wfn.org | World Methodist Council leaders respond to Vatican document

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Sept. 8, 2000  News media contact: Thomas S. McAnally ·(615)
742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.  10-21-71B{398}

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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United Methodist News Service
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