The Most Revd and Rt. Hon. Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, has welcomed the announcement by the Prime Minister regarding changes to the process by which diocesan bishops are appointed.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is on study leave, was made aware at the outset of the Government's wish to talk to the Church about its intentions announced today.

Archbishop Williams agreed that the Archbishop of York was to deal with the matter and was briefed by Dr. Sentamu in advance of the Prime Minister's statement.

Archbishop Sentamu said: "The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Justice consulted me about his intentions which I believe accord with the declared wish of the Church of England.

"I welcome the prospect of the Church being the 'decisive voice in the appointment of bishops' which the General Synod called for 33 years ago (in 1974).

"I am grateful for the Prime Minister's thoughtfulness and for his overt support for the role of the Queen and the establishment by law of the Church of England which have been strongly reiterated in the Green Paper.

"The challenge we face as the Church of England is to use the sacred trust, enshrined in law, for the common good of all the people of England. Our vocation is to love God and to love our neighbours as ourselves: doing to others that which we would wish to be done to us. Our presence in every part of England must be used for bridging, bonding, partnership and friendship for all."

Following the Prime Minister's Statement and the publication of the Green Paper outlining his proposals, the Church of England will also engage in a constructive conversation with the Government concerning the appointment by the Monarch of Deans, Canons and Parish Clergy where the Sovereign has a prerogative.


The Green Paper can be downloaded from: http://www.justice.gov.uk/

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In an interview with the Spanish daily “La Razon,” Father Gerard Sheehan, pastor of the Church of St. Thomas Moore, said that in his Diocese of Westminster-London, each year some 800 new Catholics are baptized or received into full communion with the Church.”

“If we apply those numbers to all of England, we can say without fear of being wrong that the Catholic Church in England receives an average of five thousand new adult members each year,” he said.

Father Sheehan said conversions reached their peak during the 90’s, when the progressive wing of the Anglican Church in the United States ordained women bishops, something unacceptable to the “conservative” wing of the Church of England. “That was a key moment,” he said, adding that “today, the number of converts is less than it was ten years ago, but when the (Anglican) Church of England accepts the ordination of women bishops, conversions will increase again.”

Father Sheehan said it was difficult to obtain concrete numbers as the Church “has always wanted to avoid giving signs of triumphalism, she does not want to publicly brag about these issues, because she does not want to offend anybody; in reality for sometime unity between the two churches has been sought, and any show in this sense could damage the road to this encounter.”

The case of Tony Blair, who visited Pope Benedict XVI recently at the Vatican amid rumors of his imminent conversion to Catholicism, is a one such case.

The Vatican made no comment about the matter, and Blair told the Times that, “Things are not as resolved as they would seem.” However, everything indicates that Blair’s conversion is just a matter of time and that, out of sensitivity, the announcement of his conversion will not come until he has left office, La Razon said, adding that Blair is only the public figure of the return to the Catholic faith of thousands of British who have already begun their process of conversion, with reserve and without intermediaries.

Source: CNA
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By Robert Duncan

Some readers may know that I am an Anglican convert – having found the Roman Catholic Church via a sidetrip, conveniently enough allowing me to call myself Catholic without taking the final plunge.

To this day my Anglican memories are sprinkled with images from Madrid’s St George’s Church, where I enjoyed the company of expats in the garden under a sprawling fig tree that shielded us from the scorching Spanish summer heat. Particularly included in those memories are the Fourth of July BBQ’s we Americans held, but to show we were an international crowd served with pints of Guinness.

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(CNA).- Catholic lawmakers in Australia said yesterday they will vote in favor of therapeutic cloning regardless of the directives or warnings issued by the archbishop of Sydney.

Tony Stewart of the ruling Labor Party in the New South Wales state parliament, said he would rather go to hell than take orders on how to vote from Cardinal George Pell. "Maybe I'll go to hell, but if I go to hell I'm going to do so by saving a lot of lives, because that's what this bill is about," Tony Stewart said in a radio interview.

Cardinal Pell said recently that cloning is unethical and “a serious moral matter”, which could see the creation of human and animal hybrids.

“Catholic politicians who vote for this legislation must realize that their voting has consequences for their place in the life of the Church," he reportedly said.

Cardinal Pell was soon joined by Archbishop Barry Hickey of Perth who also issued a similar warning. He said that Catholics who vote for cloning, "are acting against the teaching of the Church on a very serious matter and they should, in conscience, not vote that way; but if they do, in conscience they should not go to Communion."

The both prelates said they are considering refusing Holy Communion to Catholic lawmakers who vote in favor of the bill.

"We don't need a religious leader telling members of parliament what should be done," Stewart said in a radio interview.

Lawmakers are being allowed a conscience vote on a bill to bring the country's most populous state into line with the federal government, which overturned a ban on the so-called therapeutic cloning last year.

The new law would allow excess human embryos from in-vitro fertilization treatment to be used to create stem cells for research.

Both state premier Morris Iemma and his deputy, John Watkins, are Catholics who have said they intend to vote for the bill.

"I've already thought seriously about this legislation, and it passes all the ethical and moral issues that I need passed, and gives people hope," said Watkins, who admitted he is upset about the cardinal’s recent statements.

The Anglican Church is also asking lawmakers to vote against the bill.


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In the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarch, His All-Holiness Bartholomew I, and the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox for Theological Dialogue

Your All-Holiness, Your Eminences, dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

The dialogue between the Anglican and Orthodox families of churches is not a new thing. Only last year, we saw the publication of a fine collection of essays to mark the 300th anniversary of the short-lived but significant experiment of a 'Greek College' in Oxford; and the wide-ranging scholarship of the late Judith Pinnington gave us recently a comprehensive and quite challenging overview of some of the questionsthat had arisen for both ecclesial families in the course of theirrelationship over the centuries.

We have always had an instinct that at root, despite many superficialdifferences, our understandings of the Church of God have grown on thesame soil. We have looked to the definitive moments of doctrinal history, in the early centuries of the Church, for our standards of faith and worship, recognising that the creeds and definitions of the Councils lay out for us a field large enough for the freedom of mind and spirit to flourish in the way God intends. We have striven to remainfocused on these great central themes - of the revelation of theThreefold Godhead, and the inseparable yet distinct life of divinity and humanity in the one Person of the Eternal Son, in communion with whom through the Spirit we pray, act and love in the life of the Church.

In the last century especially, Anglicans have become more and more aware of the theological and spiritual resources of their brothers andsisters in the East; it is not too much to say that both the thinking and the piety of Anglicans would have been unrecognizably different without this growing and thankful awareness; and many of the ways in which we as Anglicans now seek a way forward for the unity and coherence of our own Communion have been shaped by the inspiration of theChristian East.

But in the last seventeen years, this instinct of common emphasis and purpose has been probed and tested at a new depth in the work of our International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue.

The Commission has not sought to negotiate an agreed position between rival views; it has begun from first principles, reflecting at length on the foundations of the Church in the triune life of God and the interpenetration of divine and human nature in the incarnate Son, andhas advanced from there to offer a fresh perspective on the challenges that we face today - within the Church itself and in relation to the world that is hungry for words of life from us. It is a document that seeks unashamedly to lay out the foundation for proclaiming good news to our world: a bold and inviting vision of God's will for his Church thatis more than just the record of an ecumenical encounter.

It reflects many dimensions of our indebtedness to the Orthodox theological perspective; and you, Your All-Holiness, have yourself beena powerful spokesman in East and West for many of the themes that come into focus here. You have taught us, as no other global church leaderhas, the imperative significance of a moral and spiritual understandingof our material environment as the natural outworking of our faith and participation in the communion of the divine persons. You have witnessed to the difficult task of holding diverse Christian communities together in charity and right doctrine without the sanctions of centralised control. And in this connection we are all sharply aware of how your leadership and witness is exercised in local circumstances of real difficulty and constraint. We wish to assure you of our strong support for you and your fellow - Christians in Istanbul and our continuing gratitude for your courage and clarity as a voice in the Orthodox world and in the Christian world in general.

So it is with the warmest sentiments that we greet you on this historic occasion, as a welcome guest in Great Britain, a welcome guest of theChurch of England, and a welcome guest in Lambeth Palace. We have seen, through the work of our Commission, a great harvest of God's goodness to us all; and we pray that on these foundations we may continue to labourfor that lasting and visible reconciliation between Christian believers that is Our Lord's will, and to labour together to show Christ to the world - Christ who, to take the words of the Epiphany kontakion, hascome, who is manifest, who is the Light Inaccessible.

+ Rowan Cantuar:

Lambeth Palace