Invalid arguments?

While some have welcomed Dominus Jesus ("The Lord Jesus"), last fall's doctrinal declaration from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), as a valuable statement of Catholic beliefs in relation to other Christians and religions, others have seen it as destructive.

Written in the dense language for which Ratzinger and the CDF are infamous, the declaration argues that certain efforts at dialogue with other Christians and religions have threatened the church's missionary mandate and have watered down core beliefs of Catholicism--key doctrines such as Jesus as the complete revelation of God, the universality of Jesus' message of salvation, and the intimate connection between Christ, the kingdom of God, and the church.

In restating these "certain indispensable elements of Christian doctrine," however the declaration refers to certain churches lacking a "valid" office of bishop and a "genuine" eucharistic mystery--namely, most Protestant churches--as "not churches in the proper sense." The document also states, "If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation."

Several prominent U.S. Catholic bishops hurried to affirm the declaration's value as a statement of core Catholic doctrines and also tried to reassure the church's ecumenical partners that the new statement should not harm existing dialogues.

But criticism of the declaration has been widespread. The World Council of Churches, which represents 330 Christian bodies, warned of the "tragedy" if Christian cooperation were "obscured by the churches' dialogues about their relative authority and status." In England, the head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop George Carey of Canterbury, pointed out that the document "breaks no new ground ... but neither does it fully reflect the deeper understanding that has been achieved through ecumenical dialogue and cooperation during the last 30 years."

Other criticisms of the document have come from Jewish, Muslim, and Russian Orthodox leaders. A Catholic-Jewish dialogue in Rome was postponed indefinitely when two rabbis withdrew their participation. And a German Lutheran church leader, speaking of ongoing efforts for Christian unity, commented, "We cannot let ourselves be put off by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."