are we called to become?”’³⁴ This of course is the question that has become the focus of the contemporary development of virtue ethics in the wake of influences such as that of Alisdair McIntyre’s After Virtue.³⁵ It is a question which relates to self-understanding, ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Who are we?’ and the response to those questions might offer a path towards an agreed understanding which then in turn could provide the framework within which various actions and ways of living may be evaluated.

Paragraph 7 develops an understanding of human freedom consonant with the self-understanding of a Christian. – ‘called to participate in the life of God [we] may not exercise a freedom that claims to be independent, willful and self-seeking’. Rather, ‘[the] freedom that is properly [ours] is a freedom of responsiveness and interdependence. [We] are created for communion, and communion involves responsibility, in relation to society and nature as well as to God’.³⁶ As ARCIC III searches for an agreed understanding of ‘how in communion the local and universal church comes to discern right ethical teaching’, the agreed position of ARCIC II in Life in Christ about the meaning and implications of human freedom for the Christian offers another criterion from the Christian tradition which should contribute fundamental criteria for moral discernment across the communions.

Paragraph 9, recalling Church as Communion, states that ‘[this] new life has been entrusted to the Church for the good of the whole world’.³⁷ The faith shared in common calls Anglicans and Roman Catholics to allow themselves to be formed by the Spirit so that their attitudes, actions and daily lives, their moral living, their living the good life, contributes to the flourishing of humankind and the care of creation.

In paragraph 10 Life in Christ states that Christian morality ‘is the outward expression of that continual turning to God whereby forgiven sinners grow together into Christ and into the mature humanity of which Christ is the measure and fullness (cf. Eph. 4:13)’.³⁸ In other places I have argued that personal moral life for the Christian is the existential expression of life in relationship with God in Christ.³⁹ Discernment of right ethical teaching will be the outcome of personal and communal prayer.

Paragraph 11 of this first section of Life in Christ draws together five fundamental questions with which Christian morality engages. These pertain to who we are in Christ, acknowledgement of the interrelationship of grace and human frailty, and the reality of humankind’s relationship with all of creation. Life in Christ states that the position of the Commission at this level is that ‘our two Communions share a common vision and understanding’.⁴⁰ I note here that this is not a focus on particular issues. Rather it is a much deeper focus and one that is the basis of Christian life, and one which Life in Christ so confidently claims Anglicans and Roman Catholics share in common.

The third section of Life in Christ is headed ‘Common Heritage’. Very early in this section we find this sentence: ‘Drawing upon the faith of Israel, this common heritage springs from the conversion of the disciples to faith in Jesus Christ and their mission to share that faith with others.’⁴¹ In paragraph 29 under sub-heading 4, ‘Growing up in Christ’, the statement speaks about conscience. It states:

Conscience is informed by, and informs, the tradition and teaching of the community. Learning and teaching are a shared discipline, in which the faithful seek to discover together what obedience to the gospel of grace and the law of love entails amid the moral perplexities of the world. It is this task of discovering the moral implications of the gospel which calls for continuing discernment, constant repentance and ‘renewal of mind’ (Rom 12:2), so that through discernment and response men and women may become in Christ what they already are.⁴²

This is a fine description of life for the follower of Jesus. Most days are ordinary and we act habitually out of the character that is ours. It is in attending to our spiritual life both individually and as community that we are formed and grow up into Christ. It is out of this that we act in our daily moral life, our life in fidelity to the good. At the beginning of paragraph 28 the statement makes the point that ‘the lived response of the Church to the grace of God develops its own shape and character’.⁴³

Paragraph 33 is clearly talking about moral life as the entire life of the Christian. It begins by saying ‘Christian morality is an authentic expression of the new life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit and fashioned according to the mind of Christ.’⁴⁴ Speaking of ‘a life of daily discipleship’ this paragraph of Life in Christ points out that this ‘process unfolds through the formation of a character, individual and communal, that reflects the likeness of Christ and embodies the virtues of a true humanity’.⁴⁵

In conclusion

The development and content of Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church shows progress on the path to communion at both the local and universal church levels, but the discernment of ethical teaching offers many challenges. It would seem, however, that some things are necessary. In the first instance, an adjustment or even a renewal of thinking across the communions is required to arrive at a deep and constant awareness that at the heart of a moral life is not first and foremost positions in relation to specific issues, but rather a conviction that the moral life pertains to the good life lived in Christ – an invitation to all which includes every aspect of life lived in relationship with and recognition of others. The call of Christian faith is an invitation to become certain kinds of people who by virtue of responding to that invitation will need to engage in discussion and moral discernment about certain specific matters.

In Chapter 6 of Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, the authors offer some pointers for further work in the transition from ARCIC II to ARCIC III. From the perspective of a Catholic moral theologian, I agree wholeheartedly with the observation that ‘overall the greatest need [of the work of ARCIC III] is for a shift of focus towards what unites Anglicans and Roman Catholics, as well as what divides them’.⁴⁶ Second, while the work of ‘exploring areas of agreement’ related to the issues identified in Life in Christ does need to go on, an even more pressing challenge is to find increasing and more evident ways of bearing prophetic witness together to the shared faith and vision so powerfully presented in the first 30 paragraphs of Life in Christ. As the authors of Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled point out as they consider the journey from ARCIC II to ARCIC III, the work of the Commission must now ‘be reconsidered in the light of new contexts in both the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church’.⁴⁷ These new contexts for moral reflection need to include all that has been identified and described by Pope Francis in Evangelium Gaudium, Laudato Sì and Amoris Laetitiae in order to ensure that across the Anglican and Roman Catholic Communions there is not in the future a narrowing of ‘moral life’ to a focus on some particular issues mostly related to human sexuality. As the Archbishop of Canterbury His Grace Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in 2006:

There are many areas of witness and service in which we can stand together, and which indeed call for closer co-operation between us: the pursuit of peace in the Holy Land and in other parts of the world marred by conflict and the threat of terrorism; promoting respect for life from conception until natural death; protecting the sanctity of marriage and the well-being of children in the context of healthy family life; outreach to the poor, oppressed and the most vulnerable, especially those who are persecuted for their faith; addressing the negative effects of materialism; and care for creation and for our environment. We also commit ourselves to inter-religious dialogue through which we can jointly reach out to our non-Christian brothers and sisters.⁴⁸

More than a decade later, not only do all of these areas still remain as ground for common witness in communion, but many more could be added to the list. Crucial progress in this dialogue will depend on such additions.

Footnotes

1

This article had its origins in the Colloquium, sponsored by the University of Divinity, to mark the work of ARCIC II. I am grateful for the encouragement and insights of colleagues on that day and I acknowledge in particular the generous support and feedback received from Rev Prof Francis J. Moloney SDB AM.

2

Common Declaration of Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury His Grace Rowan Williams (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 23 November 2006).

3

Communiqué from the meeting of ARCIC III in Bildungshaus St Ursula, Erfurt, Germany, 14–20 May 2017.

4

Communiqué from the meeting of ARCIC III in Bildungshaus St Ursula.

5

Life in Christ: An Agreed Statement by the Second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (Baldock, UK: Streetsprinters, 1994).

6

Adelbert Denaux, Nicholas Sagovsky and Charles Sherlock (eds), Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled: The Final Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission 1983-2005(ARCIC II) (New York/Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 2017), 70.

7

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 70.

8

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 302.

9

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 302.

10

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 304.

11

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 305.

12

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 306.

13

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 306–7.

14

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 77.

15

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 77.

16

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 90.

17

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 80.

18

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 117.

19

Sister Mary Cecily Boulding OP, ‘Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations Since Vatican II’, Vatican II – The Voice of the Church (9 December 2016) [cited 12 September 2017]. Online: .

20

Thomas R Kopfensteiner, Commentary on ‘Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church’. The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Information Service, Vatican City, no. 85 (1994/1), 70–75, para. 35 [cited 30 October 2017]. Online: .

21

The Centre for Catholic Studies at the University of Durham, UK, from where this process developed states that: ‘The essential principle behind Receptive Ecumenism is that the primary ecumenical responsibility is to ask not “What do the other traditions first need to learn from us?” but “What do we need to learn from them?”. The assumption is that if all were asking this question seriously and acting upon it then all would be moving in ways that would both deepen our authentic respective identities and draw us into more intimate relationship. Durham University, About Receptive Ecumenism [cited 12 September 2017]. Online: .

22

Life in Christ, Para. 1.

23

Commentary, Para. 2

24

Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter: Veritatis Splendor (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993).

25

Julie Clague, ‘On Agreeing to Differ: Some Reflections on the ARCIC Statement on Morals in the Light of Veritatis Splendor’, Irish Theological Quarterly 62(1) (1996–97), 70–4, p. 71.

26

Pope John Paul II. Encyclical Letter, Evangelium vitae (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 25 March 1995), 58, 59.

27

Gaudium et Spes, Second Vatican Council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (7 December 1965) (AAS 58 [1966] 1025–115, 27.3.

28

Evangelium Vitae, 59.

29

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 118.

30

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 332.

31

Enda McDonagh, Invitation and Response (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1972), 188–9.

32

.Life in Christ, 11.

33

Communiqué from the meeting of ARCIC III in Bildungshaus St Ursula.

34

Life in Christ, 6.

35

Alisdair Mcintyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981).

36

Life in Christ, 7.

37

Life in Christ, 9.

38

Life in Christ, 10.

39

Frances Baker, ‘Christian Moral Life: Expression of Life in Communion with God,’ Australasian Catholic Record 76(3) (1999), 310–17.

40

Life in Christ, 11.

41

Life in Christ, 12.

42

Life in Christ, 29.

43

Life in Christ, 28.

44

Life in Christ, 33.

45

Life in Christ, 31.

46

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 242.

47

Looking Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, 243.

48

Common Declaration of Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury His Grace Rowan Williams.

Author biography

Frances Baker is a Senior Lecturer at Catholic Theological College within the University of Divinity. She teaches Fundamental Moral Theology and was a member of AustARC from 2003 to 2007.