The changing scene

Material for ecumenical reception is being published all the time. The appearance of the ‘scene’ constantly changes, under the pressures which have taken us from a sense of wonder at the novelty of agreements which had seemed impossible to a bewilderment at the task of absorbing a veritable stream of such agreements. ‘Bewilderment’ is perhaps the wrong word, because their very multitude is prompting fresh critical appraisal. I will take two examples where this seems to have negative elements.

The first is the two Anglican-Lutheran ‘local agreements’, the Concordat arrived at between the Lutherans and the Episcopalians in the United States of America (LED) and the Porvoo Common Statement of the conversations between the British and Irish Anglican Churches and the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran Churches (1992). They are ‘local’ in that they respond to the special circumstances of the participating churches in the geographical areas they cover. But they deal with Church-dividing issues which are far from local, notably that of the way in which a mutually recognised ministry is to be arrived at. The two texts propose different solutions to the problem of the episcopate. The Concordat proposes a common ministry under parallel jurisdictions as an interim way forward; it suggests the temporary suspension of the Anglican requirement that all ministers should be episcopally ordained. The Porvoo statement attempts a different route, dealing as it does with a group of Lutheran churches some of which, for historical reasons, preserved the ‘historic episcopate’ while others did not.