A powerful faction in the Roman Catholic Church is scared silly by the spirit of openness introduced by Vatican II and what it sees as an "anything goes" mood among the no longer docile faithful. It is determined to batten down the hatches and wait out the storm.

But the spirit of openness is like the genie in the bottle: once let it out, and it's hard to get it back in again. The words addressed by the fathers of the council to their separated brothers and sisters cannot be unsaid, and for Roman Catholics in many (if by no means all) parts of the world they are validated by their experience of local ecumenism.

Dominus Iesus does not focus on the one church and the many churches. Its subject is other faiths. But, just as we can sometimes see better out of the corner of our eye, so too we can often see better what others think of us when they write of us "in the margin". And what is written is clear: we are second-class citizens in the household of God.

The inability freely to acknowledge other churches as churches is not, of course, peculiar to Rome. It is found also among Anglicans, with their distinction between "recognizing" ministries and "reconciling" them, and the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox.

Those of us who believe that the church of Jesus Christ is found wherever his gospel is truly preached and his sacraments rightly administered have a duty continually to challenge this sectarianism.

The mindset that produced Dominus Iesus is dispiriting, and unworthy of the Catholic tradition at its best. We must hope that the sound we hear is that of Cardinal Ratzinger locking the stable door after the horse of openness and ecumenism has irretrievably bolted.

Páraic Réamonn