http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/14Oct/oct22ftt.htm In deciding to put together this series I wanted to reach the Feeneyites that are of good will. Quite frankly I'd love to reach the Feeneyites of bad will if it be possible. I have labeled a small minority as being uncharitable and therefore not having a Catholic attitude toward their fellow Catholics on this issue. I will share a recent example. Some years ago someone wrote me challenging me on my belief about the baptism of the Holy Ghost [desire] and baptism of blood. I responded by sending her several links from Father Joseph Clifford Fenton on the issue. I asked her to please read them and send me any objections she had in regards to what I sent her. Instead when she kept sending objections, I asked if she read what I sent her on the issue and she admitted that she hadn't. I said we could not have a fruitful discussion if she will not read the responses I have sent defending the position that non-members of the Church can be saved within the Church for all the reasons we have been studying in this series.
Since then she continues to send objections, at least I assume that is what they are, but I don't open her email as she proved to me that she did not want to weigh the facts I sent her but merely wanted to keep telling me that believing what the Church teaches on the baptism of the Holy Ghost and baptism of blood are heresy. In her latest email preview the top line says, "Thanks for sending me this piece [she is on my email list]. A lot of it is true . . ." As always, I did not open it but got curious because she is responding to an article that talks about how I seriously considered Feeneyism at one point. I'm not sure if she put that friendly beginning line to entice me to believe it was a civil email for once or not but I took a chance and opened it.
She immediately goes on to say in this email to me and others that my article is dangerous because it is laced with poison that most will not discern and that I refuse to interpret EENS (the Salvation Dogma) in conjunction with the holy doctrine of predestination. Further, she states that I slam the Dimond Brothers and ignore Father Wathen who as she says "exposed the teaching of EENS in a most beautiful way." Additionally she claims I ignore truth about the Father Feeney cover up as well.
Then she claims I am a dishonest person but that I pretend to be humble and honest. (Lovely lass isn't she) She goes on to accuse me of "not wanting any more correspondence with her because I get questions and facts that I can't answer." This from one who I responded to with scholarly writings from Father Fenton who read, in their original language, all the docuмents the Church has put out on the issue. Once again the accuser stands accused. So much time is wasted in "discussions" where one or more of the people involved are willfully blind and intellectually dishonest as my wanna be correspondent proved to be. Here is a direct quote of the "facts" she presented which "I can't answer":
Adam and Eve lost the supernatural gift of Sanctifying grace (in which they were created), when original sin was committed and they were cast out of Eden. Death was the punishment for original sin; prior to original sin, there was no death.
So, no matter how good, holy and how many acts of repentance and sacrifices the saints in the old testament performed they could not regain sanctifying grace. They could only be justified in vow only.
God covered their actual sins but did not remit them. The Old Testament Just could not go to heaven when they died because they had no means of gaining sanctifying grace and removing original sin, until the Redemptive Act. The Holy Council of Florence, Exultate Deo, 1439. "There are seven sacraments of the new law...which differ a great deal from the sacraments of the old law, for those of the old law did not effect grace but only pronounced that it should be given through the passion of Christ; these sacraments of ours contain grace and confer it upon those who receive them worthily."
The Council of Trent on Justification D 793: refers to the Old Testament Just were by nature children of wrath and servants of sin and under the power of the devil and death. And not even the Jєωs who by the very letter of the law of Moses were able to be liberated and rise therefrom.
So the sacrifices and rituals of the Old Testament conferred the promise of grace but did not confer grace. It was their faith and obedience to God which covered their sins and justified them in vow.
The Crucifixion and death of Our Lord paid the price, opened up heaven and gave mankind the means to regain sanctifying grace through His Church of the new testament via the channels of grace, the sacraments. The sacraments, sacrifices and rituals of the Old Testament did not confer grace and were not channels of grace. But belief in the Messiah and obeying the 10 commandments, kept the old testament saints covered until they could receive sanctifying grace. They were covered in vow, but not in actuality. Otherwise there would be no need for the sacramental system, as God could bestow sanctifying grace outside his sacraments and law at His will. The holy council of Trent teaches us that everyone to attain salvation must receive at least ONE sacrament, that being the sacrament of Faith where the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity are bestowed at the point of sanctification at the pouring of the water and the invocation of the three persons of the Blessed Trinity.
Without the sacramental system, no sanctifying grace. Hence the saints of the old testament went to Limbo of the just when they died. There they awaited Our Lord and his redemption.
When Our Lord died on the Cross He descended into hell (Limbo of the Just). This is where the Good Thief went, and this is the paradise Our Lord on the cross refers to when He said "This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
At the Resurrection, the Limbo of the just no longer existed. Where were the souls of the old testament just? Not in Heaven.
When Our Lord died, and the earth quaked, scripture tells us the..."bodies of the saints arose and appeared to many."
Our Lord was on this earth 40 days after His Resurrection. We know, through Scripture, that only a small portion of those 40 days are accounted for. What was He doing for the whole 40 days. I believe He was baptising the saints of the Just and explaining the catholic faith to them. They must have died gain after Our Lords Ascension and gone to heaven. No one went to heaven before Our Lord's Ascension. This means all in heaven have been baptised and have sanctifying grace.
This is what I believe and there is no teaching that tells me I cannot believe this. It then makes the words of Our Lord true for all men: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost he cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven" John 3:5.
To quote Our Lord's parting words: paraphrase: "Lets be about the mission of the Church baptising in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost"
So lets stop putting into Heaven unbaptised saints!
And there we have it. So Our Lord spent the forty days after His Resurrection baptizing with water every just soul that ever existed, and every just soul that ever existed rose from the dead just so He could do this. She is blazing a new trail here is she not? None of the great Father, Doctors, Saints or theologians figured this out, but my verbose wanna be correspondent managed to come up with it. I remember a time when women had a better sense of public civility than men. Men who normally talked dirty would be corrected by women when they talked dirty in mixed company. Now women lead the charge when it comes to talking dirty in mixed company. Some traditional Catholic women are not much different than our modern non-Catholic women in that they, unlike Our Lady, are very publically verbose and they like to get so very involved in everything and be in charge of everything and run parishes and whatever other manly thing they can think of. If they feel the need to flap their gums all over the internet perhaps they could make sure they have an idea of what they are talking about before they do so. It might be a good start. I share this because anybody who has publicly defended the Catholic Church's teaching on the topic of salvation has encountered these types of Feeneyites who from a worldly perspective appear to be a lost cause due to their bad will and intellectual dishonesty, not to mention their lack of charity, pension for lying, and they high amount of ignorance on Catholic doctrine which they choose to manifest over and over again, much like the Vatican institution leaders of the post Vatican 2 era. Now let us move on to something the good willed, and even the bad willed if they would pray for the grace to obtain simplicity and humility, can benefit from:THE ENCYCLICAL LETTER HUMANI GENERIS
This encyclical, one of the most important doctrinal statements issued in the twentieth century, is dated August 12, 1950. In this letter Pope Pius XII listed and reproved some definite errors in the field of sacred theology. He denounced certain basic misinterpretations about the Church's magisterium and about the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Then he listed some false teachings which he described as the "deadly fruit" of these other mistakes. Among these "deadly fruits" he mentions the following: Some think that they are not bound by the doctrine set forth a few years ago in Our encyclical letter and based on the sources of revelation, [the doctrine] which teaches that Christ's Mystical body and the Catholic Roman Church are one and the same. Others reduce the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to attain to eternal salvation to an empty formula. [The Latin original is in AER, CXXIII, 5 (Nov., 1950), 391.] In this passage Pope Pius XII put his finger upon the cause and the nature of the defective explanations of the Church's necessity for salvation which had occurred in some popular Catholic writing over the course of the past few decades. In the final analysis, men made mistakes about the necessity of the Church for salvation because they did not realize the paramount fact that the visible society which we know as the Catholic Church is actually the Mystical body of Jesus Christ, the true and supernatural kingdom of God on earth, and thus the community within which alone men may achieve salvaific union with God in Christ. And likewise, in the last analysis, the mistakes common among some Catholic popularizers in the field of sacred doctrine were made by attempting to show how we could accept the formula "no salvation outside the Church" and, at the same time, explain that formula in such a way as to void it of all real meaning. These errors, in their turn, had stemmed from a false attitude toward the docuмents of ecclesiastical magisterium. They were, together, "deadly fruits" of a tendency to ignore the clear teachings of the Sovereign Pontiffs, teaching in the course of their ordinary doctrinal activity. It is important to note that the encyclical Humani generis was written about a year after the Holy Office's letter to Archbishop Cushing. In theSuprema haec sacra the Holy Office had explained what the Church has always understood and taught about the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Church. It had particularly stressed the fact that it is possible for a man to be "within" the Church in such a manner as to attain eternal salvation even when he had only an implicit desire to enter the Church. Thus it had rebuked those individuals who had tried to explain the dogma in too narrow a fashion. The Humani generis, on the other hand, repudiates the teaching of those who had interpreted the dogma in too broad a sense. It complains that some people "reduce to an empty formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church so as to attain eternal salvation." The terminology employed in this rebuke is highly significant. It so happens that this is the one section of sacred doctrine of which it is true to say that the individuals who try to weaken or to obscure its meaning tend to reduce it to an empty formula. The Catholic assertion of the truth that there is no salvation outside the true Church is and has always been a point on which the attacks of the Church's enemies have been centered with particular intensity. A claim that the Catholic Church is a highly acceptable religious society, or even that it is by far the best religious organization, would never have aroused any special animosity against the Church. As a matter of fact, claims of this sort have always been made and are still being made by religious societies distinct from the Catholic Church. What the enemies of the Church have always found and still find infuriating is the Catholic insistence on the truth that the Catholic Church is actually the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the one and only true supernatural kingdom of God on earth, the only social body within which men are to find salvific contact with God through Our Lord. Hence some Catholic writers on theological subjects, in their anxiety to present the Church in as favorable a light as possible to non-Catholics, have tended to soften or even, for all intents and purposes, to suppress this part of Catholic doctrine. They realize that the very heart or center of the dogma that the Catholic Church is truly the one and only supernatural kingdom of God on earth is to be found in the teaching that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Most of them had enough historical learning to know that, during the period of the earliest controversies between Catholic and Protestant writers, the matter of the necessity of the Church for salvation was hardly ever subject to dispute. They recognized that both Catholics and Protestants held that the true Church was necessary for the attainment of eternal salvation. The basic theological question that divided these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century authors was this: Exactly where is the true Church of Jesus Christ, the one and only supernatural kingdom of God on earth, to be found? Basically the Protestant position was that the true Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is to be found in this world among the justified or the predestined people, and that only God knows exactly who these individuals really are. The heresiarchs of the Reformation contended that this true Church, the social body outside which no one can be saved, is something invisible to men in this world. Against the writers who advanced this contention, the controversialists set forth and defended the divinely revealed truth that the true Church, the Mystical body of Christ is, by God's merciful institution, an organized and hence a visible society, the religious community within which the bishop of Rome rules as the successor of St. Peter and as the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Their triumphant thesis that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, God's supernatural kingdom on earth, carried with it the dogma that this organized and visible society is the social unit outside which no one at all can attain eternal salvation. To them and to their Protestant adversaries, any denial or weakening of the doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church would have meant a denial or weakening of the assertion that the Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, the true Church of the divine promises. Now during the last decade of the nineteenth century there appeared among some Catholic writers a tendency and a desire to make the Catholic Church more acceptable to non-Catholics and even to make it appear more respectable to better educated among the non-members of the Church. In line with this desire, some of them adopted an attitude sharply criticized by Pope Leo XIII in his letter Testem benevolentiae. Pope Leo repudiated those who "contend that, to entice the wills of those who differ from us, it is opportune to pass over certain points of doctrine as of lesser importance or to soften them so that they do not keep the same meaning that the Church has constantly held." [Denz., 1967.] This attitude manifested itself most strongly with regard to the dogma of the Church's necessity for eternal salvation, the point of doctrine against which the opponents of the Church tended to react most violently. Thus there were some Catholic publicists who produced statements of the Catholic position in which the dogma of the necessity of the Church for the attainment of salvation was simply ignored. Others, however, wrote and taught in such a way as to weaken this teaching and to explain it in a way inconsistent with the pronouncements on the subject by the ecclesiastical magisterium. These were the people who reduced the necessity of the Church for the attainment of salvation to a mere empty formula. Of course, they had to use a formula, and the usually employed either the Latin expression "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus," or its English equivalent, "No salvation outside the Church." Since there is hardly another dogma which has been so constantly reasserted by the Church's magisterium, no Catholic writer could possibly get around the fact that the truth expressed succinctly in this formula was an integral part of Catholic teaching. Most of the men who wrote imperfectly on this subject were at least logical enough not to want to deny some statement which had been set forth explicitly and in an authoritative fashion by the official teachers of the Church. Hence they adopted the expedient of holding the formula itself, and then explaining his formula in such a way as to make it appear to mean quite the opposite of what it says. In their hands the expression "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus" became a mere empty or vain formula, since they presented this statement as signifying, in effect, that there really is salvation outside the Church. There have been various ways in which Catholic writers have tended to reduce the teaching on the necessity of the Church for salvation to a meaningless formula. Among them, the following may be regarded as among the most important:(1) A few writers, obviously unschooled in sacred theology, have simply rejected the formula itself, and thus completely denied the teaching. The unfortunate Arnold hαɾɾιs Mathew, writing during his days as a Catholic, produced teaching of this sort. He makes this statement in the chapter "Extra Ecclesiam Salus Nulla," in the symposium Ecclesia: The Church of Christ, a work which Matthew himself edited:Now the further question arises as to how far Catholics are bound to hold that for those outside the Roman Church there is no salvation. Catholics are not bound to hold anything of the kind. [Mathew, in his chapter, "Extra Ecclesiam Salus Nulla," in the symposium, Ecclesia: The Church of Christ, edited by Arnold hαɾɾιs Mathew (London: Burns and Oates, 1906), p. 148.] Akin to Mathew's tactic and almost as crude is the procedure of writers who speak of "the Catholic doctrines concerning salvation 'outside the Church'." It is obvious that men who teach in this way are denying the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Church. If they choose to pay some lip service to the formula "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus," that formula, in their hands, becomes vain and meaningless.(2) The teaching that the dogma of the necessity of the Church for salvation admits of exceptions is, in the last analysis, a denial of the dogma as it has been stated in the authoritative declarations of the ecclesiastical magisterium and even as it is expressed in the axiom or formula "Extra ecclesiasm nulla salus." It is important to note that such teaching is found in Cardinal Newman's last published study on this subject, a study incorporated into his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, perhaps the least valuable of all his published works. Because of Newman's great influence in the field of contemporary theological studies, it will be helpful to see how he treated this subject in the Letter. 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. In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman dealt with the Church's necessity for salvation, not for its own sake, but only as a teaching that he considered as offering "the opportunity of a legitimate minimizing."[In Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), II, 334.] Despite the fact that he complained when his theological opponents designated him as a minimizer, he set out to show that the dogmas taught in the Vatican Council's constitution Pastor aeternus were subject to legitimate minimizing. [Cf. Fenton, "John Henry Newman and the Vatican Definition of Papal Infallibility," in AER, CXIII, 4 (Oct., 1945), 300-20.]He tried to support his contention by appealing to the example of the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Hence it was from this angle that he approached the teaching on the necessity of the Church for salvation. Newman taught that the principle "out of the Church, and out of the faith, is no salvation" admits of exceptions. He believed that what Pope Pius IX had taught in his encyclical Quanto conficiamur moeroreindicated the existence of such exceptions. [Newman, op. cit., 335 f.] In support of his contention, he quotes the following lines from the encyclical:
We and you know, that those who lie under invincible ignorance as regards our most holy religion, and who, diligently observing the natural law and its precepts, which are engraven by God on the hearts of all, and prepared to obey God, lead a good and upright life, are able, by the operation of the power of divine light and grace, to obtain eternal life. [Ibid.] 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.(3) Some Catholic authors attempted to explain the dogma of the Church's necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation by saying that the Church is only the ordinary means, and that it is still possible, in extraordinary cases, for a man to attain the Beatific Vision outside the Church. At the same time they resolutely claimed, as Newman had done, that it is a Catholic dogma that there is no salvation outside the Church. Manifestly, according to this explanation, the dogma would be nothing more than a vain formula, something which the very people who accept it as a dogma would be expected to treat, for all practical purposes, as untrue. Ultimately, of course, this explanation coincides with the one offered by Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.(4) By all means the most important and the most widely employed of all the inadequate explanations of the Church's necessity for salvation was the one that centered around a distinction between the "body" and the "soul" of the Catholic Church. The individual who tried to explain the dogma in this fashion generally designated the visible Church itself as the "body" of the Church and applied the term "soul of the Church" either to grace and the supernatural virtues or to some fancied "invisible Church." Prior to the appearance of the encyclical Mystici Corporis there were several books and articles claiming that, while the "soul" of the Church was in some way not separated from the "body," it was actually more extensive than this "body." Explanations of the Church's necessity drawn up in terms of this distinction were at best inadequate and confusing and all too frequently infected with serious error. When the expression "soul of the Church" was applied to sanctifying grace and the organism of supernatural virtues that accompany it, the explanation was confusing in that it stressed the fact that a man must be in the state of grace, and that he must have faith and charity if he is to attain to eternal salvation, but it tended to obscure the truth that a man must in some manner be "within" the true and visible Catholic Church at the moment of his death if he is ever to reach the Beatific Vision. When, on the other hand, some imaginary "invisible Church," some assembly of all the good people in the world, was designated as the "soul of the Church," these explanations lapsed into doctrinal inaccuracy. The great paramount mystery of the Church is to be found in the fact that the visible and organized religious society over which the Bishop of Rome presides as the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of St. Peter is the true and only ecclesia of the New Testament. This society, and this alone, is the true kingdom of God on earth, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. It holds within its membership both good men and bad. It includes those who are truly appreciative of their membership and those who are not. Nevertheless, in the mysterious and merciful designs of God's providence, this community and no other is the social entity within which men are to find salvific contact with God in Christ.(5) There were many other inadequate explanations of this dogma current before the appearance of the Mystici Corporis and of the Suprema haec sacra. Some writers tried to restrict the meaning of the Church's necessity for salvation to the fact that the gifts of grace whereby a man actually achieves salvation really belong to the Church. Others tried to make it appear that the visible Church itself was necessary for salvation only with the necessity of precept. Still others represented the attainment of salvation within the true Church as the "ideal" willed by God, but imagined that this salvation could be obtained elsewhere and otherwise in special circuмstances. The only method by which the dogma can be explained satisfactorily is that employed in the Suprema haec sacra. The Holy Office letter merely restates, in a more detailed form, exactly what all of the declarations of the ecclesiastical magisterium have taught about the meaning of the Church's necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation. Whatever progress there will be in the explanation of this dogma will come and must come along the line laid down in this Holy Office letter. Such is the teaching of the encyclical letter Humani generis. 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. 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. That doctrinal tactic was and is completely erroneous. Moreover, it had and it could only have the most absolutely disastrous effects upon the people who were misled by it. These people were influenced to believe that a dogma of the Catholic Church, a teaching which the Church presents as a divinely revealed truth which all men are obliged to accept with the assent of divine faith, was, in the last analysis, something practically devoid of meaning. They were encouraged to imagine that dogma which the Church's magisterium had, in ages past, set forth as a part of divine public revelation, turned out, on further analysis, to be an empty set of words, which modern intellectual Catholics could accept only when they had been voided of the meaning they were manifestly meant to convey. Not to put too fine a point on it, the people who were encouraged to accept the faulty teachings repudiated in the Humani generis were put in a position to fancy that the Church was something less than sincere when it still insisted upon the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Church. And, if a man could be deluded into imagining that the formulae employed by organs of the magisterium like the Fourth Lateran Council and the Cantate Domino to teach about the necessity of the Church did not mean what they said, he could just as easily be influenced to imagine that any other definition of the teaching Church was likewise devoid of any real significance. The worse doctrinal tendencies of our time found their expression in the heresy of Modernism, and it was a basic tenet of the Modernists that the declarations of the ecclesiastical magisterium are to be accepted only when they are interpreted to mean something different from what the Church originally and constantly taught that they mean.My advice to anyone who gets into a conversation with a Feeneyite on the Catholic Church's understanding of the Dogma, There is no Salvation Outside the Church, is to respond to their first query with undeniable facts from the infallible teaching of the Church, if they refuse to respond to the proof you have shown them but just keep telling you how bad you are for not being a Feeneyite don't waste your time with them. The same goes for those who are pushing for the radical, liberal - yes, apostate reforms from the synod of the family that just concluded phase one in Rome. Shake the dust off of your feet and move on to someone who is a good-willed sincere humble Catholic.
Topic: POPE PIUS XII'S ENCYCLICAL HUMANI GENERIS (Read 2374 times)