Dean remarks on `frosty' ecumenical climate

The Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, the Very Rev John Paterson, has said the Vatican's Dominus Iesus document "carried with it a sting in its tail that Christians outside the communion of Rome are not true churches in any real sense of the word".

He said yesterday at a service for Christian Unity in the Franciscan Church of Adam and Eve, on Merchant's Quay, Dublin, that the ecumenical climate at present was "a bit frosty".

"Despite that wonderful picture of Pope John Paul II, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Patriarch of Constantinople, jointly kneeling at the opening of the Holy Doors in St Peter's in January last year, the year ended with Dominus Iesus."

The "sting in its tail" meant "it was as if the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Patriarch were on the one hand accepted as brother Christians, yet not quite brothers. We as Christians have to sort out such problems if we're honestly to relate to each other."

More importantly, it had to be clarified whether "we're to try to be real brothers and sisters to those of other faiths". Ireland today was a multiracial and multicultural community, he said. We had fellow-citizens who were neither Christian nor white, yet they were Irish.

"Our common united action as Christians must be to integrate them into our society, equal yet allowing them to retain their own traditions."