The fourth meeting of the third session of ARCIC concluded last week in Durban, releasing a communique affirming the need for further talks between Catholics and Anglicans.

The fourth meeting of the third session of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) concluded last week in Durban, releasing a communique affirming the need for further talks between the two churches. According to a press released distrusted at the close of the 12-20 May 2014 meeting in Durban, South Africa: “A wide range of papers was prepared for the meeting and discussed, taking the Commission further towards its goal of producing an agreed statement. The mandate for this third phase of ARCIC is to explore: the Church as Communion, local and universal, and how in communion the local and universal Church come to discern right ethical teaching.” Following the Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey’s 1966 meeting with Pope Paul VI, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was established to find ways of achieving a reunion of the churches. Beginning in 1970 the first round of talks focused on the authority of Scripture, producing in 1981 the report “Elucidations on Authority in the Church.” A second round of talks was held between 1983 and 2004, producing an agreed statement on Marian theology in 2004. Pope John Paul II terminated talks in the wake of the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. In 2011 Archbishop Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict XVI initiated a third round of talks designed to find common ground on moral teachings.