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Religious Leaders Agree on Role of Mary
Griswold excluded from press conference
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE (May 16, 2005)-- A group of Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders studying the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, said Monday that after years of talks they have agreed that Catholic teachings on the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary into heaven are consistent with Anglican interpretations of the Bible.
The two sides issued a joint document, "Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ," which will now be examined by the Vatican and the Anglican Communion.
If the terms of the new accord are eventually accepted by top church officials - by no means a certainty - it would overcome one of the major doctrinal disagreements dividing the world's 77 million Anglicans and more than 1 billion Roman Catholics.
Historically, the Anglican Communion has opposed the papal teachings because there is no direct account of them in the Bible.
Immaculate Conception refers to the mandatory Catholic dogma, pronounced in 1854, that Mary was born free of "original sin." The Assumption refers to the belief required since 1950 that Mary was directly received, body and soul, into heaven at the end of her life. Anglicans have neither teaching.
Both Catholicism and Anglicanism officially agree, however, on the virginal conception, meaning that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born.
Anglican Archbishop Peter Carnley of Perth, Australia, co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, said the Catholic dogmas concerning Mary are "consonant" with biblical teachings about hope and grace.
The remaining question between the faiths is the authority on which those dogmas are based, he said - a question to be tackled in future discussions.
"For Anglicans, that old complaint that these dogmas were not provable by scripture will disappear," Carnley said during a news conference with Seattle's Catholic Archbishop, Alexander Brunett.
The commission spent five years developing the 81-page booklet, in a process sponsored by the Anglican Consultative Council and the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The document's release was also significant because it follows tensions between Catholicism and Anglicanism over actions by the Episcopal Church, the Anglicans' U.S. branch.
Presiding Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold, who for a time chaired the commission studying Mary, resigned from the panel after he oversaw the consecration of gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire. As recently as last month, the Vatican said Robinson's consecration and same-sex blessings by Canadian Anglicans "created new obstacles" for relations between the churches.
Though Griswold did not attend the news conference, he was in town Monday to have lunch and attend vespers with Brunett and Carnley.
Bob Chapman, a reporter for the independent Episcopal weekly The Living Church, said there is a long Anglican tradition of honoring Mary - there is even a shrine to her in Walsingham, England - but the degree of devotion varies greatly within the faith.
"I can name a couple of parishes here in Seattle that have better Marian devotion than some Roman Catholic parishes," he said, but to other Anglicans, the notion of honoring her is "anathema."
The accord announced Monday is aimed at bridging those extremes, he said.
"There are churches that look with suspicion on people who do these things, and yet we all live together under the same umbrella," Chapman said.
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