For the second time in four days Pope Benedict XVI has laid out a traditionalist marker in a document released yesterday proclaiming that the "one Church of Christ . . . subsists in the Catholic Church". It also said Reformed/Protestant churches were not churches "in the proper sense", but were "ecclesial communities".
The document has drawn strong negative reaction from Protestant/Reformed churches internationally and in Ireland.
The president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Rev Roy Cooper, expressed dismay at its content, while a spokesman for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland pointed out that, in its view, it is the Roman Catholic Church which is in error. A spokesman for the Church of Ireland, Archbishop of Dublin Most Rev John Neill, said: "We regard the Church of Ireland as having full apostolic succession."
The World Alliance of Reformed Churches said the document "makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the Reformed family and other families of the church".
Yesterday's document follows the Pope's Motu Proprio at the weekend which relaxed restrictions on the use of the Tridentine or Latin Mass. Issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), not only does it carry the pope's formal "approval", it reaffirms points originally outlined in the document Dominus Iesus, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2000 when it was headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.
Entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church", it restates fundamental Catholic Church teaching to the effect that it is the one, true church, even if elements of truth can be found in other churches and communities.
It finds the Protestant and Christian Orthodox "communities" to be deficient - the Protestants because of the lack of apostolic succession and Orthodox because of their failure to recognise Rome's primacy.
Speaking of those "Christian communities born out of the Reformation of the 16th century", it says: "According to Catholic doctrine, these communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of the Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called 'Churches' in the proper sense."
Vatican insiders yesterday were agreed the document is unlikely to help ecumenical dialogue, but felt it may have been written for internal purposes, with a view to "clarifying the authentic meaning of some ecclesiological expressions . . . open to misunderstanding", as stated in the document.