The biggest obstacle is the misleading reporting done by the main stream media who totally botched the report on this document. I cannot help believing it was done on purpose to cause division among Christians and rancor against the Catholic Church and against Pope Benedict XVI.
Many Catholics are angry with the Pope and for no reason at all except that they believe the stupid media.
My pastor wrote a short article on the subject which was printed in our local Catholic newpaper last week. It reads as follows:
Is There Grace Outside the Catholic Church?
So did the pope really say, as stated in the St. Cloud Times article (July 11, 2007) that “Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation?” Did he further insist as an article in the Star Tribune said (July 11, 2007), “that other denominations do not hold ‘the means to salvation’”?
Well, the very short answer is, No, the pope did not in any way say these things!
What these articles are referring to is a recently released document from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, with the approval of the Holy Father, entitled “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church.” This very brief document simply attempts to answer five questions that the congregation says have arisen from the theological discussion on the nature of the Church following the decisive ... renewal of Catholic ecclesiology in the years since the Second Vatican Council.
In regards to the above quoted statements, what does this document actually say? To begin, it states very decisively that as Catholics we affirm “that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.” The document does not claim that there are no means of salvation in other Christian denominations, quoting the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium (8.2). Not only that, it makes clear that “there are ‘numerous elements of sanctification and of truth’” found in them.
Finally, regarding other Christian churches, this new document restates Catholic teaching, again quoting the Second Vatican Council (Unitatis redintegratio 3.4) saying that they “are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. 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.”
Though as Catholics we do indeed believe that in the Catholic Church is found all the means of grace Christ intended for his people, these means of grace are not entirely lacking in other Christian denominations and, in fact, these communities are used in many powerful ways by the Holy Spirit to bring people to salvation.
One has to wonder how those responsible for the articles quoted above could distort so badly the message of this short and rather clearly stated document. It can only be hoped that our brothers and sisters who share our faith in Christ, yet not fully within the Catholic Church, will take the word of the Church on what it believes and not the distortion offered in the secular media. [end of article]
So, I hope you readers will understand how badly the news media distorted the message. As a lifelong Catholic I have never been taught that persons outside the Catholic Church could not be saved. Likewise, my parents allowed my siblings and I to associate freely with persons of all faiths without discrimination. I will also say that throughout my life I have been edified by persons of other faiths who personify goodness and holiness in their daily lives. I think that everyone ought to respect persons for who and what they are and how they behave and not by labels.
I'm actually glad it got the reaction it did from non Catholics. A lot of people here showed their true colors.
Reading between the Vatican's lines
...look at what did change in the Latin last week. Many phrases are highly similar, but now the term defectus occurs exactly where vulnus had been used before! In other words, the real story here is that the Vatican plagiarized itself in order to clarify what the term “wound” – an old news story from 1992 – really means.That clarification, in my opinion, gently and deftly steers the discussion away from the topic of vulnus (“who wounded whom”) to the topic of defectus (“self-wounding”). Because lack of unity is consequent upon all Christians “failing” and “doing less than they might.”