Pope John Paul has said there have been "many wrong interpretations" of the Dominus Iesus document published by the Vatican last month.
Speaking in Rome yesterday, he expressed the hope that any problems it may have caused could be overcome.
He described the document, which was published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on September 5th, as an attempt to "clarify essential Christian elements" which "do not block dialogue but lay out its foundations, because a dialogue without foundations would be destined to degenerate into empty verbosity."
He said the Christian belief that Christ was the Son of God through which they reached the Father "is not arrogance which shows contempt for other religions". Dominus Iesus repeated Catholic Church teachings that non-Christians were in a "gravely deficient situation" regarding salvation and that other Christian communities had "defects".
Pope John Paul emphasised that interpretations suggesting the document said non-Christians were denied salvation were wrong. It was a clarification and restatement of the official Catholic position and intended to contest "relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism" as a principle rather than as a de facto practice.
The document said only the revelation of Jesus Christ was "definitive and complete" and that Christian revelation could not be seen as complementary to that found in other religions.
Following its publication, Rome's Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff and his deputy, Abramo Piatelli, said they would not attend a planned commemoration of Jewish-Catholic dialogue at the Vatican tomorrow. Curia officials have since said the ceremony was "postponed indefinitely".
It was not clear if Pope John Paul's timing yesterday was an attempt to salvage tomorrow's talks with the Jewish leaders
Protestant and Anglican leaders, as well as Jews, reacted with dismay and disappointment to Dominus Iesus. The Church of Ireland bishops called on the Irish (Catholic) Bishops' Conference for clarification of the implications of the document for ecumenism. Pope John Paul dedicated nearly all his addresses to the issue yesterday.
There has been angry reaction in China following the canonisation by Pope John Paul in Rome yesterday of 120 Catholics martyred in that country.
The canonisations, on China's National Day, will severely hamper normalisation of relations between Beijing and the Holy See, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said. It continued that most of the martyrs were executed for breaking laws when colonial forces invaded China or for "bullying the Chinese people" during the 183942 Opium War and the 18981900 Boxer uprising.
"As is known to all, some foreign Catholic missionaries were the very perpetrators and accomplices in colonialist and imperialist invasion of China," the Foreign Ministry statement said.
"Some of those canonised by the Vatican perpetrated outrages such as raping and looting in China and committed unforgivable crimes against the Chinese people," it continued.
Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan, chairman of the China Catholic Patriotic Association, China's official Catholic church, said "choosing this date to canonise the so-called saints is an open insult and humiliation against the Chinese Catholic adherents." Bishop Fu was among 120 Catholic bishops, priests, monks, and nuns who attended National Day ceremonies in Beijing's Tiananmen Square yesterday.
