Dominus Jesus
by Douglas Theuner

A number of people have asked about the meaning of the document Dominus Jesus recently issued by Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its significance for non-Roman Catholics. Let me say at the outset that it has no significance for non-Roman Catholics, either from our point of view or theirs. It is addressed to "all the Catholic faithful" among whom the document itself makes clear we are not to be counted. Dominus Jesus is not about us; it is about them. How sad that we are still us and them.

Some see this apparent turn-about as a new direction for the Roman Catholic Church but there is in fact nothing new in it. There is no surprise in this restatement of what has been the Vatican's position all along despite the attempt to soft-pedal it in recent years to accommodate the waning winds of reform that blew temporarily through the open windows of John XXIII's Second Vatican Council. And, it amply manifests that Vatican II was indeed John XXIII's council, rather than the "universal" council which it had hitherto been heralded to be. The "new" document has made it clear that it will take more than fifty years of cosmetic adjustments to change the papal position articulated by generations of John XXIII's predecessors and his current successor. The "new" document simply acknowledges what has been taking place at communion rails in New Hampshire and around the world where those of us deemed to be "imperfect" are excluded from Christ's Table by one who looks in the mirror and quite plainly sees Christ's "Vicar". At the altar we have long been treated as non-persons or, at the very least, as non-Christians.

While the naive outside of Rome may have seen an inexplicable irony in the recent simultaneous beatifications of Pius IX and John XXIII, Roman insiders may have understood the twinning as an opportunity for the reactionary Pius IX to slip past the faithful on the coattails of the popular John XXIII. But, fear not, for even traditionally Roman Catholic countries no longer allow the Vatican to dictate social policy on such matters as divorce, birth control or abortion, much less are they likely to allow a return to subjecting heretics to the rack or burning at the stake. Neither secular authority nor informed public opinion will tolerate the reinstitution of such excesses in pursuit of "religious" goals. The "circling the wagons" mentality reflected in Dominus Jesus is hardly the mark of an institution leading from strength.

Before we become overly disappointed in Cardinal Ratzinger's new articulation of the long held position of the Roman Catholic Church we need to ask ourselves: "What -- or rather, who -- is the Roman Catholic Church?" Is it 5,000 hierarchies or 500,000 clergy and religious, or 500 million faithful? According to our way of theological reckoning, it is the latter. It is our friends and neighbors in New Hampshire and their co-religionists around the world for whom the dictates of a self-proclaimed "Vicar of Christ" and his district managers are little more than inter-departmental management policies about internal operating procedures.

By definition self-proclamation is all that is required to assert infallibility. Among the classic fundamentals of Protestantism, enshrined in the Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican and Baptist traditions, is the right, indeed the obligation, to dissent, to "protest" the arrogation of the prerogatives of the Body of Christ unto the machinations of a few of its members, no matter how committed and respected they may be. Remember that, no matter how "Catholic" we may be in faith and practice, according to the Preamble to the Constitution of our church our premier name is still "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America". I personally think that we lost something precious of our identity when we dropped "Protestant" from common usage in the last century.

When Cardinal Cassidy of the Vatican's Ecumenical Office fulminated at the Anglican bishops gathered at the Lambeth Conference of 1998 about their lack of cohesiveness, he forgot that we are by nature "Protestant Catholics"; preferring what has been called the "messiness" of Anglicanism to the absolutist conformity required in Roman Catholicism. In the halcyon post-Vatican II years Anglicans relished the role of being "the bridge church" between Protestantism and Catholicism but history has proven time and again that the bridge that leads to Rome bears only one-way traffic. Anglicans have never accepted as a given that "all roads lead to Rome". The cardinals have every right to define who they are but none to define who anyone else is. One man, however pious and devout, delivering a monologue from a throne to the acquiescent admiration of devoted minions is not everyone's idea of dialogue. It puts one in mind of the late Czar Nicholas II, Autocrat and Father of All the Russias, who was eventually rewarded with canonization by those whose latter day purposes were served by the memory of his regime.

I understand that Cardinal Ratzinger has warned his fellow bishops against referring to other denominations as "sister" churches because the Roman Church is nobody's sister but is, rather, the "mother" Church. Amazing as is the tribute that pays to the feminine in God's scheme, it speaks strongly not of catholicity but of exclusivity. If the Vatican really wants to tread down the path of sectarianism to which such exclusivity inevitably leads we would perhaps best honor their wishes by referring to them as "Roman Catholics" and to all the rest of us simply as "Christians". It would more accurately reflect the priorities spelled out in Dominus Jesus. I am reminded of a prayer which recently came to me attributed to Archbishop Donald Cairn, retired Primate of the Church of Ireland, but which may well have an earlier origin: "Lord, keep me in the company of those who seek the truth and guard me from those who believe they have found it." It is perversely comforting to be reminded that the latter also exist in denominations other than our own.

Let us pray for Christ's Church, remembering that since Roman Catholics represent by far the largest group that traces its origin to Jesus Christ, and it may be assumed that the preaching of the Gospel and the celebration of the Sacraments occur daily around the world more extensively in the Roman Catholic Church than in any other, let us give thanks for that witness and pray for it, that it may go forward in "the company of those who seek the truth," even those who have yet to achieve perfection.

Douglas Theuner is the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire and a former president of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company Board (which owns The Witness).