Archive

AIF had been invited to send a number of members to attend the Ecumenical Prayer Service with Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury at Westminster Abbey on 17th September; would I like to be included?  Indeed I would.

I remembered that earlier occasion when Pope John Paul II prayed together with Archbishop Robert Runcie in Canterbury Cathedral in 1982. I think that Martin and I were the only AIF couple in the cathedral then, and we were there for quite different reasons (other members were there too, but not as couples). He was invited as General Secretary of the Church of England’s Board for Mission and Unity, and I as a member of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Commission for England and Wales.  He gave up a more prominent seat to come and join our group, so that he and I could sit together. This time, 25 of us were invited as interchurch families, and most of us went as couples (see photo, above).

Canterbury Cathedral in 1982 had all the excitement of an ecumenical ‘first’ – an almost unbelievable occasion. 1982 contributed largely to the ‘Not Strangers but Pilgrims’ movement of the 1980s, leading to the formation of new ecumenical instruments in the 1990s, with Roman Catholic membership. In 2010 it would have been inconceivable for something similar to the earlier Ecumenical Prayer Service not to be planned during the papal visit.

In 1982 Pope John Paul’s visit was a pastoral one, prepared by the National Pastoral Congress of 1980. The 2010 visit was a state visit, and shorter. From the interchurch family perspective, this made a lot of difference. The NPC had shown itself favourable to eucharistic sharing for interchurch families, and we knew that some of the Anglican and Free Church leaders who were lunching with the Pope intended to speak to him about interchurch families if they had an opportunity. One of the public masses celebrated by the Pope was devoted to the topic of marriage and family life, and we were delighted that he included in his homily some words spoken directly to interchurch families that we have quoted ever since: ‘You live in your marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity …’. The structure of the 2010 visit did not allow for anything similar to occur.

On the one hand the invitation to AIF in 2010 shows that the Association has become almost part of the establishment, respected for our place in the ecumenical scene. Certainly things are much better for interchurch families than they were in the early 1980s. On the other hand the visit highlights the fact that our particular concerns are no longer felt to be as significant in the whole picture as they were in 1982 although we understand that interchurch families were mentioned during a private conversation between Pope Benedict and Archbishop Rowan Williams and our task continues: both in working for a better pastoral understanding of the needs of interchurch families and of how these can be met, and in constantly reminding the churches of the significance of interchurch family experience in the movement for promoting Christian unity.

We were delighted that our guests at this year’s London Meeting were Commissioner Betty Matear, Territorial President of Women’s Ministries in the Salvation Army, and Professor Antoine Arjakovsky, Director of the Institute for Ecumenical Studies at the Catholic University of Lviv, Ukraine.

Antoine Arjakovsky is Orthodox, married to a Catholic, and was formerly a French diplomat.  He spoke eloquently about his own spiritual journey in an interchurch family and about his work at the Institute for Ecumenical Studies in the Catholic Universities in both the Ukraine and Leuven in Belgium, where he is presently on sabbatical. He was keen to meet interchurch couples in Britain and to understand something of the ecumenical environment in this country.

Betty Matear is one of the AIF Presidents and a President of Churches Together in England. This is her final year as Free Churches Moderator.  She had been looking forward to spending time with us ever since her appointment. She gave a very lively and incisive reflection on the visit of Pope Benedict XIV to these islands in September and what it meant to her as a Salvationist and what she perceived it meant for interchurch families.

Commissioner Betty Matear
Betty Matear is married to Commissioner John Matear and together they have served in the Salvation Army both in the UK and overseas.  John is currently Territorial Leader of the United Kingdom with the Republic of Ireland.
Commenting on her appointment as the Moderator of the Free Churches Group, Betty Matear said “It felt like … God was saying expand your boundaries, reach out to other churches, reach beyond that, into the community.  For me it was confirmation that we are together in mission and I just feel that's very pleasing to God.”  (Interview with Christian Today)

Professor Antoine Arjakovsky
Born in Paris, Professor Arjakovsky now lives and teaches in the Ukraine. He founded the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Catholic University of Ukraine.
In 2008 AIF members, Jill and Anton Perusko, met him at a conference in Ukraine and had told us: “He talks with great enthusiasm about the work they do there and his vision for Unity. He is a real "people" person and will enjoy hearing about our experiences and the work of AIF.”
Last March he gave one of the papers at the ‘Household of God’ conference at the Catholic University of Leuven, where is he is now on sabbatical writing a book on the History of Orthodox Christianity,  and which was also attended by a number of AIF members.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, who is one the Presidents of the Association of Interchurch Families, gave a thought-provoking and wide-ranging address to a public audience of around 250, including around 70 AIF members who had travelled from all over the country, and also from Canada, at the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Farm Street, London W1 on 20th March. The venue was chosen because of the long established association of the church in Mayfair with Father John Coventry, a founder of AIF after whom the annual lecture is named.  The invitation came from the parish priest, Fr William Pearsall, and members of the Jesuit Community there.

Dr Williams picked up on some of the threads of his address in Rome last November to the Willebrands Symposium but also addressed interchurch families and their particular situation. He said to them that inter-confessional marriage should be seen as something transformative. ‘The couple pledge themselves to be Christ to one another, a sign of unconditional covenanted love, but they also pledge themselves to be a sign to the whole church of the covenant of grace – we celebrate God’s capacity to raise up in a self wounding church signs of his self-healing and so inter-church families become a sign of a healing sacrament’, he said.

Reflecting on ‘the visual and verbal imagery of the Orthodox Church which sees the descent of Jesus into the baptismal water of Jordan as a descent into the chaos, into the unformed reality which swills around just below the surface of the ordinary world’, Dr Williams built on the thought that ‘Christ is simultaneously in the neighbourhood of the Father and in the neighbourhood of the sin, the formlessness, the shapelessness and dissolution, the dis-integrity of creation.’

The full text of the lecture can be found below.

 

Earlier in the day, at the invitation of the priest in charge, Canon Mark Oakley, over 70 Interchurch Family members had met at the nearby Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street to worship, exchange news, and to lunch with Archbishop Williams and Rev David Coffey, who later chaired the John Coventry Memorial Address. Canon Oakley’s sermon to Interchurch Families can be found below.

 

Earlier on 10-13 March, following the eminent German theologian’s, Thomas Knieps, paper given at the AIF Conference at Swanwick in August 2008 on Interchurch Families as Domestic Church, some 30 interchurch family members from around the world, including 10 from the UK, attended an International Conference at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. A full report can be found below and more information can be found at www.intams.org/events-col10.htm.

 

Pope Benedict XVI visited Britain 16 to 19 September and Interchurch Family members were present at the Ecumenical Service held at Westminster Abbey on the evening of Friday 17th. At least 26 members were spotted including our two Episcopal members, as well as four of our Presidents!  Participation was by invitation of the Dean and Chapter (via the Internet) and we were delighted to be represented.  It was a stirring occasion, especially when Pope Benedict and Archbishop Rowan prayed together at the tomb of St Edward the Confessor.  We could only watch them on one of the many TV monitors placed around the Abbey but we could see the incense rising heavenward from behind the Screen!  We had been seated in time to watch the address to Parliament at Westminster Hall which took place immediately before the service and which was shown on the same monitors.  At the Abbey, Pope Benedict was greeted by leaders of the many different denominations represented and at the end, together with Archbishop Rowan, signed the visitors book. Afterwards a number of us enjoyed a fine meal at a nearby restaurant and reflected on our experiences of the occasion.