Vaticanul a revendicat titlul de "unica si adevarata Biserica a lui Cristos" pentru Biserica Catolica intr-un document publicat ieri, care risca sa relanseze vii controverse cu alte confesiuni crestine, scrie AFP. Documentul Congregatiei pentru doctrina credintei reafirma tezele deja dezvoltate intr-un text publicat pe 5 septembrie 2000, „Dominus Iesus", ce a starnit polemici mai ales in randul protestantilor, care nu sunt considerati membri ai unor adevarate „Biserici".
                Cu siguranta, se adauga in text, se gasesc in afara Bisericii Catolice „numeroase elemente de sanctificare si de adevar". Dar Bisericile orientale (ortodoxe) care nu il recunosc pe Papa drept urmas al lui Petru sufera de „o lipsa" si nu sunt decat „biserici particulare", in timp ce „comunitatile protestante", care dezvolta o alta conceptie a euharistiei si a sacerdotiului, „nu pot fi numite Biserici", se mai spune in acelasi text.
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                By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 10, 3:59 PM ET LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.
                The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. "It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries. "It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the reformed family and other families of the church," the group said in a letter charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the era before the Second Vatican Council. It was the second time in a week that Benedict has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-1965 meetings that modernized the church. On Saturday, Benedict revived the old Latin Mass — a move cheered by Catholic traditionalists but criticized by more liberal ones as a step backward from Vatican II. Among the council's key developments were its ecumenical outreach and the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass. Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers its erroneous interpretation by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Benedict headed before becoming pope, said it was issuing the new document Tuesday because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.
                The new document — formulated as five questions and answers — restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation." The commentary repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church "has the fullness of the means of salvation." "Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," said the document released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy's Dolomite mountains. The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession — the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles — and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it said. The Rev. Sara MacVane, of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said that although the document contains nothing new, "I don't know what motivated it at this time."

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