A not very ecumenical statement from His Holiness was issued this week:
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican on July 10 reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, calling other Christian churches defective and saying Protestant denominations are not even churches "in the proper sense."
The statement, which was "ratified and confirmed" by Pope Benedict XVI and published with his approval, reiterates some of the most controversial ideas in a 2000 Vatican declaration published under Benedict's authority when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Tuesday's four-page document purports to correct "erroneous interpretation" and "misunderstanding" of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, which paved the way for ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and other Christian churches.
The new document said Vatican II "neither changed nor intended to change" the teaching that the "one Church of Christ ... subsists in the Catholic Church" alone. Other Christian denominations, it argues, can also be "instruments of salvation," but "suffer from defects" insofar as they depart from Catholicism.
Eastern Orthodox churches, though lacking communion with Rome, nonetheless deserve the term "Church" because their priests follow in the succession of bishops and priests that started in the early church, the document explains.
Protestant denominations, however, "because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery," and are therefore to be termed mere "Christian Communities."
The National Council of Churches USA and the Evangelical Luthern Church of America have offered very charitable views of the Pope's statement but I agree with the statement issued by the Presbyterian Church USA which says in part that: "Roman Catholic leadership has mischaracterized our own faith and re-opened questions of Christian unity for all church bodies." This new statement from the Pope does damage to the ecumenical movement.
