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A week after publishing a document which casts doubt on the validity of Protestant Christianity and asserts Roman Catholic superiority over all other churches, the Vatican continues to draw criticism both from other churches and from within its own ranks.

The general secretaries of two organizations representing major wings of Protestantism have publicly lamented the harm done to ecumenism by Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published on September 5 by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document declares that churches that do not have a "valid Episcopate [bishops] and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery are not Churches in the proper sense". Another document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in an Italian magazine this month orders Catholic bishops not to use the term "sister church" in reference to Protestant churches. This too has also caused dismay in ecumenical circles.

Although many theologians pointed out that there is nothing new in the Vatican documents, the reaffirmation that the Vatican does not consider Protestant churches to be authentic churches has provoked widespread irritation, especially within those organizations involved in long-standing dialogue with the Vatican.

Commenting on the two documents, Dr Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, which represents 59 million of the world's 63 million Lutherans, pointed out that on October 31 last year the Vatican and the LWF signed the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" which uses the word "church" in reference to Lutherans and Catholics "to reflect the self-understanding of the particular churches, without intending to resolve all the ecclesiological issues related to them".

In his statement, issued on September 8 at LWF headquarters in Geneva, Dr Noko expresses "dismay and disappointment" that 35 years of ecumenical dialogue between Roman Catholics and Lutherans seem not to have been considered in the documents issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He adds that the impact of the recent statements from the Vatican is more painful because they reflect a different spirit "than that which we encounter in many Lutheran-Roman Catholic relationships."

He adds that "Lutheran churches, together with other churches of the Reformation, are not ready to accept the categories now emphasized by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, nor the definitions and criteria underlying them".

Also in Geneva, Dr Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, has written to Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, to express "disappointment and dismay" about Dominus Iesus.

Dr Nyomi, whose organization represents more than 75 million Christians in 215 Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Reformed and United churches world-wide, says in his letter to Cardinal Cassidy that the declaration is "made without ecumenical sensitivity" and "seems to go against the spirit of Vatican II ... and the progress made in relationships and dialogues since then".

"We in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches have attached much importance to the dialogue we have engaged in for a long time now," Dr Nyomi says. "In many nations a number of our constituent members have made major strides in relationship, often relating as 'sister churches' in common witness and diaconal work vis-a-vis challenges in their communities."

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September (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44