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ACCENT November 2001

The following article was written by Bishop Robert Carlson and first published in the April 2001 issue of the Bishop's Bulletin for the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls.  It is being copied here with permission.

Ecumenical dialogue called into focus.   Recently Dr. Stephen Hipp, theologian for the Diocese of Sioux Falls, held a "brown bag" discussion over the noon hour on the Declaration issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith entitled Dominus Iesus.  A number of priests attended the workshop and soon discovered that Dominus Iesus, or in English, The Lord Jesus, is an important document for ecumenical dialogue.  The Church?s universal mission is born from the command of Jesus and voiced in the mystery of his incarnation and resurrection.  In other words, authority in the Church comes from Christ, and he has confirmed this in sacred Scripture.  (Mk 16:15-16 and Mt 28:18-20)

Unfortunately, the Declaration has received a fair amount of negative comment in the press as reporters tried to grasp the document and failed to realize that this document is really a restatement of much of what was said at the Second Vatican Council and especially in paragraph 8 from Lumen gentium.  For true ecumenical dialogue to take place, it is necessary to reassert the definitive and complete character of the revelation found in the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

Today there are certain relativistic theories being presented that either deny or view as superseded certain fundamental truths of the Catholic faith.  A challenge presented in the Declaration is to set forth and clarify certain truths of faith after the example of the Apostle Paul:  "I handed on to you as of first importance what I myself received."  (1 Cor 15:3)

One new feature of the Declaration is that it offers an important clarification of the term "subsists in."  This term was chosen by the Second Vatican Council to express two complementary principles of the Catholic Church's self understanding and of its approach to the relationship between the Catholic Church and the other Christian denominations.

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