Episode 393: What did the Vatican documents really say or not say - Part 2

True Catholic ecumenism

However, the only unity that the Church recognizes is the unity of faith, worship and government, by which all members of the Mystical Body are united with each other and with their Head, Christ and His Vicar on earth (see Matthew 16:18; John 21:16-17; Ephesians 4:16).

Unfortunately the Eastern schismatics refuse to recognize the authority of the Pope over the Universal Church and deny or do not accept several essential dogmas: the procession of the Holy Ghost, the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of the Assumption of Our Lady body and soul into heaven. They refuse the teachings of the Magisterium formulated after the seven first ecumenical councils, in other words ever since the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. Organized in individual and autonomous churches, the Orthodox—in reality heterodox—are no longer united in government at all.

The Catholic Church in its Magisterium has condemned the meetings and initiatives that are not founded on the unity of faith, by the bond of which “the disciples of Christ must be united principally.” The law of faith is absolute, because without “the teachings of Christ whole and uncorrupted,” without “one law of belief and one faith of Christians”, there would be neither unity in the Church, nor true charity.

The Protestant vision according to which the Church should be divided into distinct and individual communities, as are the Orthodox, ignores the true nature of the Church, a supernatural society founded by God and recognizable by its four marks: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, as affirmed in the Apostles’ Creed. None of these marks can be separated from the others: “It follows that the Church, which is Catholic in truth and in name, must also distinguish itself by the prerogative of unity, sanctity and apostolic succession.”

Therefore:

the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it."
Such is true Catholic ecumenism.