ARCIC Drafting Meeting in London

On 7 and 8 March 2024, the drafting group of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) met in London, UK. Convened by the two co-secretaries of the commission, the group held its working sessions at the church of St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square, and at Westminster Abbey.

ARCIC’s current mandate is to examine how the Church in communion, local and universal, discerns right ethical teaching. It addressed the first ecclesiological part of its mandate in its 2018 agreed statement, Walking Together on the Way: Learning to be Church ‒ Local, Regional, Universal. In this phase of its work, ARCIC is now examining how the two communions practice moral discernment in search of right ethical teaching. The first three chapters of the report examine both the shared tradition which Catholics and Anglicans have inherited, and how distinct moral discernment developed in each tradition since the Reformation. During their meeting in London, the drafting group concentrated on refining and analysing two case studies which will form part of the fourth chapter of the report. These case studies examine one example of where Catholics and Anglicans reached the same teaching – Enslavement – and one where they did not – Contraception. Their work will be considered by the full commission when it gathers for its annual plenary meeting in Strasbourg, France, in May 2024.