c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ The Vatican last week (Sept. 5) issued a highly technical document written by theologians for theologians and containing nothing new in Roman Catholic doctrine. Yet it has caused widespread disappointment and dismay and cast doubt on the Vatican’s commitment to dialogue with other faiths.

Some critics see the document as the latest in a series of moves by forces within the Vatican trying to close the door on the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and set strictly conservative parameters for the next papacy.

If this is true, the conservative forces appear to be acting with the blessing of the 80-year-old Pope John Paul II, who for all his liberal positions on social issues strongly upholds established church doctrine.

Publication of the document followed the disclosure that the Vatican sent a letter to presidents of all Roman Catholic bishops’ conferences on June 30 directing them to stop referring to Anglican and Protestant denominations as “sister churches.”

The stated purpose of the “Declaration Dominus Iesus (Lord Jesus) On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church” is to counter religious relativism, an approach that finds some truth in all forms of worship, Christian or otherwise.

Contending that only the revelation of Jesus Christ as transmitted by the pope and his bishops is “definitive and complete,” the declaration said the Roman Catholic Church, therefore, is the only “instrument for the salvation of all humanity.”

With the exception of the Orthodox churches, other Christian faiths “suffer from defects” and therefore are “ecclesial communities” rather than true churches, the document said. However, it said, “the Church of Christ is present and operative” in the Orthodox churches even though they do not accept the doctrine of papal primacy.

Non-Christian faiths are inherently inferior to Catholicism because they do not accept the absolute “significance and value” of Jesus Christ and their “superstitions or other errors constitute an obstacle to salvation,” the declaration said.

Although none of the denominations engaged in ecumenical or interfaith dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church found the document disturbing enough to break off talks, most leaders appeared disconcerted by the Vatican’s move.

The Most Rev. George L. Carey, who as archbishop of Canterbury is spiritual leader of the 70 million-member Anglican Communion, spoke first and set the tone of their responses. He said the “idea that Anglican and other churches are not `proper churches’ seems to question the considerable ecumenical gains we have made.”

John Baycroft, the retired Anglican bishop of Ottawa, Canada, who is director of the Anglican Centre in Rome and Carey’s personal emissary to the Vatican, noted that the document may cause some awkwardness when the pope receives Queen Elizabeth on Oct. 17 as she is the head of the Anglican Church of England.

Dr. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the 59.5-million member Lutheran World Federation expressed disappointment and said the impact of the statements was all the “more painful because they reflect a different spirit than that which we encounter in many other Lutheran-Roman Catholic relationships.”

The Catholic and Lutheran churches took a major step toward reconciliation last Oct. 31 when they signed a joint declaration coming to terms on the doctrine of justification, a basic cause of the Protestant Reformation. Noko noted they sidestepped any problem about the word “church” by stating that it was used “to reflect the self-understanding of the particular churches without intending to resolve all the ecclesiological issues related to them.”

Leaders of the Baptist and Reformed churches expressed similar sentiments, but a statement by the World Methodist Council took a positive view, saying it joined in the Vatican’s affirmation that Jesus Christ is the one savior of the world.

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow refused immediate comment other than to say that Catholics and Orthodox are separated by “a different conception of the church’s universality.”

Some Roman Catholics also expressed fear over what the declaration means for the future of ecumenism. Members of the National Conference of Priests of England and Wales voted unanimously to ask their bishops “to give public assurance at this time that the Catholic Church is deeply committed to continuing dialogue with other Christians.”

The Rev. Hans Kung, the dissident Swiss theologian disciplined in 1979 for questioning the doctrine of papal infallibility, dismissed the document as “a mixture of Medieval backwardness and Vatican megalomania.”

The 36-page document was prepared by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Office which serves as the pope’s doctrinal watchdog. The congregation also sent the letter banning the term “sister churches.”

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the ultra orthodox German prefect of the congregation, said the document took two years to write, and that John Paul was consulted every step of the way.

The pope’s concurrence came as a surprise because he has made ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue a hallmark of his 22-year papacy.

In his 1995 encyclical “Ut Unum Sint: On Commitment to Ecumenism,” he asked forgiveness for the obstacle that papal primacy presents to reconciliation and offered to engage in “a patient and fraternal dialogue on the subject.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Just two days before the document’s release, the beatification of the 19th century Pope Pius IX in tandem with John XXIII, the widely admired pontiff who convened the Second Vatican Council and thus opened the way to dialogue, was another surprise.

Pius IX, a determined anti-modernist, called the First Vatican Council and established the doctrine of papal infallibility, which other Christian faiths find a major obstacle to reconciliation.

Critics said coupling Pius IX with John XXIII was a clear attempt to downgrade Vatican II.

John Paul has given progress toward Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation priority throughout his papacy, but the elevation of Pius IX to one rank below sainthood could have serious consequences for the talks, already stalled over charges by the Russian Orthodox Church that Catholics are attempting to steal converts from among the Orthodox.

“The beatification of Pope Pius IX is a disaster for the Orthodox,” Olivier Clement, a prominent Orthodox theologian, said in Paris in an interview with a Swiss Catholic news agency. “He is the man of the First Vatican Council, which poisoned relations between the divided churches.”

KRE END POLK