By Gretchen Keiser

Episcopal Church members and Catholics sat down around small dinner tables in Atlanta the week before Christmas in the first such organized celebration of the ongoing work toward unity between the two denominations.

The 65 people, including the Catholic bishops of Atlanta and Savannah and Episcopal Bishop Bennett Sims and Judson Child, were the guests of St. Philip's Episcopal Cathedral in a dining room at the Atlanta church. The Dec. 15 dinner arose from a series of discussions which have been held over the past few months to talk about the stage the two denominations have reached in working toward unity. A final report has been issued by the Anglican-Roman Catholic group meeting on an international level and the Atlanta gathering has been reviewing and reacting to that report.

Bishop Raymond Lessard of Savannah, who is among the Catholic representatives in national dialogue with Anglican Communion members in the United States, spoke to the dinner gathering about what is occurring between the denominations in the United States and what can take place at a grassroots level.

Drawing upon the experiences of ARC-USA, the national group, which has been meeting since 1965 and has had more than 20 sessions, he suggested that local plans and projects begin in a simple way and not try to bypass the essential and fruitful road of small endeavors shared by members of the two faiths. In the area of prayer, he mentioned praying together and, in a study of prayer and spirituality, learning together how to pray and learning together different forms of prayer.

The two other essential prongs in any endeavor would be study and action, he said. If, for example, a local group decided to look at spirituality in the two denominations, they could, in addition to joint prayer, study each other's forms of worship and decide upon a specific action such as promoting covenants between individual churches and parishes or between small groups of the two denominations.

Bishop Lessard stressed the importance of seemingly modest efforts such as living room dialogue between members of the two denominations who might live in a neighborhood shared by an Episcopal and Catholic parish. The dialogue might consciously focus upon "the Lord's prayer that we be one."

The stated goal of the national dialogue, he said, is "restoration of full communion and organic unity" between the denominations.

"The game about which we are is a very serious one," he said. "It presumes that the ice has been broken and that a lot of the steps have been taken … for us to be able to say that."

ARC-USA hopes to finish in February a study of the "Role of Women in Church and in Society," which will involve many controversial questions concerning women and their ministry in society and the church, Bishop Lessard said. However, the questions will be addressed within a framework that looks at the image of God; Jesus as the image of God; the image of God and sexuality, and the image of God in the Church.

The study will not attempt to solve the controversial questions, Bishop Lessard said, but to establish a context "in which we can discuss them civilly, as Christians and with profit."