Vatican view of ecumenism questioned

The Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork, the Right Rev Paul Colton, has described the Vatican's Dominus Iesus document, issued last Tuesday, as "bewildering". Having read the document in full, he believed parts of it, "and indeed the tone", were not a reflection of the "very positive experiences and co-operation of Christians and churches at local level".

He said that the document appeared to run counter to the trend of the significant ecumenical progress of the past 40 years.

In seeking urgent clarification from "our brother bishops of the Catholic Church in Ireland", the Church of Ireland bishops had underlined the importance they attached to ecumenical endeavour and the quest for unity, he said.

There was much in the document which all Christians would readily accept, Dr Colton said. However, he disagreed "resolutely" with the assertion that `the Church' . . . constituted and organised as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church . . ." Face-to-face ecumenism, framed in a context of common prayer, "would surely be much more challenging and fruitful than the publication of any text", he said.

The Church of Ireland Dean of Ferns, the Very Rev Leslie Forrest, has described Dominus Iesus as "Cardinal Ratzinger's extraordinary document". If taken seriously on the ground, it could "set back the whole ecumenical movement and the warmth that has built up in the intervening years", he said.

Were Anglicans and others now to be treated as "poor people in shabby clothes", he asked, quoting from the Epistle of St James.

Preaching in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Dean Forrest said: "There is no exclusiveness with God . . . None of us has any right to be exclusive as we proclaim Christ to an increasingly secular and dismissive world."

He continued: "Could anything be further removed from the thinking of the man beatified during the past week or so, the founding father of Vatican II and indeed of much of the modern ecumenical movement, Pope John XXIII?"