World Methodist Council leaders respond to Vatican document
9/8/2000 NOTE: The Dominus Iesus reference is spelled correctly. By United Methodist News Service World Methodist Council leaders have responded favorably to a recent Vatican statement that reaffirms Jesus Christ as the one savior of the world.
At the same time, they say there is need for continued dialogue so each of the two bodies will "come to a fuller recognition of the churchly character of the other."
The WMC response was released Sept. 7 by the Rev. Geoffrey Wainwright, chairman of the council's Committee on Ecumenism and Dialogues, and the Rev. Joe Hale, the council's chief executive in Lake Junaluska, N.C.
WMC representatives have been involved in a formal dialogue with Roman Catholic leaders since 1967. Wainwright is co-chairman of the 16-member joint commission along with Bishop Michael Putney, a Roman Catholic from Australia. Hale and the Rev. Timothy Galligan of Vatican City are co-secretaries.
"The World Methodist Council welcomes the reaffirmation of Jesus Christ as the one savior of the world made by the Vatican in the recent declaration Dominus Iesus," said the WMC statement. "In its continuing dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, the World Methodist Council looks forward to further exploration on the question of how each partner can come to a fuller recognition of the churchly character of the other."
To understand the 36-page document, Hale said it is helpful to separate the issues of interfaith perceptions and the relationships of other Christian groups with the Roman Catholic Church
While Methodists have respect for other faith groups, they share the Vatican concern that people are interpreting religious pluralism to mean that every religion is of equal significance. "As in all other areas of our life, we make value judgments," Hale said. "That is true of our faith commitments."
In the sticky theological area of Roman Catholic-Methodist relations, the Vatican document repeats the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, declaring that "there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."
Hale says it is easy to read that statement and overlook others, which say that other churches and church communities, "while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church ... have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation ... "
While the document does not consider Methodist churches and others outside the Roman Catholic Church as churches "in the proper sense," it says, "those who are baptized in these communities are, by baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church." He noted that the theme of the next meetings of the World Methodist Council and Conference in Brighton, England, next July will be "Jesus: God's Way of Salvation."
Wainwright, a British Methodist on the faculty at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, N.C., voiced his enthusiasm for the Vatican's statement that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. "It needed to be said. The World Methodist Council in its evangelization efforts insists very strongly on this."
Regarding religious pluralism, Wainwright said, "With the Vatican, we affirm there are good things in other religions, but we nevertheless hold that Jesus Christ is the one savior of the world. We affirm that."
Regarding relations among Christians, Wainwright said the Methodist-Roman Catholic dialogues have improved the way one group views the other. "We are starting to give more recognition to the Roman Catholic Church as being a church," he said. "That wasn't true for many Methodists until recent times. On the other side, it is clear that the Roman Catholic Church is taking much more seriously the contribution of Methodism to the spread of the Gospel and God's plan of salvation for the world."
Wainwright said Roman Catholic theology has been busily rethinking how it can both acknowledge that contribution and still maintain its belief that the Roman Catholic Church is the church in all its fullness. "What we are doing in the dialogues is trying to work out ways that will be mutually understandable, whereby each side can understand its own place in God's plan and the place of the partner."
The Joint Commission for Dialogue is scheduled to meet next in late October at St. Simons Island, Ga. A report of the dialogues from 1997 to 2001 will be given to both the council, meeting in July in conjunction with the World Methodist Conference in Brighton, and the Vatican.
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