Though we are fundamentally encouraged by the Windsor Report, and note that its recommendations reflect the major insights of our common ecumenical documents, there are two points also found in the ARCIC [Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission] texts which we hope can be more clearly articulated and directly addressed in the ongoing reception and implementation of the Windsor Report.
The first point concerns the textâ??s ecclesiological approach itself. While the Report stresses that Anglican provinces have a responsibility towards each other and towards the maintenance of communion, a communion rooted in the Scriptures, little attention is given to the importance of being in communion with the faith of the Church through the ages. In addressing the exercise of authority in the Church, â??The Gift of Authorityâ?? speaks not only of the necessity of a synchronic communion of churches but also of a diachronic consensus; in fundamental matters of faith and discipline, the decisions of a local or regional church must not only foster communion in the present context, but must also be in agreement with the Church of the past, and in a particular way, with the apostolic Church as witnessed in the Scriptures, the early councils and the patristic tradition. While the Windsor Report stresses the catholicity of the Church, we believe that in the discussion that will follow, it might be helpful for the Anglican Communion to place more stress on the Churchâ??s apostolicity. This aspect also has important ecumenical ramifications, since we share a common tradition of one and a half millennia. This common patrimony – what Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey called our â??ancient common traditionsâ?? – is worth being appealed to and preserved.
Walter Cardinal Kasper Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury – on the publication of the Windsor Report
