With respect to the ongoing controversies about the value of both Catholic ecumenism and the Sainthood of Pope Paul VI, Inez Fitzgerald Storck, in reply to a question regarding her previous review of Paul VI: A Divided Pope by Yves Chiron, writes in this month’s New Oxford Review:
“As my husband, Thomas Storck, points out in “Ecumenism: A Reassessment” (NOR Jul.-Aug. 2023), the theology is articulated in three significant Church documents: Mortalium Animos (1928), an encyclical of Pope Pius XI that discourages participation in ecumenism and teaches that only through union with the Catholic Church can the unity of Christians be effected, Unitatis Redintegratio (1964), a Vatican II decree that upholds the former doctrine but commits the Church to ecumenical dialogue and an appreciation of the positive elements in Protestant communities; and Ut Unum Sint (1995), an encyclical of Pope John Paul II that makes an impassioned plea to hope, pray, and work for Christian unity and affirms the clear teaching that this will necessarily involve acceptance of the Catholic Church by other ecclesial communities.
These several decades later, it is easy to criticize Pope Paul VI (who yearned for Christian unity), Vatican II, and John Paul II for their somewhat naïve expectations regarding ecumenical activities. Very little has been accomplished, and the dangers of indifferentism inherent in accepting Protestant communities as equal partners in dialogue have not been avoided.
Just the same, it is incumbent on Catholics to pray “that all may be one,” that all may convert to the true Church, while not denying that other ecclesial communities are sources of a portion of the truth and graces for their members. We should fervently desire that Protestants and all people receive the fullness of the truth and access to all the sacraments, especially the Eucharist..
— New Oxford Review (May 2024).
From the book: “We now have a
generation of Catholics who, after be-
ing lulled by the relative stability of
John Paul II’s reign and the brief
hopes of Benedict’s, are horrified by
the devastating Modernism that has
returned at the head of the Church.
Yet the older generation have to tell
them that we have been through all
this before.
The truth is that, despite the accel-
erating rate of destruction in Francis’s
nine years, he has not yet inflicted as
much damage on the Church as Paul
VI did. On the doctrinal side, Paul be-
gan the damage by overturning the
conservative plan John XXIII had for
his Council, throwing its direction
into the hands of a few Western
European hierarchies, and allowing
Modernist heresy to take control…”
Catholic Critique 