Comment: yes, you read that right. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, former co-chairman of
ARCIC II (the failed talks on reunion between Rome and Canterbury) has described Anglicans (at least by implication) as an 'ecclesial community', the term approved by the Vatican for referring to Protestant sects. By contrast, the Orthodox can be described as a 'church' in the sense of 'local churches', each diocese being a church etc. (a usage one finds in Scripture). A schismatic part of the Universal Church, with a bishop, is a 'church', but a bunch of Protestants is not.
See here for an
article on Cardinal Ratzinger (as he then was) rejecting the absurd fudges of ARCIC's 'Final Report'; see here for '
Dominus Iesus', issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger, which clears up the matter of 'churches' in paragraph 17:
On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense...
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