Speaking at the Nikaean Club, an ecumenical organisation overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity observed the two communions have the same theology, but a different ecclesiology.
Adding that Anglo-Catholicism was so Catholic he wondered what was keeping Anglican clergy in the Church of England.
His comments, reported in The Tablet, came at a engagement at the Nikaean Club, and ecumenical organisation overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Koch however also warned that the plan to ordain women as bishops threatened to jepodise a greater unity between the two Churches.
In a separate address given at Evensong in Westminister Abbey, Koch highlighted the importance of carefully choosing suitable words when describing ecumenical relationships.
“It is a task which is not without its difficulties and which in many ways can run counter to the spirit of the age,” he said, but one which which brings us closer to the will of God, and therefore liberates us and builds us up.
Following his engagements in England, Koch went to Ireland.
After an address to an international theology symposium in Maynooth, he refused to comment on claims by the head of the Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay, that talks with the Vatican demonstrated that “Rome no longer makes total acceptance” of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council a condition for his traditionalist group’s full reconciliation with the church.
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