Dominus Jesus
Pá 01 prosince 2006
When we were on the vacations of our church in Prague in the hotel owned by our denomination, one sister, who is a professor of medieval literature (and thus interested in M. John Hus & co.) mentioned in passing “that horrible letter Dominus Jesus”. I have heard about that letter before, but now my curiosity was ignited, so when we returned to Prague, I have found this declaration on the Vatican website and read it (or at least part IV., paragraphs 16 and 17, which I think constitute the most important part of the letter for me).
I have to admit that some parts of this reading caused the strongest attack on my hope of the Unity of the Church at all. All the time before, whenever I met a Roman-Catholic who undestood ecumenism solely as return of “separated brethern” to the arms of the Mother Roman-Catholic church, sole source of salvation (and it happened couple of times), I believed that at least since the II. Vatican Council such belief is just a local closemindness and the official line of the Catholic church is much more open. I expected more of the ecumenism and longing for the unity of the Church, and I met many Catholics including some priests who supported such belief. First time in my life it occurred to me, that there is always the second possibility—that we were mistaken by our wishful thinking and that actually the Roman-Catholic church is still so stupidly closeminded as it was since at least XVI. century, that all the talks of the Council were just cosmetic changes of the finishing on the whole structure of the church, but that particularly in the area of relations with other Christian denominations not much has changed if anything at all.