News Alert

MSNBC News Services, 7/10/07 [Excerpts]: Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches are defective and that other Christian denominations are not true churches.

Benedict approved a document from his old offices at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [formerly the Holy office of the Inquisition]....It was the second time in a week the pope has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council....

Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers the erroneous interpretation of the council by liberals....

[This latest document] restates key sections of a 2000 document the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, “Dominus Iesus,” which set off a firestorm of criticism among ...other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the “means of salvation.”

Despite the harsh tone of the document, it stresses that Benedict remains committed to ecumenical dialogue.

[TBC: Astonishingly, Rome’s historically consistent bottom line (“She alone has the means of salvation”) is completely ignored by leading evangelicals thrilled to dialogue and work with this apostate church. For all Rome’s ecumenical talk, in the end all must submit to this “only true church, outside of which there is no
salvation.”]