I am writing this diary essentially to get Devilstower's attention, because his diary of yesterday has probably died. This is why it has not been crossposted elsewhere.
DT wrote in his post that the Catholic Church having the "means of salvation" and the other churches being merely "ecclesial communities" means that non-Catholic Christians are going to hell. I wrote that this didn't make sense to me, because in my limited understanding faith in JC is the source of salvation, and the means of salvation above all others. (As anyone who knows me, or looks at my blogroll, knows, I don't really have a dog in this...) The NYT today wrote about this document today. I will discuss the two significant paragraphs on the flip.
Paragraph One
The document released Tuesday focused largely on the Vatican definition of what constitutes a church, which it defined as being traceable through its bishops to Christ's original apostles. Thus, it said, the world's Orthodox Christians make up a church because of shared history, if "separated" from the "proper" Catholic tradition, while Protestants split from Catholicism during the Reformation are considered only "Christian communities"
So the Orthodox Church is a church. The Protestants are ecclesial communities. As a gnostic wrote, the Catholic Church is concerned here with the continuity of its hierarchy. DT is correct that the Church is not doing the religious right any favors by insisting on its prerogatives when many of the churches which make up the religious right are suspicious of central authority in their own denominations, much less the Catholic Church. As a broader point, Pope Benedict is not interested IMHO in reaching out to and finding common ground with other religions in the same way as his predecessor. Although DovBear does not believe that Pope John Paul II did enough to apologize for the Holocaust, he made the attempt, and he was the first to visit synagogues. These acts created a large amount of good will in the Jewish community because no one had previously done them. It is now part of Pope Benedict's job to visit synagogues, mosques, and so on. But he seems to believe that the more key mission is to preserve the Catholic Church as an institution and its uniqueness in modern life. Actual Catholics are welcome to correct me. The religious right may still believe that all of Christianity is in danger and work with individual Catholics. But the institution of the Church won't be behind them, because Catholics and Protestants are in competition in much of the world. [UPDATE: the catechism does encourage interchurch dialogue and human service activities, and so on. These are meant to bolster the unity of the church]
Paragraph Two
"These separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance to the mystery of salvation," the document [released yesterday] read. "In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church."
This does not mean that people who adhere to these churches and communities are going to hell. I believe that this means that they can provide salvation as a sort of reflection of the full spiritual gift given to the Catholic Church. And if salvation means having faith, they would have to bring salvation if they brought people to have faith.
I actually have the new catechism in the house, because in the course of reading various Italian texts I had questions about what Catholics believed after Vatican II. In 816 we have a quote from the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism: "it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help towards salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained." So I am not sure that Benedict is saying anything new here. The Church provides full means of salvation but does not have a monopoly on salvation. 819 almost repeats the quote above:
"Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth" are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: "the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements." Christ's Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derivcs from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, and are in themselves calls to "Catholic unity"
"The fullness of the means of salvation" is described in 830: "correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession". Apostolic succession is also described in 815 as
a sign of the Church's unity.
So apostolic succession is a sign of the ideal church which the Protestant churches do not have. But this does not mean that the Catholic Church has any right to tell G-d what to do or who to bless.