That is the Real Thing. I am curious to see if will shall have a ton of misleading secular news Reports on this. John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter says yesterday in his column Pope confirms Catholicism as 'one true church'; bioethics document underway:
In an address to members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith currently meeting in Rome for their plenary assembly, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed recent Vatican declarations on Catholicism as the “one true church” and the necessity of seeking converts to the faith, and also offered a preview of a coming document on bioethics.
Pope Benedict made the comments this morning in an audience for members of the doctrinal congregation in the Sala Clementina, inside the Apostolic Palace.
In late June, the congregation issued a document on the famous phrase from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) that the one church of Christ “subsists in” the Catholic church. In essence, the congregation asserted that the phrase means the Catholic church alone possesses the fullness of what it means to be a church.
During the council, some analysts interpreted the phrase “subsists in” as a departure from the traditional claim that the Catholic church is the lone “true” church. When the doctrinal congregation issued its clarification, some leaders of other Christian denominations warned of negative ecumenical fallout.
It’s a critique which Benedict obviously does not accept, insisting that the clarification is actually “necessary for the correct development of ecumenical dialogue.”
“Far from impeding authentic ecumenical dialogue,” Benedict said, “it will be a stimulus, so that the debate on doctrinal questions is always marked by realism and full awareness of the aspects that still separate the Christian confessions.”
“To cultivate a theological vision that regards the unity and identity of the church as attributes ‘hidden in Christ', so that historically the church would exist only in multiple ecclesial confessions, reconcilable only in an eschatological perspective, would generate a slowdown and ultimately paralysis in ecumenism itself,” the pope said.
Benedict also defended a recent doctrinal note on evangelization, asserting that the quest for explicit conversion to Christ remains an essential duty of the faith.
“The recognition of elements of truth and goodness in the religions of the world,” he said, “and of the seriousness of their religious efforts, dialogue with them and a spirit of collaboration for the defense and promotion of the dignity of the person and universal moral values, cannot be understood as a limitation on the missionary duty of the church, which compels it to incessantly announce Christ as the way, the truth and the life,” he said.
This is a welcome development, and a retreat from earlier words of Benedict XVI, as pope and as Ratzinger, John Paul II, and others. To see the difference between traditional Catholicism on the question of ecumenism, and the "modern interpretation," take a look at No Crisis in the Church? from Angelus Press. 'Even the elect will be deceived,' said St. Matthew. The modern interpretation has kicked the heart out of morals and is singularly responsible for the failure of leadership at all levels, even secular, and we have to be well on guard against it. The very people who 'hate' the Church for saying it is the True Church also hate the results, a world without any standards.
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