The body responsible for promoting the deepening of communion between the churches of the Anglican Communion and its ecumenical partners, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order (IASCUFO), has welcomed next month’s Primates Meeting in Canterbury. The Commission has described Archbishop Justin Welby’s invitation to his fellow-primates as “an opportunity for a new, redeemed conversation within the Communion.”

The comment was made in a communiqué issued by the Commission after their meeting last week in Elmina, Ghana, in the Province of West Africa’s Diocese of the Cape Coast. The Commission say that they are “greatly heartened” by the forthcoming meeting and are “ready to assist in any way consistent with its remit.”
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For the first time since the Second Vatican Council changed Christian teachings toward Judaism and the Jewish people 50 years ago, a group of Orthodox rabbis have issued a public statement advocating partnership with Christians and appreciating the religious value of Christianity.

Published on December 3rd on the website of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC) in Israel, “To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians” is signed by over 25 prominent Orthodox rabbis in Israel, United States and Europe and calls for cooperation between Jews and Christians to address the moral and religious challenges of our times. The proclamation’s authors are inviting fellow Orthodox rabbis to join in signing the statement.

“The real importance of this Orthodox statement is that it calls for fraternal partnership between Jewish and Christian religious leaders, while also acknowledging the positive theological status of the Christian faith. Jews and Christians must be in the forefront of teaching basic moral values to the world,” said Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, one of the statement’s initiators, and founder of CJCUC, member of the Israeli Rabbinate and the Chief Rabbi of Efrat. While not a direct response to the Church’s 1965 “Nostra Aetate,” “To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven” was clearly influenced by Christianity’s new affirmation of the eternity of the Jewish covenant and the respect that Christian leaders have demonstrated toward Judaism and Jews in contemporary dialogues and religious encounters.

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Catholics should not try to convert Jews and should work with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a major document drawing the Church further away from the strained relations of the past. It was the latest move on a host of issues, such as gay rights and re-marriage, that the Vatican or Pope Francis have made showing a desire to be more compassionate and open and to move further away from entrenched traditions. In the past, for example, Catholic prayers have denounced Jews for not believing in Jesus. Jews have also accused the World War Two papacy of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, a charge the Vatican denies. The new document from the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews stressed recent Vatican teachings that the two religions were intertwined and that God had never annulled his covenant with the Jewish people. “The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelization (spreading Christianity) to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views,” it said. It also said Catholics should be particularly sensitive about the significance to Jews of the Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, and pledged “to do all that is possible with our Jewish friends to repel anti-Semitic tendencies”. “A Christian can never be an anti-Semite, especially because of the Jewish roots of Christianity,” it said.
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A social media campaign to help educate Canadians about Muslim women has its roots in Saskatoon.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at launched a national campaign this week based around the Twitter hashtag #JeSuisHijabi.

“After the Paris attacks … there’s a lot of misconceptions in Canada and the U.S.,” 17-year-old Naiela Anwar explained. “We thought it was important that we gave our point of view, and show that not all Muslims are like that.

“We condemn greatly the terror attacks that took place. That is not the true Islam.”
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On December 2nd, 55 years ago, Pope John XXIII had a private audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher, the first time that Anglican and Catholic leaders had met together since the Reformation.

Following their historic encounter, the archbishop met with Cardinal Augustin Bea, head of the newly established Secretariat for Christian Unity, leading to the invitation of Anglican observers to the Second Vatican Council. The meeting also paved the way for the first official encounter between their successors, Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey in March 1966 and the establishment of an Anglican Centre here in Rome.

The current director of that Centre and representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Vatican is New Zealand Archbishop David Moxon. He talked to Philippa Hitchen about the upcoming 50th anniversary and about the significance of Archbishop Fisher’s visit to the Vatican in December 1960 ….
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