The following is a letter I
received from one of my readers. In response to the letter is
my brief but hopefully satisfactory explanation. I will attempt
to clarify the position of the Roman Catholic Church as it has
been presented through the ages. I have wrestled with trying
to explain this profound, albeit, controversial subject for a
long time. So please be patient. I cannot answer every question
or objection in the space available in this newsletter. I would
suggest reading this article from beginning to end in one sitting
and more than once in order to get the full impact.
"Dear Mr. Gonzales,
I salute your efforts on the Newsletter (The Hammer). You
may be familiar with John Harden, S.J., who speaks of the tremendous
need for RE-EVANGELIZATION in this country. Received copy of
your publication at Assumption of Mary (Catholic Church)....
The content of your Issue #4 surely says it as it is. However,
page 7 at mid-page has a comment which seems to say that there
is no salvation outside the Church. If this is what you mean,
it is in conflict with Church teaching as expressed many years
ago in the Fr. Feeney incident and as given in our current Catechism
of the Catholic Church.... pages 216, 222, and 223. To avoid
loss of credibility I believe it would be well to clarify this
in your next issue.
Wishing you many blessings in your work,
I am Sincerely, CBW."
Dear Mr. W. Thank you for your letter and especially
for taking such an interest in your faith. To know the One True
God and to love Him with every fiber of our being is the most
important gift we have been given as Roman Catholics. Continue
to nourish and foster your faith. I will use the rest of this
newsletter to address your question and comment. It is one of
the most controversial and profound issues of our religion and
should be clarified. As I have stated above it is impossible
to answer all the objections and questions that this issue provokes.
In fact, the more we learn the more questions we will have but
let me try in this limited space to at least express the traditional
and constant teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on this matter.
Sacred Scripture
"If God were your Father, you would surely love me.
For from God I came forth and have come; for neither have I come
of myself, but He sent me. Why do you not understand me? Because
you cannot listen to my word. Your father is the devil and you
desire to do his will. He was a murderer from the beginning.
He cannot abide in the truth for the truth is not in him. When
he tells a lie he speaks from his very nature, for he is a liar
and the father of lies. Therefore, because I speak the truth
you do not believe me.... If I speak the truth why do you not
believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God. The reason
why you do not hear is that you are not of God." (John
8:42-47)
Jesus spoke these damning
words to the Jews of his day who would not believe Him. He said
in this same chapter that to refuse to believe Him was mortally
sinful, and that they would die in their sins if they persisted
in error. If you take these same words and apply them to the
voice of the Church, which is the continuing incarnation of Jesus
in the world, you will see that they apply to all those who resist
the truth. The Church has been given the fullness of truth
and the fullness of Grace, for it came from God and speaks the
same Word of God for all generations.
The Jews were a good
people when Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity,
became a man to reveal the fullness of truth to them. God had
forged their spirits and culture in the crucible of slavery,
glory, persecution and exile. By the time Jesus came, they had
finally renounced, once and for all, the pagan gods in the cultures
that surrounded them; they lived by the law and their identity
as God's chosen people had been solidified. They had finally
become the people that God had wanted them to be, truly prepared
for His coming. So the question is: If being good simply means
living out the natural law, loving God and neighbor and being
true to your own conscience (and according to the Modernists
this is enough to gain eternal life), then why did Jesus come
in the first place? He came first to the children of Israel,
whom He had formed to be a people uniquely His own, and they
rejected Him. So...
The Church is the extension
of Jesus in time and space. She carries on, by His commission
and command, His mission to teach, govern and sanctify all men
in every place and at all times. "As the Father has sent
me so now I send you!" (John 20:21) WHY?
If knowing the truth is unnecessary and ignorance a ticket
into eternal life, why would Christ burden us with this mission?
He said to the Apostles,
"Who's sins you forgive they are forgiven them. Who's sins
you hold bound they are held bound" (John 20:23) But what
difference does it make, if all you need to do to be forgiven
is to admit you've sinned before God alone, privately in your
own room, making this sacrament of Confession unnecessary? If
the pagans have just as much chance of eternal life as those
do in the Church, then why did Jesus establish the necessity
of baptism for salvation? ("Unless a man be born again
of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.")
From whence does the imperative come for the missionary activity
of the Church, if there is no need for the Church? Didn't Jesus
say?
"All power in heaven and on
earth has been given to Me. Therefore, I am sending you forth
to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teach
them to observe all that I have commanded you." (WHY?)
"He who believes and is baptized will
be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned."
(Matt.28:18-20) (Mk 16:15)
"He who hears you hears me;
and he who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects
He who sent Me." (Luke 10:16)
Now how can anyone
be condemned for not believing in what is unnecessary to believe?
Either we believe that Jesus meant what He said or we don't believe
and itís all just a nice fairy tale that has no real significance.
Jesus demanded three things of us in order to be saved; first
we must believe in everything He came to reveal; second, that
we believe in Him and consequently in His Church through which
we would come to know Him and finally that we live out this truth
and this relationship in love. He did not come to simply give
us a philosophy of life like Buddha, Confucius or Mohammed. Our
Faith rests primarily on Him. He is the source of our salvation
and He established the Catholic Church through which He could
be with us in time and space. The Church is Christ and Christ
is the Church. They are one and the same! (Acts 9:5)
The Fathers of the
Church
If we are to understand
exactly what the Church has always taught in this matter it is
important to go back to the Fathers of the Church. They were
closest to the Apostles and whatever we have has come to us through
them. The following quotations will give us a clear view of exactly
how the Fathers of the Church approached this question. It is
also very important to realize that our ancestors were not "politically
correct" nor did they feel the need to be "tactful"
or diplomatic when it came to presenting the Faith. In fact,
I find their candor quite refreshing compared to our own fear
of hurting feelings even to the point of allowing people to remain
in error and ignorance to the peril of their souls.
St. Ignatius of Antioch
(AD 107)
"They (the heretics) abstain from the Eucharist because
they do not believe the Eucharist to be the flesh of Our Saviour
Jesus Christ Who suffered for our sins. Unbelievers in the blood
of Christ shall be condemned. Let no man deceive himself, unless
he believes that Jesus Christ has lived in the flesh and confesses
His cross and passion and blood He shed for the salvation of
the world, he shall not obtain eternal life. Therefore, they
who deny this gift of God (The Eucharist) die in their denial."
"He who corrupts the Faith of God for which Christ suffered
shall go into unquenchable fire."
"An invisible Church is the same thing as no Church at
all."
St. Irenaeus of Lyons
(AD 202)
"Heretics damn themselves and are worse than heathens."
"Being ignorant of Him Who from the Virgin is Emmanuel,
they are deprived of eternal life; and not receiving the incorruptible
Word, they remain in mortal flesh and are debtors to death, not
obtaining the antidote of life."
St. Cyprian (AD 258)
"He who does not have the Church for his mother cannot
have God for his Father. If anyone was saved outside the ark
of Noah then those who are outside the Catholic Church can be
saved."
"Christ has declared the unity of the Church. Whoever
parts and divides the Church cannot possess Christ. The House
of God is one, and no one can have salvation except in the Church."
"There is no salvation outside the Church and it is they
who in His Church have labored in doing good works whom the Lord
says shall be received into the Kingdom of Heaven on the Day
of Judgment."
"He is no Christian who is not in the Church of Christ."
"No martyr can he be who is not in the Church. If he
be outside the Church when put to death, he cannot come to the
rewards prepared for the Church. Though they be cast into fire
and burnt in flames, though they be exposed to wild beast and
lay down their lives, this will not win them the crown of glory,
but will be the penalty for their unfaithfulness;..."
St. Augustine
(AD 430)
"The contemporaries of Noah would not believe his warnings
as he was building the Ark, and thus they became frightful examples
for all posterity. Christ our God is now building His Church
as the Ark of Salvation, and is calling upon all men to enter
it."
"He who does not have Christ for a Head cannot be saved;
and he who does not belong to the Body of Christ, that is to
the Church of Christ, does not have Christ for his head. The
Catholic Church alone is the Body of Christ; the Holy Ghost gives
life to no one who is outside His Body."
"No one can find salvation except in the Catholic Church.
Outside the Church you can find everything except salvation.
You can have dignities, you can have sacraments, you can sing
"Alleluia," answer "Amen," have the Gospels,
have faith in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
and preach it, too; but never can you find salvation except in
the Catholic Church."
"Because we fight for the unity of the Church, let us
not concede to heretics what we know to be false, but let us
rather teach that they cannot attain salvation unless they come
into that same unity."
St. Jerome (AD 420)
"As I follow no one but Christ, do I therefore unite
myself with Your Holiness, that is, with the Chair of Peter.
Whoever eats the Lamb outside this House is profane; whoever
is not in this Ark of Noah will perish in the Flood; whoever
does not gather with thee scatters; that is: he who is not Christ's
is Antichrist's."
St. Fulgentius (AD
553)
"Hold most firmly, and do not doubt at all: not only
pagans, but also all Jews and all the heretics and schismatics
who terminate this present life outside the Catholic Church will
go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil
and his angels."
"No one can by any means be saved outside the Church;
all pagans and heretics are infallibly damned."
Now I think the position
of the Fathers of the Church is crystal clear. The consensus
of the Fathers is unanimous. I have used only a few here to give
you an example of what they all have confirmed. They who were
closest to Christ and the Apostles in time and culture all say
the same thing. THE BEATIFIC VISION OF ETERNAL LIFE IS NOT A
RIGHT! It is a gift rewarded to those who, with faith, obey the
will of God, loving Him above all things and loving His creation
for His sake. The only vehicle of salvation, which Christ directly
established, is the Catholic Church. Christ never revealed any
other means of attainment of the beatific vision except through
His Church.
The Magisterium of
the Church
It must be emphasized
that the Church has continually reaffirmed the positions of Christ
and the Fathers of the Church. It has passed down to every generation
the same truth and has never and can never deny any dogma of
the Faith. This would be against its very nature and the guarantee
of Christ to preserve the Church from error. Whatever, therefore,
the Church teaches in any particular age must always rest upon
and agree with the position it has continually clarified for
the faithful in the past. Any interpretation , which denies an
article of the faith whether implicitly or explicitly, must be
rejected as false. Whatever statements the Church has made since
the Second Vatican Council including the Council documents themselves
must be read and interpreted through the light of Holy Tradition
and all dogmatic statements previously confirmed by the Magisterium
of the Church. The following quotations are from the official
statements of the Church, her saints and Popes.
Official Ex Cathedra
Dogmatic Statements
II Council of Constantinople (AD
553)
"If anyone does not condemn those who hold opinions
similar to heretics and who have remained in their godlessness
up till death: let such a one be anathema."
The First Lateran Council (AD 1123)
"If anyone does not profess, in accordance with the holy
Fathers, properly and truthfully all that has been handed down
and taught publicly to the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church
of God, both by same holy Fathers and by the approved universal
Councils, to the last detail in word and intention: let him be
anathema"
The Fourth Lateran Council (AD 1215)
"There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside
of which no one at all can be saved."
Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino, (AD
1441.)
"The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and
teaches that none of those who are not within the Catholic Church,
not only pagans, but Jews, heretics and schismatics, can ever
be partakers of eternal life, but are to go into the eternal
fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt. 25:41), unless
before the close of their lives they shall have entered into
that Church; also the unity of the ecclesiastical body is such
that the Church's sacraments avail only those abiding in that
Church, and fasts, alms giving and other works of piety which
play their part in the Christian combat are in her alone productive
of eternal rewards; moreover, that no one, no matter what alms
he may give, not even if he were to shed his blood for Christ's
sake, can be saved unless he abide in the bosom and unity of
the Catholic Church."
Council of Florence (AD1445)
"No one can be saved outside the bosom and unity of the
Catholic Church."
Council of Trent (AD 1563)
"Without our Catholic Faith it is impossible to please
God"
I Vatican Council (AD 1870)
"Since without faith it is impossible to please God and
to attain to fellowship of His children, therefore without faith
no one has ever achieved justification. If anyone says a man
without the faith can be just before God merely by observing
the Commandments: Let him be anathema!"
II Vatican Council (AD 1965)
"Basing itself on Holy Scripture and Tradition, this
sacred Council teaches that the Church now sojourning on earth
as an exile is necessary for salvation. In explicit terms, Christ
affirmed the necessity of Baptism and thereby also affirmed the
necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door
men enter the Church. Christ present to us in His body, which
is the Church, is the sole Mediator and the exclusive way of
salvation." (Lumen Gentium)
Pope John XXIII (AD 1963)
"It is impossible to be joined to God except through
Jesus Christ; it is impossible to be united to Christ except
in the Church which is His Mystical Body."
Pope Paul VI (AD 1978)
"We must always remember the unity of the mystical Body
outside of which there is no salvation, for there is no entering
into salvation outside the Church. Only within the Church is
an encounter with our Father possible... The Church AND THE CHURCH
ALONE possesses the secret of true relationship to God, as established
by Jesus Christ. Indeed, the Church IS that very relationship,
which is both a certain and exclusive means of attaining salvation....
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS THE Extension OF JESUS CHRIST IN TIME
AND SPACE.... Outside this Body, the Holy Spirit does not give
life to anyone."
Pope John Paul I (AD 1978)
"The ship of the Church is guided by Christ and by His
Vicar... It alone carries the disciples and receives Christ.
Yes, it is tossed on the sea but, outside it, one would perish
immediately. Salvation is only in the Church; outside it, one
perishes."
Pope John Paul II (AD 1978-Present)
"Dear young people and members of the faithful... We
have to be conscious of and absorb this fundamental and revealed
truth, contained in the phrase consecrated by Tradition: There
is no salvation outside the Church. From her alone there flows
surely and fully the life-giving force destined, in Christ and
His Spirit, to renew the whole of humanity, and therefore directing
every human being to become a part of the Mystical Body of Christ."
I think the
point is clear. The constant position of the Church has been
and always will be that no one outside the Church is saved. But
what about all those supposedly "good" people who have
never "hurt" anyone and who do not deserve to be damned?
What about the "virtuous pagan" who truly lives out
the natural law and has never heard the Gospel and does not know
the Church is necessary for eternal life? Will men be damned
to hell for what they do not know?
"God... wishes
all men be saved and come to the knowledge of Truth."
(1 Timothy 2:4)
We must realize that
it is God's desire to see that men are saved. Therefore, He will
do whatever He can, within His own established Order, to save
us. This is why He became man. He literally took upon Himself
the just punishment we deserved to save us from eternal separation
from Himself. This must be understood. God established the Church
to continue to apply the merits of His redemption to all those
men of good will who would accept Him, obey Him and embrace the
fullness of the truth He came to reveal. We are all born into
original sin. That means that we are all born without the ability
to see God. We are born without God's life within us and are
spiritually dead. Nothing we can do on a human level can ever
bring us to spiritual life. This spiritual life and the ability
to see God face to face is given to us by the sacrament of baptism.
We cannot demand spiritual sight either for ourselves or anyone
else. This is not something we deserve or to which we are entitled.
It is given only to those who are given the grace to receive.
We can make ourselves more receptive to God's grace by living
out the eternal law written within our own hearts and by our
"good will" but this still would not entitle us to
the rewards of eternal life.
The fact that we are
Roman Catholics is a grave responsibility. It means that through
the mercy of God we have obtained a grace that we neither deserved
nor earned but that God has, in His infinite and unfathomable
wisdom, willed to give to us sinners, that we might have the
most precious gift that He could ever give, eternal life.
When asked how many
would be saved Jesus answered with the terrifying words; "Enter
by the narrow gate, for wide is the way and easy the path that
leads to destruction but narrow is the way and difficult the
path that leads to eternal life and few there are who find it."
(Matt.7:13-14) In other words, not only is salvation reserved
to those within the Mystical Body of Christ, but also few of
us will attain it even with all the assistance of the sacraments
and helps of the Faith.
Is There Hope?
This imperative of
Christ reiterated over and over again by the Church has spurred
the Missionary zeal over the centuries. Countless men and women
have given their lives for pagans, Jews, Muslims, heretics and
schismatics to win their souls back from error and death to life
in Christ. They have suffered indescribable tortures by the very
people to whom they went to save and the blood of the martyrs
has been the foundation of the faith. I remember reading about
the tortures that the Red Communists in China put the Catholics
through especially the priests and nuns. The thousands of martyred
missions who died to bring the gospel to the unbelievers and
the ignorant testify to the necessity of Christ and consequently
the Church for salvation.
We can, however, give
a small hope for the possible salvation of those who appear to
be outside the possibility of hope by making a very important
distinction. Let me explain. In the normal, ordinary course of
events God does not directly intervene to change the laws of
nature. For instance, if through ignorance a man should drink
a deadly poison the normal result would be his death. Yet there
has been instances within the lives of the Saints where the enemies
of the Church attempted to poison a saint and the saint had no
ill effects from that poison due to the direct intervention of
God. We call these direct interventions and the suspension of
the natural law a miracle. Only He who is supreme Sovereign over
His creation can suspend the very laws He has established for
the normal ordinary functioning of His universe. Examples of
this are found throughout the Sacred Scriptures. Normally when
a person dies they remain dead. Yet Jesus raised the dead to
life. If a person has a severe head injury he will remain mentally
and or physically handicapped for the rest of his life unless
and only unless God directly intervenes in an extraordinary manner.
We call these interventions "miracles" because they
are outside the normal order of things.
The ordinary, normal
means of salvation is the Church. God created it this way. He
established the spiritual laws of His creation and they are just
as fixed as the physical laws of gravity and thermal dynamics.
Now how many times has He opened the Red Sea or raised the dead
to life? I can confidently say not too many. His miracles are
rare. God prefers to work within the laws He has established
and therefore we can never depend on miracles to save us. We
can hope that God will be merciful but we can never expect Him
to change the normal course of history. He has not revealed that
He will perform a miracle for any particular circumstance and
therefore we must rely upon the natural means He has given us.
Thus it is with the
Church. He can suspend the spiritual laws He has established
for the salvation of humanity. Nevertheless, He has never revealed
that He would do so and to expect it is to imply that God must
do what we think is best by performing a miracle of grace to
save a soul outside the Ark. God did not do so for the people
of Noah's time. Nevertheless He could have if He so chose.
Because God wills that
all men be saved and come to knowledge of truth He will use every
opportunity to save the souls of men of good will. He may even
perform a miracle of grace and save them outside the Church militant
but they would still be saved through the Church because they
would have to be given the truth through the Church suffering.
So can a person be
saved who dies outside the visible Catholic Church? The answer
is absolutely not, in the ordinary course of things. Can God
perform a miracle of grace and suspend the spiritual laws of
nature He has fixed and established? Absolutely! He is Supreme
Sovereign over all His creation. Does He perform miracles of
this kind? That is a much harder question to answer. I believe
that He does and there is some evidence to support this in the
Scriptures. Nevertheless, if He does so He does so rarely and
we cannot expect or demand that He do anything outside the ordinary
means He has already given His very Life to establish. We have
always heard about the proverbial "virtuous pagan"
or the good "Christian" that seemingly dies in faith.
But we do not know if God in His mercy has seen fit to perform
a miracle in any particular circumstance. He has never revealed
that He has even in any authentic private revelation. On the
contrary, He always reiterates the need for the Catholic Faith.
In so far as the new
"Catechism of the Catholic Church" indicates that others
may be saved who are outside the Catholic Church it does so with
the idea, based in the Sacred Scriptures, Holy Tradition and
the constant teaching of the Church, that these are miracles
of grace outside the ordinary means of salvation, and that these
souls would nonetheless be united to and saved through the Church
if not on earth then in purgatory. To interpret what is said
in the catechism or any other document in any other way is to
commit heresy. And if the authors of the Catechism actually meant
to say anything opposed to the constant teaching of the Church
then the catechism, in so far as it means this, is in error and
that error must be rejected. Remember the whole catechism is
not dogmatic. There are portions of it that are theological considerations
and explanations that may not necessarily be accurate.
I hope
this brief explanation helps you to understand the position that
the Church has always taken regarding salvation. It is our duty;
then, to see the overwhelming need to evangelize in some way
by word and example those who God brings into our life. If our
ancestors were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of
the gospel and converting those who were in the darkness of sin
and error how can we do otherwise. There are souls to be saved
and it is the height of Charity to do all that we can to save
them.
In regards to Father
Feeney: This is a rather complicated issue and I would recommend
the book "The Boston Heresy Case". However, it should
be noted that despite the fact that Fr. Feeney never recanted
his "hard nosed" position on this issue of "Extra
Ecclesiam Nulla Salus", he was, nonetheless, re-communicated
by Pope Paul VI. The problem with Father Feeney's position
was that he would not give any quarter in regards to the possibility
that God can be God and use extraordinary means to save someone
not visibly united to the Church.
It must also be noted
that the Church has never definitively defined "Eternal
Life" as being exclusively the "beatific vision".
It is, therefore, possible to speculate that those few who are
saved by an extraordinary miracle of God's grace to live in eternal
happiness with Him in heaven may, nonetheless, be deprived of
the beatific vision. In other words, they may enjoy perfect natural
and even supernatural happiness for all eternity after the resurrection.
They will be able to see and be with Jesus and Mary and all the
Angels and Saints but they could never see God in the face, as
He is in Himself, as the Blessed Trinity. This will be such for
unbaptized infants and virtuous pagans as it was for the Angels
before the fall. The privilege of the beatific vision is reserved
exclusively for those who have been faithful to God through the
Church and who die in the state of sanctifying grace.
I could write
a book on this subject but hopefully this brief article will
stimulate thought and discussion. May God have mercy on us all.
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