Ratzinger attacks grassroots trends

by Viviane Hewitt in Rome IN MS third call for theological order in as many weeks, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has published an IS-page document on Church unity.
The paper, in the form of a letter to the bishops, is a condemnation of what are called "horizontal" trends in the Church with sociological stress on grassroots communities of the faithful.
Cardinal Ratzinger reminded bishops that the Church also had a "vertical" dimension – communion with God – and what he called a visible dimension comprising communion on doctrine, the sacraments and the hierarchical order.
Hierarchical order was one of the main points in the letter and is believed to designed to curb post-Conciliar interpretations of the dogmatic constitution, Lumen Gentium.
Some theological schools of thought, which Cardinal Ratzinger described as "recurring errors", saw the constitution's stress on the "people of God" as the birth of a "new" federal Church over which the Pope merely presided.
The universal Church "cannot be conceived as a group or federation of individual Churches". There was just "one body of Christ" and unity was rooted in the Eucharist and in the unity of bishops themselves under the primacy of the Roman pontiff, the document stressed.
• Church authorities in Italy have "dissociated" themselves from a north Italian parish priest's suggestion that the Italian government legalise brothels.
Fr Augusto Mozzetti, 74, of Oleggiu in Piedmont, said his Idea was in the interests of public health.