The Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on the Church answers, in paragraph 18: “This sacred synod, following in the steps of the First Vatican Council [which decreed the dogma of papal infallibility], teaches and declares with it that Jesus Christ, the eternal pastor, set up the holy Church by entrusting the apostles with their mission as he himself had been sent by the Father (cf. Jn. Joh 20:21). He willed that their successors, the bishops namely, should be the shepherds in his Church until the end of the world. In order that the episcopate itself, however, might be one and undivided he put Peter at the head of the other apostles, and in him he set up a lasting and visible source and foundation of the unity both of faith and of communion. This teaching concerning the institution, the permanence, the nature and import of the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and his infallible teaching office, the sacred synod proposes anew to be firmly believed by all the faithful, and, proceeding undeviatingly with this same undertaking, it proposes to proclaim publicly and enunciate clearly the doctrine concerning bishops, successors of the apostles, who together with Peter’s successor, the Vicar of Christ and the visible head of the whole Church, direct the house of the living God.”

Significantly, this Dogmatic Constitution on the Church was promulgated by Pope Paul VI on the very day that he signed the Decree on Ecumenism. And on that same November 21, 1964, he made a statement proclaiming “Mary ‘Mother of the Church,’ that is, of all the faithful and all the pastors.” How can it be claimed that the Decree on Ecumenism ‘marked the full entry of the Roman Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement’ when the pope chose on the very day it was published to reaffirm dogmas that are totally unacceptable to the majority of the members of the WCC (World Council of Churches)?

Did Vatican II fundamentally change the Catholic Church’s view of Christian unity? Pope John’s successor, Paul VI, promulgated the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which says: “This is the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him.”

So the Catholic Church’s view of Christian unity has not changed fundamentally. The view expressed at Vatican II is, in effect, that whatever good things exist outside the Catholic Church really belong to her and are, therefore, as the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church says, “forces impelling towards Catholic unity.”