The Church of Ireland Primate, Dr Robin Eames, has said the Dominus Iesus declaration published by the Catholic Church last week "could be interpreted, and it certainly has been suggested to me by some clergy in the Church of Ireland, that this is a throwback to pre-Vatican II".
He said if that was the case he would be "bitterly disappointed."
It had been "a considerable time since we read or heard language like this," he said, and he would like to know whether it represented "any change in the official attitude to us as the Church of Ireland in ecumenical dialogue". Speaking to the Sun- day Tribune, he said he felt "the whole ecumenical movement is being tested by this [document]".
Dominus Iesus, published last Tuesday by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said "there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops".
It continued, "On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery are not churches in the proper sense." This has been interpreted as a reference to all churches in the reformed tradition.
Dr Eames said, "It says something to the effect that really the Reformation churches are no longer really churches. That to me could be insulting.
"It could also be questioning what I believe in, which is that by baptism a member of the Church of Ireland, as a member of the Roman Catholic faith, enters the Christian church. Does it mean that members of the Church of Ireland are somehow members of something that is less than a church?"
He believed that the vast majority of his Catholic colleagues would not want him to think that. "But I have to say that the wording is open to a great deal of misunderstanding", he said.
Calling on the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference to clarify the document's implications for Ireland, Dr Eames said that his church was going to have to say to them: "Look, is this back to square one or are we simply seeing a blip in the progress?"
His hope and prayer was that "it is reinforcing what we have known to be the traditional approach and doctrinal position of our Roman Catholic friends, that it is simply a reiteration and that it does not represent a change of policy".
The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Dr Trevor Morrow, has welcomed the document, which he said in many ways was a mirror-image of the Presbyterian Church's view of the Catholic Church, which it sees as "defective" and "in error".
The document was also "a positive reiteration" of what the Catholic Church believed to be true "in a post-modern world where truth is perceived as unimportant".
He could sympathise with Cardinal Ratzinger's anxiety over the use of the phrase "sister churches" to describe other Christian denominations. It was a concern shared within Presbyterianism.
It was asking too much of the Catholic Church at this time to say that all churches were equal. It had been struggling since Vatican II with according the honour, status and regard due to other Christian communities while not affecting its own self-understanding.
Ecumenism was "very hard work", he said. It was not just a case of "hold hands, hum, and expect warm fuzzy feelings". He was "quite happy" with the document and was indeed "extremely supportive of much of it".
