During the summer of 2000, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a declaration entitled “Dominus Iesus: On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church”. In an interview published on 22 September 2000, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung invited Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to respond to the principal objections raised against the Declaration Dominus Iesus. The daily edition of L’Osservatore Romano subsequently published an Italian translation of the interview, omitting the parts that only concern the German situation. Here is a translation from the Italian version of the interview.
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The declaration entitled Dominus Iesus released on Sept. 5 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has given rise to a firestorm of mixed reaction. Its context is the relatively new situation of religious pluralism that now marks the western world.

A lively debate has been under way among Christian theologians; it was inevitable that Christians in general, and not just theologians, stop and reflect on what this new awareness of religious diversity means for their own religion.

The Vatican declaration has provided that occasion. At issue in this debate is nothing less than what we as Christian believers should think about other world religions and their adherents, our new neighbours. The question at the bottom of it is an old one: “Who do you say that I am?”
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A week after publishing a document which casts doubt on the validity of Protestant Christianity and asserts Roman Catholic superiority over all other churches, the Vatican continues to draw criticism both from other churches and from within its own ranks.

The general secretaries of two organizations representing major wings of Protestantism have publicly lamented the harm done to ecumenism by Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published on Sept. 5 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document declares that churches that do not have a “valid Episcopate [bishops] and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery are not churches in the proper sense.”

Another document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in an Italian magazine this month orders Catholic bishops not to use the term “sister church” in reference to Protestant churches. This too has also caused dismay in ecumenical circles.
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Rev. Dr Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, has written to Cardinal Edward Cassidy, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, to express “disappointment and dismay” following the publication this week of Dominus Iesus, a declaration by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
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CHICAGO (ELCA) — The general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) said Sept. 8 that he is “disappointed” that 35 years of ecumenical dialogue between Lutherans and Roman Catholics apparently were not considered when the Vatican issued a document earlier this week and sent a letter in June to presidents of Roman Catholic Bishops’
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Statement by Dr Ishmael Noko, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, on the Vatican document “Dominus Iesus” The Lutheran World Federation has received news of the document, “Dominus Iesus” – On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the
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Statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the Roman Catholic document ‘Dominus Iesus’ [ACNS 2219 – Lambeth Palace, 5 September 2000] By restating the long-held view of the Roman Catholic Church on the position of other Christian churches, this document breaks no new ground. But neither does it fully reflect the deeper understanding that has
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