Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Pope: Other Christians not true churches

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_re_eu/pope_other_christians;_ylt=AsFBgJ82RMHgP55D38neRN87Xs8F

This is too good for the archive...so here's the article...

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 10, 3:59 PM ET
LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.

The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. "It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries.

"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the reformed family and other families of the church," the group said in a letter charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the era before the Second Vatican Council.

It was the second time in a week that Benedict has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-1965 meetings that modernized the church. On Saturday, Benedict revived the old Latin Mass — a move cheered by Catholic traditionalists but criticized by more liberal ones as a step backward from Vatican II.

Among the council's key developments were its ecumenical outreach and the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers its erroneous interpretation by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Benedict headed before becoming pope, said it was issuing the new document Tuesday because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.

The new document — formulated as five questions and answers — restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."

The commentary repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church "has the fullness of the means of salvation."

"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," said the document released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy's Dolomite mountains.

The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession — the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles — and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it said.

The Rev. Sara MacVane, of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said that although the document contains nothing new, "I don't know what motivated it at this time."

"But it's important always to point out that there's the official position and there's the huge amount of friendship and fellowship and worshipping together that goes on at all levels, certainly between Anglicans and Catholics and all the other groups and Catholics," she said.
The document said that Orthodox churches were indeed "churches" because they have apostolic succession and enjoyed "many elements of sanctification and of truth." But it said they do not recognize the primacy of the pope — a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.

"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of primacy which, according to the Catholic faith, is an 'internal constitutive principle' of the very existence of a particular church," said a commentary from the congregation that accompanied the text.

Despite the harsh tone, the document stressed that Benedict remains committed to ecumenical dialogue.

"However, if such dialogue is to be truly constructive it must involve not just the mutual openness of the participants, but also fidelity to the identity of the Catholic faith," the commentary said.

The top Protestant cleric in Benedict's homeland, Germany, complained the Vatican apparently did not consider that "mutual respect for the church status" was required for any ecumenical progress.

In a statement titled "Lost Chance," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber argued that "it would also be completely sufficient if it were to be said that the reforming churches are 'not churches in the sense required here' or that they are 'churches of another type' — but none of these bridges is used" in the Vatican document.

The Vatican statement, signed by the congregation prefect, American Cardinal William Levada, was approved by Benedict on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul — a major ecumenical feast day.

There was no indication why the pope felt it necessary to release it now, particularly since his 2000 document summed up the same principles.

Some analysts suggested it could be a question of internal church politics or that the congregation was sending a message to certain theologians it did not want to single out. Or, it could be an indication of Benedict using his office as pope to again stress key doctrinal issues from his time at the congregation.

In fact, the only theologian cited by name in the document for having spawned erroneous interpretations of ecumenism was Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian clergyman who left the priesthood and was a target of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's crackdown on liberation theology in the 1980s.

Joke comprehension may decrease with age

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_sc/joke_comprehension_age

By BETSY TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer (From the web, July 10, 2007.)


ST. LOUIS - A new psychology study at Washington University was no laughing matter: It found that older adults may have a harder time getting jokes because of an age-related decline in certain memory and reasoning abilities.

The research suggested that because older adults may have greater difficulty with cognitive flexibility, abstract reasoning and short-term memory, they also have greater difficulty with tests of humor comprehension.


Researchers tested about 40 healthy adults over age 65 and 40 undergraduate students with exercises in which they had to complete jokes and stories. Participants also had to choose the correct punch line for verbal jokes and select the funny ending to series of cartoon panels.
Findings were published earlier this month in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.


The research conducted by graduate student Wingyun Mak and psychology professor Brian Carpenter showed that the younger adults did 6 percent better on the verbal jokes and 14 percent better on the comic portion than did older participants, Mak said.


But who decides what's funny?


The researchers, citing past work in the field, wrote that humor research is "rooted in the philosophical notion that humor arises from a sense of incongruity, a conflict between the expected and the actual."


"Successful comprehension of humor occurs upon resolving something that is seemingly incongruous with a logical but less obvious explanation."


Researchers used a verbal joke test developed in 1983 and used in other humor studies. Mak added a new element, though, by showing participants cartoons from the Ferd'nand comic strip, and asking them to choose between four panels to locate the funny ending. Three of the choices for each cartoon were the wrong ones, created by an artist for the study.


Participants had to respond to jokes like this one:


A businessman is riding the subway after a hard day at the office. A young man sits down next to him and says, "Call me a doctor ... call me a doctor."


The businessman asks, "What's the matter, are you sick?"


Participants then had to choose the right ending. For this one, the correct answer was "I just graduated from medical school."


Wrong choices were straightforward answers or conclusions that did not follow from the premise. Among the wrong answers: "Yes, I feel a little weak. Please help me."


"This wasn't a study about what people find funny. It was a study about whether they get what's supposed to be funny," Carpenter said.


"There are basic cognitive mechanisms to understanding what's going on in a joke. Older adults, because they may have deficits in some of those cognitive areas, may have a harder time understanding what a joke is about."


Mak said humor comprehension merits further study because of the potential physical and psychological benefits of humor.


"I think it's really important to note this doesn't mean older adults aren't funny or don't understand humor," Mak, who is from Los Angeles, said.


She said humor comprehension and humor appreciation are tested in different ways. The Washington University study didn't delve into humor appreciation. In fact, Mak said, older study participants who may have picked the wrong answers may also have been laughing at their choices at the time.


Josephine Bertani, 73, of St. Louis, took part in the study. She has some memory issues, and thinks she probably didn't come up with all the right answers.


Even so, she leads tours of senior citizens as a volunteer through St. Ambrose Catholic Church.


"I'll entertain them with jokes," she said, adding that some tour participants bring her jokes that she can read aloud on bus trips. Any cases of the older people not laughing? "Not yet," she said.