Bad timing in Rome's 'one, true church' line

Could there have been a more unnecessary or inappropriately timed document from the Vatican as that published yesterday? asks…

Could there have been a more unnecessary or inappropriately timed document from the Vatican as that published yesterday? asks Religious Affairs Correspondent Patsy McGarry.

And now, from the people who brought us Limbo, then took it away. Who gave us Hell, took it away too, and have since tried to give it back to us. Who gave us the Latin Mass, took it from us, and gave it back last Saturday.

Yes, from those same people we now have a repeat, summer-time restatement of why being Roman Catholic is "simply the best". Furthermore, they explain again why being Protestant is to be a yellow-pack Christian.

Yes, from the very people who under Pope Paul VI told us that Christians who were Protestant belonged to "sister churches" of the Roman Catholic Church, we are being told again that Protestant (Reformed) churches are not really sister churches at all.

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Now, they are not even churches "in the proper sense". A bit like St Christopher, they have been demoted. They are now mere "ecclesial communities". You could say they remain in something of an ecclesiological Limbo. If Limbo still existed.

Pity our Anglicans, our Presbyterians, our Methodists, etc. They do not know it really, despite being told before, but their priests/ministers are not really priests or ministers at all. And as for their Holy Communion - it's a sham! All a sham.

Even if, when in 1997 Cardinal Desmond Connell used that word after President McAleese received communion at a Church of Ireland Eucharist service in Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral, he meant it was "a sham" for a Roman Catholic like her to do such a thing. But, let's be frank, it is the Holy Orders and the Holy Communion of the Reformed Churches that Rome really sees as "a sham".

To be fair and as you would expect, Cardinal William Levada, current prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, put in somewhat differently in yesterday's document (which was approved by Pope Benedict).

He said: "According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called 'Churches' in the proper sense."

All of which can be summarised in one pithy word - sham!

As for the timing of yesterday's document? Well, if we needed any reminding of just how insignificant Ireland is where the Vatican is concerned we need look no further than its decision to publish a document which so gratuitously insults Protestants in the week of the Twelfth marches in Northern Ireland.

In all of the 52 weeks of all of the year it chose to do so on a day which is bookended by Drumcree Sunday at one end and the Twelfth of July at the other. Could there be a more delicate week where Protestant/Roman Catholic relations are concerned anywhere in the world?

And could there have been a more sensitive time in a more sensitive week of a more sensitive year of the past 40 on this island where Protestant/Roman Catholic relations are concerned, as we emerge, together just two months and for the first time, from bitterest conflict?

Then should we be surprised? Did not the Roman Catholic bishops of these islands bring out their One Bread, One Body document at the end of August 1998 "clarifying" why a Protestant must never be allowed receive Holy Communion in a Roman Catholic Church except in extremis but, above all, why a Roman Catholic must never receive Holy Communion in a Protestant/Reformed church.

All that just four months after the Belfast Agreement was signed. In fact they had originally planned to bring out the document in May 1998, a month after the agreement was signed, but it was deferred a further three months, "for technical reasons". Three months being an eternity in theology, obviously.

Timing, clearly, is not a concern when you are dealing with absolute truth. Neither, it seems, is peace on this island. Or good relations between Protestants and Roman Catholics, here or elsewhere. No, what is important is to repeat the assertion that you are "simply the best". That the rest are inferior Christians, "in the proper sense", and that to be Roman Catholic is "very heaven".