c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) While some non-Catholics are angry over a Vatican statement asserting that the Catholic Church is the only valid church, a number of other groups mostly shrugged, saying Tuesday’s (July 10) strong words are nothing new.

The statement, “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church,” reasserts the position that only Catholics comprise the true church, while Protestants are merely “Christian communities” and not churches “in the proper sense.”

The statement had softer words for Orthodox churches, saying they were “wounded” but still closer to Rome because they share a common historic line of ordained clergy and bishops.

“To be surprised by that is surprising,” said Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky of the Orthodox Church of America, who is actively involved in ecumenical talks. “It does no more than (restate what) I know to be at the core of the Catholic understanding.”

Indeed, the Catholic Church made an almost identical statement just seven years ago in “Dominus Iesus,” written by then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI).

That statement caused a stir among ecumenists in 2000, and for some, Tuesday’s words were salt in a still-tender wound.

“An exclusive claim that identifies the Roman Catholic Church as the one church of Jesus Christ … goes against the spirit of our Christian calling towards oneness in Christ,” wrote the Rev. Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

Nyomi said the statement “takes us back to the kind of thinking and atmosphere that was prevalent prior to the Second Vatican Council” in the 1960s, when Catholic leaders opened themselves to dialogue with other Christians.

The Rev. Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said the Vatican’s “exclusive claims” are “troubling,” adding that “what may have been meant to clarify has caused pain.”

The statement comes about a week before the National Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission hosts a conference in Oberlin, Ohio, to mark the 50th anniversary of a conference that sparked the modern ecumenical movement.

According to R.M. Keelan Downton, a staff member at the NCC’s Faith and Order Commission, said the Vatican statement lays bare _ in an honest way _ divisions that still exist.

“It can be taken as a reminder that theological disagreements can’t be resolved by tricks of language,” Downton said. “The ecumenical task is not to hide or ignore those differences but to seek the unity for which Christ prayed in the midst of them.”

Episcopalians, meanwhile, say they are willing to agree to disagree.

“We believe that our Orders (of ordination) are valid and that we are a `church’ in every sense of the word,” said Bishop Christopher Epting, deputy for ecumenical and interfaith relations. “None of these disagreements, however, will lessen our commitment to remain in international and national ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.”

Hanson, who also serves as president of the Lutheran World Federation, which signed a landmark agreement with the Vatican in 1999 that bridged age-old divisions over salvation, also appeared undeterred.

“Although our witness is wounded by the division that exists among Christians,” he said, “the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recognizes no deficiency in our self-understanding as `church.”’

KRE/LF END RINDELS