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DOCTRINAL
STUDIES: ECUMENISM
ABOUT
THE ROMAN DOCUMENT: DOMINUS JESUS
H.E.
Bishop Bernard Fellay
On August 6th
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a declaration
"on the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church".
This declaration provoked violent reactions in modernist circles as well
as outside the Church, in most of the communities concerned with ecumenism.
The document forcefully
restates and imposes numerous points of traditional Catholic doctrine
on the matter. At the same time the truths of faith are strongly tempered
by other propositions originating from Vatican II. (The great principles
of Nostra Aetate, Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes are here recalled.)
The new principles of the last council regarding the relations of the
Catholic Church with the other Christian and non-Christian religions are
presented as if they were perfectly integrated in the Catholic faith.
What some have said
of Vatican II can be said of Dominus Jesus: "Two theological traditions
which fundamentally cannot understand one another have collided" (Mgr
Henrici, ‘The maturation of the Council’ Communio). "The real
problem is so unusual to Catholicism that it is easy to understand the
instinctive blindness which allows to elude it: the will to remain faithful
to two councils which differ so decidedly from one another is simply impossible."1
This contradiction
is obvious in the text, especially when it speaks of the unicity of the
Catholic Church. The identity between the Church of Christ and the Catholic
Church seems affirmed when it speaks of historic continuity between the
Church founded by Our Lord and today’s Catholic Church (N. 16). But at
the same time this is denied by the ‘subsistit in’ (N16-17). Last
spring Cardinal Ratzinger2 himself declared that there is no continuity between
the ‘is’ (affirming this identity) and the ‘subsistit in’
(which allows to place other ‘true’! churches along side the one true
Church, cf. N 17).
In the same text
he affirms on the one hand that the ‘subsistit’ is the foundation
of ecumenism3
and on the other that this same ‘subsistit’ is in contradiction
with the ‘is’ of tradition4:
"Since sin is a contradiction, we cannot in the final analysis, fully
logically solve this difference between subsistit and is.
In the paradox of the difference between the singularity and realisation
of the Church on the one hand and on the other the existence of an ecclesial
reality outside the unique subject, is reflected the contradictory character
of human sin, the contradiction of division."
It is not therefore
difficult to conclude that ecumenism, founded on a contradiction with
the traditional doctrine by the avowal of its promoters, will itself be
in the same way contrary to traditional doctrine.
With Dominus Jesus
we find ourselves confronted with the tragic confirmation that an inexpressible
cloud darkens the Vatican, since never in the past has contradiction been
taught, much less one which is recognised as such.
The document despite
of the praiseworthy aim of condemning abuses, will be useless to solve
the doctrinal crisis which it wants to fight, since the true doctrine
is only half stated which is a distortion.
Menzingen, October
29, 2000, Feast of Christ the King.
1 P. Olivier, Les deux visages du prętre, Fayard, Paris,
1971, p. 106
2 The Ecclesiology of the conciliar constitution
Lumen Gentium published in Osservatore Romano March 4 2000. (Documentation
Catholique n. 2223, 2 avril 2000, p. 303-312)
3 "In the difference between subsistit
and is is hidden the whole problem of ecumenism". op. Cit.,
p. 310
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