Some clarity

The recent document released by the Vatican to clarify Church teaching since Vatican II has been the subject of angry outbursts like this, and this one Carl Olson features at Ignatius Insight, among lots of others. But the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Christian Unity is urging calm, and trying to explain.

I’m not sure it’s getting any clearer. Here’s a snip from Cardinal Kasper’s sincere attempt to….clarify:

“A close reading of the texts clearly shows that the document does not say that Protestant churches are not churches, but rather that they are not churches in the proper sense, that is, they are not churches in the sense in which the Catholic Church understands the term church.  This is totally obvious to anyone with a certain amount of ecumenical formation,” he added.

“When the statement Dominus Iesus came out, I said the Protestant churches are churches of another kind.  This does not contradict the formulation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as some Evangelical reactions tried to show.  On the contrary, I sought out an appropriate interpretation of which I am convinced even today, especially because Catholics today still speak of Protestant churches,” the cardinal continued. 

“The declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does nothing more than show that we use the word Church, attributing to it a meaning that is not completely the same.  Thus the declaration allows us to move towards greater clarity and consequently towards the process of dialogue,” he said.

And between the time I started this post and now (interruptions abound), I noticed that Carl has a new post up on that, saying much of what I wanted to here as well, bottom line being…

Maybe I’m missing something (and I hope I’m wrong), but this appears to be the sort of clarification that clarifies little and even adds to the confusion.

And there’s plenty of that.

I received a brief note from Deb asking for help understanding how to explain this to Protestants angry at the pope.

Help! I was out for coffee with some friends who happen to be Methodists and I came under attack! “What does your Pope mean that you won’t see me in heaven?????”

Frankly…I had heard very liitle about the Pope’s comments…

I tried to explain that from what little I knew about what the Pope said, that of course, we believe we are the one true church … don’t they believe what their church teaches??????

A few days ago, I put up these posts in the Forum to begin putting some meaning to this. (Carl, somehow you wind up all over the Forum today.) In that last one about the WTTW Chicago Tonight roundtable discussion, I think the most important point that came out of it was the three theologians emphasized that the Vatican document was written for them, and for bishops, and didn’t have more “accessible” language because it wasn’t intended for popular dissemination.

True, but someone should have seen this coming.

More clarification later…