Evangelicals Agree With Vatican but Reject Papacy

REUTERS, Feb. 9 — The recent furor over the ordination of an openly homosexual Episcopal bishop in the United States highlighted deep divisions in the Anglican communion.

Now, debate over an ecumenical document proposed by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission will expose a split that cuts in a different direction, Reuters reported.

The 1999 document, “The Gift of Authority,” had been drafted by the commission to draw closer together the Anglican and Catholic views of the papacy's role in the Church.

The General Synod of the Church of England opened Feb. 9, scheduled to debate the document.

While the argument over sexual ethics has placed evangelical “low-church” Anglicans in line with Catholic teaching, the new issue finds many of the same groups firmly opposed to any agreement that would import papal authority to the Anglican communion.

Reuters reported that the Church of England's Council for Christian Unity wishes to take the commission's document back to the drawing board rather than begin to implement it.

Ironically, Reuters noted, such authority would have resolved the battle over homosexual bishops in the very direction sought by evangelical Anglicans.

Catholic and Coptic Orthodox Churches Meet

VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE, Feb. 5 — The first meeting of the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Churches took place Jan. 27-30 in Cairo, Egypt, the Vatican Information Service reported.

The meeting was hosted by Shenouda III, Coptic Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria. Jointly presiding were Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Metropolitan Amba Bishoy, general secretary of the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

In opening remarks, Cardinal Kasper and Metropolitan Bishoy underscored the importance of the meeting, saying that it marks the beginning of new official theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the family of Oriental Orthodox Churches.

The next meeting, “Church as Communion,” is scheduled to take place Jan. 25-30, 2005. Cardinal Kasper invited the Orthodox bishops to hold the meeting in Rome.

Pope Backs Cardinal in Fight Against Relativism

CATHNEWS.COM, Feb. 9 — Pope John Paul II is encouraging Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to proclaim boldly the truth of Christ in a world “marked by both a widespread relativism and the tendency to a facile pragmatism,” the Australian news site CathNews.com has reported.

The Pope's remarks came as he received Cardinal Ratzinger and other participants in the biannual assembly of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Holy Father explained that the congregation has the “delicate duty to promote and defend the truth of the Catholic faith in service to the magisterium of the Successor of Peter.”

John Paul particularly urged the congregation to promote the teaching of natural law — those ethical truths that can be deduced from human reason and shared with other religions that do not accept the full revelation of Christ.