Talks have finally resumed between the Vatican and the Anglican Communion after a year-long break following the election of the gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, reports The Church of England Newspaper.

|TOP|Members of the Anglican Communion stated in a Communiqué released on 12 December that tensions between the two Churches “following developments in two of the Anglican Provinces relating to ministry by and to persons of a homosexual orientation and practise” had led to a postponement of the 2004 meeting.

According to the statement, assurances from the Anglican Communion led to a fourth meeting of IARCCUM, the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission, held “to review work on the project to produce a Common Statement” that would “identify a sufficient degree of agreement in faith to enable the development of a deepened common life and mission” between the two Churches.

The Commission has also compiled a report summarising the theological agreements reached between the two Churches that will “harvest the theological fruits” of 40 years of the ARCIC agreements, “taking the thinking and turning it into mission,” said the Rt. Rev. Edwin Gulick, Bishop of Kentucky.

The report has not yet been made public but will be first submitted to the Vatican and to London for review and publication, reports The Church of England Newspaper.

|AD|Members of the Anglican Communion gathered in Rome for the Consultation included the chairman, the Rt. Rev. David Beetge, Bishop of the Highveld; the Most Rev Peter Carnley, retired Primate of Australia and Archbishop of Perth; the Rt Rev Peter Fox, Bishop of Port Moresby; Dr Mary Tanner of the Church of England, Bishop Gulick and representatives from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Council joined Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Roman Catholic delegation.

In his homily at an evening prayer service held last month at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Archbishop Carnley suggested the unity of the Trinity as a model for Church unity.

The three persons of the Trinity were “not absorbed into the life of the others to the point where all individuality is lost,” but they are one “by virtue of the fact that they share a common will and a common purpose; they are one in the common exchange of love,” he said.

He added that the Church must endeavour to bring about unity so that “the world may know what God is like” as division and schism are symbols of “infedility” and a “denial of the reality and presence of God in the midst of us”.