Pope Benedict has invited the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to give some theological reflections at October’s world Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelisation.
“I’m being invited to give some theological reflections on the nature of mission, the nature of evangelization, and I’m extremely honored to be invited to do this,” Williams told Vatican Radio.
“I hope that it’s a sign that we can work together on evangelization in Europe,” the archbishop said.
“It’s disastrous if any one church tries to go it alone here and tries to assume that it and it alone has the key,” because reviving the Christian faith in Europe requires as many and “as deep resources as we can find.”
“One of the hardest, yet most important, lessons the different Christian communities today have to learn is that they cannot live without each other and that no single one of them in isolation possesses the entirety of the Gospel,” he said.
In their divisions, Christian communities have developed different spiritual gifts and traditions, which should be shared to build up all communities.
He told Vatican Radio that Anglicans and Roman Catholics “can become so fixated” on issues of authority and church structure “that we can forget the gift of baptism and the gift of one another in baptism,” which are the true basis of unity.
The Archbishop’s comments came after the recent shared Vespers marking the 1000th anniversary of the Camaldoli monastic community in the church of St Gregory on the Caelian Hill, Rome.
Earlier in the afternoon, Pope Benedict urged Anglicans and Catholics to remember the common roots of the Christianity they share, and said both should renew their commitments to praying and working for Christian unity.
“Christian admonishment is never motivated by a spirit of accusation or recrimination. It is always moved by love and mercy,” Benedict said in a Lenten reflection on Twitter.
Sources
- CNS
- Pope2YouVatican
- Image: Agnus Radio