I am Protestant? No, it is the Vatican who is Protestant! You are being led down that slippery slippery Path........
Vatican's New Ecumenical Officer May Smooth Relations with Protestants
Walter Kasper has criticized Dominus Iesus for treating Protestant denominations as "not churches in the proper sense."
By Luigi Sandri in Rome
On January 22, the day after the Pope announced the names of the new cardinals, including Kasper, a Catholic magazine in Austria, Die Furche, published an interview with Kasper in which he expressed doubts about the presentation and interpretation last year of a controversial Vatican document, Dominus Iesus, which annoyed many Protestant churches.
Dominus Iesus, published on September 5 and signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated that the churches which grew out of the Reformation of the 16th century were not "churches in the proper sense."
"That affirmation offended other people," Walter Kasper told Die Furche, "and if my friends are offended, then so am I. It's an unfortunate affirmation—clumsy and ambiguous." He added that the section of Dominus Iesus on the Protestant churches was written in "abstract, doctrinaire language, which in some ways excludes [others]. The tone is not appropriate."
Another negative aspect of Dominus Iesus signaled by Kasper was its failure to mention the fruits of ecumenical dialogue undertaken since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). He pointed out that Pope John Paul had specifically referred to this dialogue in his encyclical on ecumenism, Ut unum sint, published in 1995.
Referring to the claim that Protestant churches were not "churches in the proper sense," Kasper said out that Cardinal Ratzinger had correctly explained that "churches which grew out of the Reformation have a different idea of church from us [Catholics]. There is no dispute about that. These churches do not wish to be churches like the Catholic Church. They do not retain the apostolic succession for the episcopate or the ministry of Peter, which for us are essential. So in fact Dominus Iesus does not signify any change in the Vatican's ecumenical policy."
Moreover, he added, "the document upholds the common ecumenical belief that Jesus Christ is the sole and universal mediator of our salvation. Protestants say the same thing."
In an interview with Lutheran World Information in Geneva late in February, Cardinal Kasper also commented on Dominus Iesus, saying that the original controversy had now been more or less overcome. He felt that the pontifical council had succeeded in its attempt to clarify the misunderstandings that had arisen. The language of the statement was certainly different from that of the Second Vatican Council and from that used by Pope John Paul, and did not mention previous dialogues, Cardinal Kasper admitted. He added that Dominus Iesus was intended as a warning against "a relativism or a fundamental pluralism" and stressed that Pope John Paul had repeatedly stated "that for him, the decisions taken at the Second Vatican Council are irrevocable and irreversible for the ecumenical process."