In a preliminary response to the document, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, the Rt Rev John Neill, said "it is sad that in spite of the ecumenical tone of this document, it does not move the situation on at all".
It had "little that is new and encouraging", he said, to offer Christians who worship and pray together. "There is a certain ambiguity from the very beginning of the document. This is the type of assumed, absolute, and exclusive link with what the first Christians did and with the Roman Catholic Mass, as if other Christians did not feel exactly the same about the Eucharist that they celebrate."
He referred to the type of ecclesiology that can say "the Catholic Church claims, in all humility, to be endowed with all the gifts with which God wishes to endow the church" and "our belief is that the Catholic Church is uniquely gifted". He felt "it is this approach, stemming as it does from Vatican II, that is quite simply outdated 30 years later for any serious attempt at ecumenical theology".
He described as "strange, and especially so if Anglicans are included", a statement in the document that "those Christian communities rooted in the Reformation" had not retained "the authentic and full reality of the Eucharistic mystery". He pointed out that this was despite the "substantial agreement that our two churches have reached in this area". It was "an example of inconsistency in the document".
On dealing with Communion and inter-church couples he said it "goes very close to suggesting that those of inter-church marriages have less than a fully Christian marriage. I wonder how those in such marriages can receive the statement that they face `an obstacle to the full unity of their family life'. No amount of theological pleading can take from the hurtfulness of such a statement".
On the document's pleas to other Christians to respect the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church (where Communion is concerned) as it respects theirs, he said, "but neither should we be asked to implement the discipline of the other [church]".
"The churches which welcome others to Communion are not doing anything against the internal discipline of another church, and it is hard to see why this element of pleading has slipped in."
The document, he concluded, was "the setting forth of the traditional position in a more ecumenical and modern way. Its sincerity is undoubted, but its argument becomes less convincing than ever".
