Ecumenical commitment is irrevocable

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=128

The non-Catholic Christian who thinks of the church (usually lower case) as a voluntary association of believers–whether local or connected with other such voluntary associations–can, in the Catholic understanding, certainly be saved. Saving and sanctifying grace is certainly present in such associations or “ecclesial communions.” They are not unrelated to the Church, the Body of Christ apostolically ordered through time, but neither are they that Church.

Because of its more comprehensive understanding of the Church of Jesus Christ fully and rightly ordered through time, the Catholic Church cannot let go of the ecumenical quest for full visible communion with other Christians.

The Catholic Church recognizes that she is wounded by our present divisions in a way that other communities do not understand themselves to be wounded by division.

It is because of her very self-understanding that the Catholic Church knows, as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have regularly repeated, that the ecumenical commitment is “irrevocable.”

How wonderful it will be.

And how good it is that we are not a voluntary association of believers, but the compelled Body of Christ left with no other choice; as bound as Peter's "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life ."