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A Spirituality of Reconciliation: Encouragement for Anglicans from a Roman Catholic Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Philip Sheldrake
Philip Sheldrake
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Abstract

The essay is a manifesto for keeping faith with the Christian vocation of reconciliation in the face of painful conflicts within the Anglican Communion. Its fundamental conviction is that, theologically speaking, reconciliation lies at the heart of Christian identity. The first part of the article concentrates on the key questions of the meaning and process of reconciliation, defined as ‘making space for what is other’, historically, psychologically and spiritually. The second part of the article focuses on the specifically Christian characteristics of reconciliation in terms of two theological themes, the catholicity of God (and its corollary the catholicity of the Church) and hospitality and in terms of spirituality related to insights from the Rule of St Benedict, Anglican sources and the practice of the Eucharist. The article concludes with brief reflections on the importance of applying wisdom from the Christian tradition of discernment to the current situation in the Communion.

Keywords

reconciliationcatholicityhospitalityspiritualityEucharistdiscernment
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , June 2008 , pp. 107 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) and The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2008

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References

1. This article originated in a keynote address given to the Society for the Study of Anglicanism at the American Academy of Religion, Washington DC, November 2006.

2. de Gruchy, John, Reconciliation: Restoring Justice (London: SCM Press, 2002), p. 44.Google Scholar

3. On the process of reconciliation, the works of the Catholic theologian at Chicago, Robert J. Schreiter, are especially insightful. See his The Ministry of Reconciliation: Spirituality and Strategies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998)Google Scholar, and Reconciliation: Mission and Ministry in a Changing Social Order (Cambridge, MA: Boston Theological Institute Series, 2000).Google Scholar

4. For a fuller development of what follows, see Sheldrake, Philip, ‘Practising Catholic “Place”: The Eucharist’, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, 28.2 (2001), pp. 163–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. See Gunton, Colin, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark 1997), pp. 112–17Google Scholar; and also his The One, The Three and The Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995), p. 164.Google Scholar

6. Translation from the Spanish in Kavanaugh, K. (ed.), John of the Cross: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1987).Google Scholar

7. For a summary of issues and critical approaches, see Sheldrake, Philip ‘Interpretation’, in Holder, A. (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 459–77.Google Scholar

8. For an interesting analysis of different ecclesiological ‘styles’, see e.g. Healy, N., Church, World and the Christian Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. The link between the enactment of identity and the ethical nature of the Eucharist is discussed by the moral theologian, the late Spohn, William, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics (New York: Continuum, 1999), pp. 175–84.Google Scholar

10. On this point, see Saliers, Donald E., ‘Liturgy and Ethics: Some New Beginnings’, in Hamel, Ronald and Himes, Kenneth (eds.), Introduction to Christian Ethics: A Reader (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), pp. 175–86.Google Scholar

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15. See McIntosh, Mark, Discernment and Truth: The Spirituality and Theology of Knowledge (New York: Crossroad, 2004), p. 255.Google Scholar

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