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A Dilemma for the Catholic ChurchAwake!—1991 | February 22
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Obstacles to Unity
The fact is, the Roman Catholic Church did not abandon its position that it is the one true church. The Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism states: “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. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant.”
The recent French work Théo—Nouvelle Encyclopédie Catholique (1989) states: “For Catholics, the pope, as Peter’s successor, is theologically the permanent element of the unity of the Church and the bishops. The plain fact, however, is that the pope is the major cause of division between Christians.”
This divisive doctrine of the primacy of the pope is closely related to the dogmas of papal infallibility and the apostolic succession of Catholic bishops, both of which are unacceptable to most non-Catholic churches of Christendom. Did Vatican II do anything to modify the Catholic position on these doctrines?
The Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on the Church answers, in paragraph 18: “This sacred synod, following in the steps of the First Vatican Council [which decreed the dogma of papal infallibility], teaches and declares with it that Jesus Christ, the eternal pastor, set up the holy Church by entrusting the apostles with their mission as he himself had been sent by the Father (cf. Jn. Joh 20:21). He willed that their successors, the bishops namely, should be the shepherds in his Church until the end of the world. In order that the episcopate itself, however, might be one and undivided he put Peter at the head of the other apostles, and in him he set up a lasting and visible source and foundation of the unity both of faith and of communion. This teaching concerning the institution, the permanence, the nature and import of the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and his infallible teaching office, the sacred synod proposes anew to be firmly believed by all the faithful, and, proceeding undeviatingly with this same undertaking, it proposes to proclaim publicly and enunciate clearly the doctrine concerning bishops, successors of the apostles, who together with Peter’s successor, the Vicar of Christ and the visible head of the whole Church, direct the house of the living God.”
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Is Christian Unity Possible?Awake!—1991 | February 22
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Pope John’s successor, Paul VI, promulgated the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which says: “This is the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him.”
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