Pope says Protestants not churches ‘in proper sense’

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on July 10 reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, calling other Christian churches defective and saying Protestant denominations are not even churches “in the proper sense.” The statement, which was “ratified and confirmed” by Pope Benedict XVI and published with his approval, reiterates some of the most controversial ideas in a 2000 Vatican declaration published under Benedict’s authority when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The four-page document purports to correct “erroneous interpretation” and “misunderstanding” of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, which paved the way for ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and other Christian churches.

The new document says Vatican II “neither changed nor intended to change” the teaching that the “one Church of Christ … subsists in the Catholic Church” alone. Other Christian denominations, it argues, can also be “instruments of salvation” but “suffer from defects” insofar as they depart from Catholicism.
Protestant denominations, however, “because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery” and are therefore to be termed mere “Christian Communities.”

The document breaks little new ground but is likely to open old wounds from Dominus Iesus, the 2000 document produced by Ratzinger, which says non-Christians are in a “gravely deficient situation” on the question of salvation and that Catholics alone have “the fullness of the means of salvation.” It, too, says Protestant churches suffer “defects.”