Pope: Other Denominations Not True Churches

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/7/10/213423.shtml?s=ic

Pope: Other Denominations Not True Churches

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - For the second time in a week, Pope Benedict

XVI has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second

Vatican Council, reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and

saying other Christian communities were either defective or not true

churches.

Benedict approved a document released Tuesday from his old office, the

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which repeated church teaching

on Catholic relations with other Christians.

While there was nothing doctrinally new in the document, it nevertheless

prompted swift criticism from Protestants, Lutherans and other Christian

denominations spawned by the 16th century reformation.

"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church

takes its dialogues with the Reformed family and other families of the

church," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which groups 75

million Reformed Christians in 214 churches in 107 countries.

"It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian

unity," the alliance said in a letter to the Vatican's key ecumenical

official, Cardinal Walter Kasper, charging that the document took ecumenical

dialogue back to the pre-Vatican II era.

One of the key developments from Vatican II, the 1962-65 meetings that

modernized the church, was its ecumenical outreach.

Another key change was the development of the New Mass in the vernacular,

which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass. On Saturday, Benedict revived

the old Latin Mass, saying it was wrong for bishops to deny it to the

faithful because it had never been abolished. Traditional Catholics cheered

the move, but more liberal ones called it a step back from Vatican II.

Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained

about what he considers the erroneous interpretation of the council by

liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of

church tradition.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said it was issuing the new

document on ecumenism because some contemporary theological interpretations

of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had

prompted confusion and doubt.

The new document -- formulated as five questions and answers -- restates key

sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the

congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant, Lutheran and other

Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but

merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of

salvation."

"Christ 'established here on earth' only one Church," said the document

released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy's

Dolomite mountains.

The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense"

because they do not have apostolic succession -- the ability to trace their

bishops back to Christ's original apostles -- and therefore their priestly

ordinations are not valid, it said.

The Rev. Sara MacVane, of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said there was

nothing new in the document.

"I don't know what motivated it at this time," she said. "But it's important

always to point out that there's the official position and there's the huge

amount of friendship and fellowship and worshipping together that goes on at

all levels, certainly between Anglican and Catholics and all the other

groups and Catholics."

The document said Orthodox churches were indeed "churches" because they have

apostolic succession and that they enjoyed "many elements of sanctification

and of truth." But it said they lack something because they do not recognize

the primacy of the pope -- a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.

"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of Primacy which,

according to the Catholic faith, is an 'internal constitutive principle' of

the very existence of a particular Church," said a commentary from the

congregation which accompanied the text.

Despite the harsh tone of the documents, they stressed that Benedict remains

committed to ecumenical dialogue.

"However, if such dialogue is to be truly constructive it must involve not

just the mutual openness of the participants but also fidelity to the

identity of the Catholic faith," the commentary said.

The top Protestant cleric in Benedict's homeland, Germany, complained that

the Vatican apparently did not consider that "mutual respect for the church

status" was required for any ecumenical progress.

In a statement headlined "Lost Chance," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber

argued that "it would also be completely sufficient if it were to be said

that the reforming churches are 'not churches in the sense required here' or

that they are 'churches of another type' -- but none of these bridges is

used in the 'answers."'

The document, signed by the congregation prefect, American Cardinal William

Levada, was approved by Benedict on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and

Paul -- a major ecumenical feast day.

There was no indication why the pope felt it necessary to release the

document, particularly since his 2000 document summed up the same

principles. Some analysts suggested it could be a question of internal

church politics, or that the Congregation was sending a message to certain

theologians it did not want to single out. Or, it could be an indication of

Benedict using his office as pope to again stress key doctrinal issues from

his time at the Congregation.

In fact, the only theologian cited by name in the document for having

spawned erroneous interpretations of ecumenism was Leonardo Boff, the

Brazilian who was a target of the former Cardinal Ratzinger's crackdown on

liberation theology in the 1980s.