Mathew, who held ultimately that Catholics were simply not bound to hold anything like the teaching that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church, was enthusiastic in his praise of Newman's explanation. He claimed that the Cardinal had "dealt with the question in such a masterly way that it is impossible to improve upon what he says." [Ibid.] As a group, the theologians of the Catholic Church have shown no disposition whatsoever to share Mathew's enthusiasm for this section of Newman's teaching. Fenton 

 According to the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, these words of Pope Pius IX conveyed what Newman called "the doctrine of invincible ignorance - or, that it is possible to belong to the soul of the Church without belonging to the body." He concluded his treatment of the dogma with this question: "Who would at first sight gather from the wording of so forcible a universal ["Out of the Church, and out of the faith, is no salvation"], that an exception to its operation, such as this, so distinct, and, for all we know, so very wide, was consistent with holding it?" [Ibid., 336]

    If Newman's words mean anything, they assert that the Church holds and proposes as "a dogma, which no Catholic can ever think of disputing," a statement which it contradicts at the very same time. He claims that the doctrine "Out of the Church, and out of the faith, is no salvation" is a dogma of the Church, a truth revealed by God to be held on divine faith by all men. This dogma is set forth as a universal negative proposition, something which is contradicted by a particular affirmative. And Newman taught here that the particular affirmative proposition contradicting this very universal negative dogma is true. He believed that in at least one definite case, which may have a very wide application, there can be salvation outside the faith and outside the Church.

    Newman believed that it was "consistent" to hold at the same time that there is no salvation outside the Church and outside the faith. Obviously there could be no more effective way of reducing the teaching on the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal salvation to an empty formula than the explanation advanced by Newman in what are probably the least felicitous pages of all his published works. That explanation is certainly one of those reproved in the encyclical letter Humani generis. Fenton

    The Humani generis is certainly one of the most important docuмents issued by the Holy See during the course of the twentieth century. The perspective of years will be needed for a proper appreciation of the beneficial effects it has brought into the teaching of sacred theology. Yet even today we can see clearly that one of its finest and most valuable lessons was contained in its brief reference to the dogma that the Catholic Church is really necessary for the attainment of eternal salvation. Fenton 

 It repudiated and condemned the practice, which, incidentally, had been all too frequent, of reducing this doctrine to an empty or vain formula. Actually this section of sacred theology or of Catholic doctrine was one in which inadequate or inaccurate teaching had precisely the effect of representing a part of Catholic teaching as mere meaningless verbiage. Almost every Catholic writer who touched in any way upon this subject began in some way with a consideration of and an assent to a definite formula: "No salvation outside the Church." Most of the men who taught this subject in an incorrect or faulty manner managed, in the last analysis, to give the impression that, although Catholics are bound in conscience to accept this formula as true, it really means little or nothing. Fenton

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Was Fenton a Supreme Father and Doctor of the Church?.....or what?

 8)

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