It seems that these people are so deprived that their chances of salvation are, at best, extremely low.
This is why I prefer to avoid discussion of BOD. Our focus should be to pray that our non-Catholic friends/family members request baptism before they die.
So, the focus with the BoD issue isn't so much about "their chances of salvation". Utlimately that's up to God.
What it's about and why it's so important is because of its implications for Catholic ecclesiology.
Because no one can deny that EENS is dogma (it's been solemnly defined at least 3 times), the only way to "get" non-Catholics saved is to re-define the Church ... pretty much exactly the same way Vatican II did.
MAJOR: There's no salvation outside the Church. [dogma]
MINOR: Jews, Muslims, Protestants and Orthodox can be saved (without converting before they die obviously).
CONCLUSION: Jews, Muslims, Protestants and Orthodox can be IN the Church somehow.
That conclusion is in fact Vatican II ecclesiology in a nutshell, and all the Vatican II errors rest upon that conclusion. If I believed that Jews, Muslims, Protestants and Orthodox could be saved, I would have to accept Vatican II as correct and not being in error.
So, the main way even Trads accomplish this is by the "soul" vs. "body" distinction. But Msgr. Fenton rightly points out that this distinction, where you posit a "soul" of the Church that is not co-extensive with the "body" (i.e. at soul that extends out farther than the body) ... is illegitimate and was in fact condemned by Pius XII. So his solution is to claim that someone can be IN the Church (body and soul) without being a member OF the Church, so the "within" vs. "member of" distinction. Either way one tries to justify it, however, both of these approaches effectively justify Vatican II ecclesiology. This is, alas, why Msgr. Fenton ultimately concluded that V2 ecclesiology represented an "improvement" over past teaching.
THIS is why it's so important, and the Trads who can't see it don't actually understand the errors of Vatican II and are basically schismatic for rejecting Vatican II while holding the very same ecclesiology that V2 does.
We get that a lot here. "Who cares? It doesn't matter." Oh, it absolutely matters because depending upon how we fall on the issue we do or do not have any legitimate reason to reject Vatican II.
Now, this applies more to the "extended" version of BoD, vs. where a Catechumen who pretty much intends to become Catholics could be considered to have a partial or imperfect membership in the Church. So whether there's a BoD at all (as St. Robert held it, for instance, as applying only to Catechumens) is a separate issue that often gets conflated with the broader / extended BoD.
God is not bound by impossibility, and it would be no effort whatsoever on His part to get the Sacrament to His elect, period, no matter what. As St. Thomas stated, He would send an angel to preach the Gospel to one who's invincibly ignorant if necessary. That same angel could also baptize the person. There's no need for a BoD whatsoever. Saints have raised people back to life to baptize them, and God could obviously do the same. God established Baptism as necessary by necessity of means (whereas Fr. Barbara incorrectly implied that it's necessary of precept only), and why would He suddenly go back on His word and basically say, "Jesus didn't really mean it when He said no one could enter the Kingdom of Heaven without water AND the Holy Ghost. He was exaggerating." No one has given a satisfactory explanation for WHY God would wish some to be saved by BoD and others to be saved via the actual Sacrament ... when He has put such emphasis on its necessity.
Topic: Apparently some reject BoB and BoD? (Read 50852 times)