Posted October 22, 2009
Cardinal says US church ready
to collaborate on receiving Anglicans
By Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the American church "stands ready to collaborate" with the Vatican in implementing a new provision to receive Anglicans into the Catholic Church.
In a statement released in Washington Oct. 20, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, conference president, also emphasized the U.S. Catholic Church would continue to work toward Christian unity with Episcopalians.
The same day at the Vatican, U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said Pope Benedict XVI was preparing an apostolic constitution that would establish a special structure for Anglicans who want to be in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage.
The Anglican province in the United States is the Episcopal Church.
"The Catholic bishops of the United States remain committed to seeking deeper unity with the members of the Episcopal Church by means of theological dialogue and collaboration in activities that advance the mission of Christ and the welfare of society," Cardinal George said.
At the Vatican, Cardinal Levada also reaffirmed the church's commitment to Christian unity. However, he said, in establishing the new church jurisdictions -- "personal ordinariates," similar to dioceses -- Pope Benedict was responding to "many requests" submitted by individual Anglicans and Anglican groups, including "20 to 30 bishops," asking to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.
Dialogue, negotiations must replace war,
say synod bishops
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Dialogue and negotiations must replace weapons and war, said an appeal from the Synod of Bishops for Africa.
"With dialogue, undertaken in mutual respect and peace, all problems can be solved. War, instead, makes everything more difficult and tempts (people) to turn their brothers and sisters into enemies to be defeated," it said.
The appeal was sent as a letter to the presidents of the bishops' conferences of Sudan, Uganda, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
It was written on behalf of the synod by Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, and by the co-presidents of the synod for Africa: Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, Cardinal Theodore-Adrien Sarr of Dakar, Senegal, and Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa. The Vatican released a copy of the letter Oct. 20.
In the letter, the bishops lamented the persistent war throughout Africa's Great Lakes region and the violence, killings and forced displacement of people who must seek refuge "in extremely perilous conditions."
They also highlighted their concern for child soldiers and orphans and for the serious physical and emotional damage inflicted on people.
The bishops implored all people involved in the conflicts "to replace at once the language of weapons with that of dialogue and negotiation."
They warned of God's final judgment and said, "The blood of the innocent cries for vengeance to God who sooner or later will also have to judge those who have stained their hands with the blood of the poor, who are God's chosen ones."
|
