The belief that the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches were divided by moral disagreements came to prominence in the early 1980s and affected the direction of ecumenical dialogue. But no moral disagreements go back to the Reformation era, and the perception of moral difference has undergone many changes since that time, especially reflecting differences of social and political setting. A moral agreement or disagreement is difficult to chart with precision. It is not embodied in a formulation of moral doctrine, since moral reason functions on two planes, that of evaluative description and that of deliberation and decision. Disagreement is phenomenologically present as offence, which has its own dynamic of expansion. Addressing offence, a task involving lay, theological and episcopal contributions, is the primary way in which moral agreement has to be sought and defended.

英国国教和罗马天主教会因道德分歧而分裂的信念在 1980 年代初期变得突出，并影响了普世对话的方向。但是没有道德分歧可以追溯到宗教改革时代，从那时起，对道德差异的看法发生了许多变化，特别是反映了社会和政治环境的差异。道德上的一致或分歧很难精确地描绘出来。它没有体现在道德教义的表述中，因为道德理性在两个层面上发挥作用，即评价性描述的层面以及审议和决定的层面。分歧在现象学上表现为冒犯，它有其自身的扩展动力。处理犯罪，一项涉及平信徒、神学和主教贡献的任务，