Source: The New York Times
On October 7, 2000, The New York
Times reported that "On Sept. 5, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who heads
the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a
document titled 'Dominus Iesus' ('The Lord Jesus') that condemned certain
'relativistic Theories' of religious pluralism. A month later, the dust
has still not settled. In some eyes, Cardinal Ratzinger was only saying
the obvious and doing his job. Haven't Christians always believed that it
is through Jesus Christ and the church of the Gospel that salvation has
been mediated to all humankind? If grace and holiness seemed manifest
within other religions or among those who had never heard the Gospel,
this, too, was attributable, in ways not always to be understood, to
Jesus' redemptive acts. Some Christian theologians have found this
traditional approach insufficiently respectful of other faiths...Cardinal
Ratzinger's reply, beneath the highly technical theological language of
'Dominus Iesus,' was to display a formidable array of Christian
affirmations of the central redemptive role of Jesus. Those affirmations
begin with the fourth-century Nicene Creed, Christianity's most uniting
statement of faith...The affirmations continue right through the documents
of the Second Vatican Council, considered the seedbed of modern Roman
Catholic ecumenism and interfaith dialogue.
"So why...was the
Vatican declaration something like a theological equivalent of Ariel
Sharon's striding into the area of Al Aksa Mosque? Many Christian leaders,
including the archbishop of Canterbury, expressed their distress at what
seemed a sharp change of climate in the Vatican. Italian Jewish leaders
withdrew their participation from a Vatican-sponsored Day of
Jewish-Christian Dialogue, and the event had to be canceled. The World
Alliance of Reformed Churches, similarly scheduled to participate in an
official dialogue with Catholics in Rome, considered calling off that
session as well. The alliance, based in Geneva, went ahead with the
meeting, but only after expressing its dismay at the Vatican declaration
'in the strongest terms possible.' The pope himself felt compelled to
address the group with the message that "the commitment of the Catholic
Church to ecumenical dialogue is irrevocable."
"...These
high-level disruptions of ecumenical and interreligious relations scarcely
compared to the unsettling of Catholics in the pews. Was the church
teaching that their non-Christian spouses, parents or grandchildren could
not be saved? Wasn't this document a gratuitous insult to their partners
in interfaith efforts? Reactions ranged from puzzlement to bitterness, and
pastors have been fielding questions and calming the waters in
sermons.
Some church leaders were quick to hold the news media responsible
for this confusion. They could point to misleading headlines or articles
suggesting that only Catholics could go to heaven. They could equally have
blamed lazy thinking that takes the maxim 'All religions are pretty much
the same, and one's as good as another' as the gold standard in tolerance,
when in fact it trivializes the serious claims most faiths make. But media
shortcomings and lazy thinking are more or less permanent facts of life
that the Vatican might have considered in wording and presenting its
declaration. And they don't explain the reservations voiced by a number of
Catholic bishops and scholars, who otherwise sympathized with the
declaration's intent."