LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy – Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches, and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.
The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. “It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity,” said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries.
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 for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Dominus Iesus,” which riled Protestant 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.”
The commentary repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church “has the fullness of the means of salvation.”
“Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church,” said the document released as the pope vacationed 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 document said Orthodox churches were indeed “churches” because they have apostolic succession and enjoyed “many elements of sanctification and of truth.” But it said they do not recognize the primacy of the pope – a defect, or a “wound” that harmed them, it said.
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