When the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury meets Pope Benedict XVI, divisions within the Anglican Communion are expected to grab more attention than the barriers to Anglican-Catholic unity posed by the ordination of women bishops and attitudes toward homosexuality.

Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England and spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, will visit Rome Nov. 21-26.

He is scheduled to meet privately with Pope Benedict and with Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as well as with other Vatican officials and with Catholic and Anglican groups in Rome.

The Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion continue to make public commitments to joint witness even as new issues appear to make their eventual unity more difficult.

The decision by several member churches of the Anglican Communion to ordain women priests and the decision of some to ordain women bishops, to ordain openly homosexual men and to bless gay unions have created a serious barrier to full union with the Catholic Church.

Meeting with a small group of journalists Nov. 17, Cardinal Kasper said: "We cannot have full communion with a church or ecclesial community which has women bishops. It's not possible for the Catholic Church and it's not possible for the Orthodox Church."

"We are sad about this," the cardinal said.

At the same time, he said, "we are determined to continue (our dialogue). We do not want to interrupt it," but exactly what form the dialogue will take will have to be discussed with the Anglicans and will depend on how the Anglican Communion deals with its internal tensions.

The ordination of women and differing attitudes toward homosexuality have threatened to fracture the Anglican Communion as entire Anglican provinces and individual dioceses and parishes refuse to recognize the authority of bishops who approve the practices.

The tensions have led many people to wonder how Catholics and Anglicans can continue their dialogue and to ask whether full visible unity is still the goal.

"We are in agreement with the Anglicans that Christ wills his church to be one, so we are not authorized to say the goal of our dialogue is no longer full unity," said Canadian Father Donald Bolen, an official at the Christian unity council.

"Can we see a clear path to full communion in the near future? No. But that does not lessen our commitment to work together to seek progress where we can," he said.

The fact that the Vatican sees the thorny questions as involving issues deeper than women bishops or gay unions was reflected in a speech Cardinal Kasper was invited to give to bishops of the Church of England in June as they prepared to discuss ordaining women bishops.

A month after Cardinal Kasper's visit, the Church of England synod adopted a statement saying the ordination of women bishops was "consonant" with the Anglican faith, leading to the formation of a committee to draft the necessary church legislation and recommend ways to provide for Anglicans who would not recognize the validity of a female bishop's ordination.

In his speech to the bishops, Cardinal Kasper reiterated Catholic Church teaching on the equality of men and women, but also the church's belief that it has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood and episcopacy.

In addition, he said, a decision by the Church of England, the mother church of the Anglican Communion, to ordain women bishops would indicate a new direction by the entire communion. The controversial decision not only would threaten the unity of Anglican bishops, but make full union with the Catholic Church "disappear into the far and ultimately unreachable distance."

The question goes deeper than whether a woman can be a bishop, because "where mutual recognition and communion between bishops does not exist or no longer exists, where one can therefore no longer concelebrate the Eucharist, then no church communion, at least no full church communion and thus no eucharistic communion, can exist," Cardinal Kasper said.

Special arrangements such as providing nonterritorial bishops to Anglican faithful who do not recognize their female bishop's leadership "can only cover over the breach superficially; they can paper over the cracks, but they cannot heal the division; one can even go one step further and say that, from the Catholic perspective, they are the unspoken institutionalization, manifestation and virtual legitimating of an existing schism," the cardinal said.

Despite the difficulties, Pope Benedict and Archbishop Williams are expected to discuss concrete ways for the official Catholic-Anglican theological dialogue to move forward.

In addition, the Vatican and the Anglican Communion are preparing to release in early 2007 a document summarizing the points of faith and doctrine their communities hold in common and indicating concrete ways for Anglicans and Catholics to witness together to those beliefs.

The document was prepared by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission.

Archbishop Williams' visit marks the 40th anniversary of a historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury and of the establishment of the Anglican Center in Rome.

The center houses the archbishop's personal representative to the Vatican and offers a variety of activities promoting Catholic-Anglican dialogue and study.

One issue Pope Benedict and Archbishop Williams agree on strongly is the need for a common Christian witness in an increasingly secularized world, particularly in Europe.

---CNS