Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ
The Seattle Statement
INTRODUCTION
- In honouring Mary as Mother
of the Lord, all generations of Anglicans and Roman Catholics
have echoed the greeting of Elizabeth: "Blessed are you
among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke
1:42). The Anglican - Roman Catholic International Commission
now offers this Agreed Statement on the place of Mary in the
life and doctrine of the Church in the hope that it expresses
our common faith about the one who, of all believers, is closest
to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We do so at the request
of our two Communions, in response to questions set before us.
A special consultation of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops,
meeting under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Dr George Carey, and Cardinal Edward I Cassidy, President of
the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at Mississauga,
Canada in 2000, specifically asked ARCIC for "a study of
Mary in the life and doctrine of the Church." This request
recalls the observation of the Malta Report (1968) that "real
or apparent differences between us come to the surface in such
matters as … the Mariological definitions" promulgated
in 1854 and 1950. More recently, in Ut Unum Sint (1995),
Pope John Paul II identified as one area in need of fuller study
by all Christian traditions before a true consensus of faith
can be achieved "the Virgin Mary, as Mother of God and
Icon of the Church, the spiritual Mother who intercedes for
Christ's disciples and for all humanity" (para. 79).
- ARCIC has addressed this topic
once before. Authority in the Church II (1981) already
records a significant degree of agreement:
We agree that there can be
but one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, and
reject any interpretation of the role of Mary which obscures
this affirmation. We agree in recognising that Christian
understanding of Mary is inseparably linked with the doctrines
of Christ and the Church. We agree in recognising the grace
and unique vocation of Mary, Mother of God Incarnate (Theotókos),
in observing her festivals, and in according her honour
in the communion of saints. We agree that she was prepared
by divine grace to be the mother of our Redeemer, by whom
she herself was redeemed and received into glory. We further
agree in recognising in Mary a model of holiness, obedience
and faith for all Christians. We accept that it is possible
to regard her as a prophetic figure of the Church of God
before as well as after the Incarnation. (Para. 30).
The same document, however,
points out remaining differences:
The dogmas of the Immaculate
Conception and the Assumption raise a special problem for
those Anglicans who do not consider that the precise definitions
given by these dogmas are sufficiently supported by Scripture.
For many Anglicans the teaching authority of the bishop
of Rome, independent of a council, is not recommended by
the fact that through it these Marian doctrines were proclaimed
as dogmas binding on all the faithful. Anglicans would also
ask whether, in any future union between our two Churches,
they would be required to subscribe to such dogmatic statements
(para. 30).
These reservations in particular
were noted in the official Response of the Holy See to
The Final Report (1991, para. 13). Having taken these
shared beliefs and these questions as the starting point for
our reflection, we are now able to affirm further significant
agreement on the place of Mary in the life and doctrine of
the Church.
- The present document proposes
a fuller statement of our shared belief concerning the Blessed
Virgin Mary and so provides the context for a common appreciation
of the content of the Marian dogmas. We also take up differences
of practice, including the explicit invocation of Mary. This
new study of Mary has benefited from our previous study of reception
in The Gift of Authority (1999). There we concluded that,
when the Church receives and acknowledges what it recognizes
as a true expression of the Tradition once for all delivered
to the Apostles, this reception is an act both of faithfulness
and of freedom. The freedom to respond in fresh ways in the
face of new challenges is what enables the Church to be faithful
to the Tradition which it carries forward. At other times, some
element of the apostolic Tradition may be forgotten, neglected
or abused. In such situations, fresh recourse to Scripture and
Tradition recalls God's revelation in Christ: we call this process
re-reception (cf. Gift 24-25). Progress in ecumenical
dialogue and understanding suggests that we now have an opportunity
to re-receive together the tradition of Mary's place in God's
revelation.
- Since its inception ARCIC has
sought to get behind opposed or entrenched positions to discover
and develop our common inheritance of faith (cf. Authority
I 25). Following The Common Declaration in 1966 of Pope
Paul VI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Michael Ramsey,
we have continued our "serious dialogue … founded
on the Gospels and on the ancient common traditions." We
have asked to what extent doctrine or devotion concerning Mary
belongs to a legitimate ‘‘reception' of the apostolic
Tradition, in accordance with the Scriptures. This Tradition
has at its core the proclamation of the trinitarian ‘economy
of salvation', grounding the life and faith of the Church in
the divine communion of Father, Son and Spirit. We have sought
to understand Mary's person and role in the history of salvation
and the life of the Church in the light of a theology of divine
grace and hope. Such a theology is deeply rooted in the enduring
experience of Christian worship and devotion.
- God's grace calls for and enables
human response (cf. Salvation and the Church [1987] 9).
This is seen in the Gospel account of the Annunciation, where
the angel's message evokes the response of Mary. The Incarnation
and all that it entailed, including the passion, death and resurrection
of Christ and the birth of the Church, came about by way of
Mary's freely uttered fiat – "let it be done
to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). We recognize
in the event of the Incarnation God's gracious ‘Yes' to
humanity as a whole. This reminds us once more of the Apostle's
words in 2 Corinthians 1:18-20 (Gift 8ff): all God's
promises find their ‘Yes' in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
In this context, Mary's fiat can be seen as the supreme
instance of a believer's ‘Amen' in response to the ‘Yes'
of God. Christian disciples respond to the same ‘Yes' with
their own ‘Amen'. They thus know themselves to be children
together of the one heavenly Father, born of the Spirit as brothers
and sisters of Jesus Christ, drawn into the communion of love
of the blessed Trinity. Mary epitomizes such participation in
the life of God. Her response was not made without profound
questioning, and it issued in a life of joy intermingled with
sorrow, taking her even to the foot of her son's cross. When
Christians join in Mary's ‘Amen' to the ‘Yes' of God
in Christ, they commit themselves to an obedient response to
the Word of God, which leads to a life of prayer and service.
Like Mary, they not only magnify the Lord with their lips: they
commit themselves to serve God's justice with their lives (cf.
Luke 1:46-55).
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