I accept that, and I also accept that the tension between a broad, open vision of Catholicism rooted in living experience, and a narrower, static hierarchical view of faith, runs right through church history. It is my perception that at present many in the hierarchy and some laity are moving increasingly in this narrow, elitist direction. DJ, which claims to protect the uniqueness of Christ, in fact expresses a profoundly anti-ecumenical spirit at odds with the sense of God' s grace permeating the whole cosmos. DJ gives voice to a wider movement that is slowly but pervasively turning the Catholic church inward in an increasingly sectarian direction. It is this which concerns me most.
Sectarianism is incompatible with genuine catholicity.
It is the antithesis of the kind of openness to the world, tolerant acceptance of others and a sense of religious pluralism that most thinking Catholics have been formed in and have embraced over the last three or four decades. Thus many Catholics find themselves involved in a corrosive disjunction between what they believe and have experienced, and the views expressed at the highest levels of the church. The reason is because those who claim to articulate Catholic belief seem to be abandoning their catholic' spirit. As a result there is a turning away from the other Christian churches, and a rejection of the search for common ground with the other great religious traditions. Thus more and more thinking Catholics who have been educated and live in pluralist, democratic and tolerant societies, find themselves in conflict with church hierarchs who seem to be moving in an ever-more sectarian direction.