Author:
Publication: Vatican
Update From Catholic World News
Date: September 5, 2000
VATICAN, Sept.
5 (CWNews.com) -- The worldwide head of the Church of England sharply criticized
the Roman Catholic Church for suggesting that the Anglican communion is
not the one true Church.
Dr. George Carey,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, was reacting to the publication of Dominus
Jesus, a new document which reaffirms that role of the Catholic Church
in the economy of salvation. Archbishop Carey was particularly offending
by the statement, found in the new Vatican document, that: "Ecclesial communities
that have not preserved the valid episcopate and the genuine and integral
substance of the Eucharistic mystery are not churches in the proper sense."
This statement, the Anglican
archbishop said, fails to represent "the deeper understanding that has
been achieved through ecumenical dialogue and cooperation during the past
30 years." He added that the Anglican Church "believes itself to be part
of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ."
The Vatican document
Dominus Jesus was issued precisely in order to counteract the increasingly
popular argument that ecumenical dialogue can change essential doctrinal
truths.