Send CathInfo's owner Matthew a gift from his Amazon wish list:
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/25M2B8RERL1UO

« previous next »
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5

Author Topic: The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements of the Church  (Read 2032 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Lover of Truth

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements of the Church
« on: August 14, 2017, 09:37:04 AM »
http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/13Jul/jul24ftt.htm


As we go through the teachings of the Church pertaining to salvation it is important that we understand the vitalness of Catholics accepting infallible teachings in encyclicals and in other authoritative docuмents as will be made clear by Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton below. Some have an aversion to the fact that no one at all can be saved outside the Catholic Church. Others have an aversion to the fact that non-members can be saved within the Catholic Church. Neither understands the Dogma Outside the Church there is no Salvation as the Church Herself understands it.

A sheep is a docile and accepting creature. The same is true of good Catholics. When you see an authoritative docuмent that presents a teaching contrary to what you have always believed the initial Catholic response is to doubt your belief rather than to naturally conclude that the authoritative docuмent has erred.

We will see that Saint Augustine makes the same point I have been making, or I guess I'm making the same point he made, when I say that it is God Who cleanses the soul of Original Sin, not the water:

Augustine says (Super Levit. lxxxiv) that "some have received the invisible sanctification without visible sacraments, and to their profit; but though it is possible to have the visible sanctification, consisting in a visible sacrament, without the invisible sanctification, it will be to no profit." Since, therefore, the sacrament of Baptism pertains to the visible sanctification, it seems that a man can obtain salvation without the sacrament of Baptism, by means of the invisible sanctification.

The sacrament or Baptism may be wanting to someone in two ways. First, both in reality and in desire; as is the case with those who neither are baptized, nor wished to be baptized: which clearly indicates contempt of the sacrament, in regard to those who have the use of the free-will. Consequently those to whom Baptism is wanting thus, cannot obtain salvation: since neither sacramentally nor mentally are they incorporated in Christ, through Whom alone can salvation be obtained.

Secondly, the sacrament of Baptism may be wanting to anyone in reality but not in desire: for instance, when a man wishes to be baptized, but by some ill-chance he is forestalled by death before receiving Baptism. And such a man can obtain salvation without being actually baptized, on account of his desire for Baptism, which desire is the outcome of "faith that worketh by charity," whereby God, Whose power is not tied to visible sacraments, sanctifies man inwardly. Hence Ambrose says of Valentinian, who died while yet a catechumen: "I lost him whom I was to regenerate: but he did not lose the grace he prayed for."

As it is written (1 Samuel 16:7), "man seeth those things that appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart." Now a man who desires to be "born again of water and the Holy Ghost" by Baptism, is regenerated in heart though not in body. Thus the Apostle says (Romans 2:29) that "the circuмcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not of men but of God."

No man obtains eternal life unless he be free from all guilt and debt of punishment. Now this plenary absolution is given when a man receives Baptism, or suffers martyrdom: for which reason is it stated that martyrdom "contains all the sacramental virtue of Baptism," i.e. as to the full deliverance from guilt and punishment. Suppose, therefore, a catechumen to have the desire for Baptism (else he could not be said to die in his good works, which cannot be without "faith that worketh by charity"), such a one, were he to die, would not forthwith come to eternal life, but would suffer punishment for his past sins, "but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire" as is stated 1 Corinthians 3:15.

The sacrament of Baptism is said to be necessary for salvation in so far as man cannot be saved without, at least, Baptism of desire; "which, with God, counts for the deed" (Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 57).

Now if your immediate reaction is to doubt Saint Augustine rather than yourself you need to change your thinking. Hit the beads hard man, and pray for sincerity, humility and the grace to know Truth as presented and understood by the Church. Then read the following as we continue with Monsignor Fenton's book - "The Catholic Church and Salvation":

There are several docuмents issued by the Church's supreme teaching authority which deal with the revealed doctrine that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church. The latest editions of Denzinger's Enchiridion symbolorum carry upwards of twenty citations directly pertinent to this dogma, taken from different official docuмents issued by the Holy See and by Oecuмenical Councils. If a man wants to learn exactly how the Catholic Church itself understands and teaches this revealed truth, he can best obtain this information by reading and studying these official and authoritative statements of the ecclesiastical magisterium.

Actually, however, it is not necessary to study every one of these statements individually. It so happens that there are eight of these official pronouncements which, taken together, bring out every aspect of Catholic teaching on this subject that the Church has included in its authoritative docuмents. Hence an examination of these eight statements will show us every aspect and facet of the Church's official and authoritative teaching about its own necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation.

The eight docuмents in which these pronouncements are contained are:

A profession of the Catholic faith issued by the Fourth Lateran Council, the twelfth in the series of Oecuмenical Councils, in 1215, during the pontificate Pope Innocent III.

The Bull Unam sanctam, published by Pope Boniface VIII, on November 18, 1302.

The decree for the Jacobites, the Bull Cantate Domino, published by Pope Eugenius IV on February 4, 1442, and included in the Acta of the Council of Florence, the seventeenth among the Oecuмenical Councils.

The allocution Singulari quadam, delivered on December 9, 1854, the day after the solemn definition of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, by Pope Pius IX, to the Cardinals, Archbishops, and bishops gathered in Rome for that definition.

The encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, addressed by Pope Pius IX to the Bishops of Italy on August 10, 1863.

The encyclical letter Mystici Corporis Christi, published on June 29, 1943, by Pope Pius XII.

The letter Suprema haec sacra, sent by the Holy Office, at the command of Pope Pius XII, to His Excellency the Most Reverend Archbishop of Boston, on August 8, 1949.

The encyclical letter Humani generis, issued by Pope Pius XII on August 12, 1950.

Each of the eight chapters that go to make up the first part of this book will consider the teachings of one of these docuмents on the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of eternal salvation. The docuмents will be studied in chronological order.

As authoritative statements of the teaching Church, all of these pronouncements of the Holy See and of Oecuмenical Councils must be accepted with true internal consent by all Catholics. What they teach on the subject of this dogma is what all Catholics are bound in conscience to hold. It is definitely not enough for Catholics to receive these declarations with what has been called "respectful silence." It is not sufficient that they merely refrain from overt statements rejecting what has been taught in these authoritative docuмents of the ecclesia docens. Every Catholic is strictly bound in conscience to make what the Church has taught in this way his own view, his own conviction, on this subject. And, as a result, it is objectively wrong for any Catholic to hold an explanation of the Church's necessity for salvation which is in any way incompatible with what the Church has taught authoritatively about this dogma.

The first three of the eight docuмents studied in this book limit themselves, mainly, to the assertion as a dogma of the Faith of the teaching that no man can be saved outside the Catholic Church. A dogma is a truth which the Church finds in Scripture or in divine apostolic tradition and which, either in solemn judgment or in its ordinary and universal teaching activity, it presents to its people as a doctrine revealed by God and as something which all are obligated to accept with the assent of divine and Catholic faith. Since the teaching that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church is a dogma, men are obligated in conscience to believe it as certainly true on the authority of God Himself, who has revealed it. Objectively the refusal to believe this teaching with an act of divine faith constitutes heresy. The public denial by a Catholic of this or any other dogma of the Church is something that carries with it a loss of membership in the true Church. [Something for non-sedevacantists to chew on. J.G.]

The first three of these pronouncements are contained in docuмents of the Church's solemn teaching activity. The other five belong to the ordinary magisterium of the Holy See. Four of these, the teachings contained in the allocution Singulari quadam and in the encyclical letters Quanto conficiamur moerore, Mystici Corporis Christi, and Humani generis, were issued by the Sovereign Pontiff himself. The other statement treated in this book, that of the Holy Office letter Suprema haec sacra, is an act of a Roman Congregation. Thus, according to the rule set forth in canon 7 of the Codex iuris canonici, it must likewise be considered and described as an act of the Holy See.

All of these statements of the Church's ordinary magisterium are authoritative. Pope Pius XII spoke of the Holy Father's own ordinary teaching power in the encyclical Humani generis, in a passage which has special reference to the teaching set forth in encyclical letters.

Nor must one think that the truths proposed in encyclical letters do not demand assent by themselves (assensum per se non postulare), since in writing such letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their teaching authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in encyclical letters already appertains to Catholic doctrine for other reasons. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their Acta take the trouble to issue a decision on a point hitherto controverted, it is obvious that this point, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, can no longer be considered a question open to discussion among theologians. [The Latin text of Humani generis is carried in The Americal Ecclesiastical Review, CXXIII, 5 (Nov., 1950), 383-98. The paragraph here quoted is n. 20, p. 389. Subsequent references to The American Ecclesiastical Review will use the abbreviation AER.]

The following passage, taken from the letter Tuas libenter, written by Pope Pius IX on December 21, 1863, to the Archbishop of Munich, gives a clear view of the doctrinal authority of the Holy See's statements, including pronouncements issued by the Congregations of the Roman Curia.

Even in the matter of that subjection which must be given in the act of divine faith, it should still not be restricted to those things that have been defined in the obvious decrees of the Oecuмenical Councils or of the Roman Pontiffs or of this See, but must also be extended to that which is taught as divinely revealed by the ordinary magisterium of the entire Church spread throughout the world and which, as a result, is presented as belonging to the faith according to the common and constant agreement of the Catholic theologians.

But, on the matter of that subjection to which all Catholics who are engaged in the work of the speculative sciences are obliged in conscience, so that, by their writings, they may bring new advantages to the Church, the members of this assembly [a convention of German theologians] must take cognizance of the fact that it is not enough for them to receive and to venerate the above-mentioned dogmas of the Church, but that it is also necessary that they subject themselves to the doctrinal decisions of the Pontifical Congregations and to those points of doctrine that are considered by the common and constant agreement of Catholics as theological truths and conclusions which are so certain that opinions opposed to these points of doctrine still merit some other theological censure, even though they may not be designated as heretical. [Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum, 30th edition (Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1954), nn. 1683 f. Further reference to the Enchiridion symbolorum in this volume will use the abbreviation Denz.]

The directions given almost a hundred years ago by Pope Pius IX are just as valid and necessary now as they were when the Tuas libenter was first written. It is and it always will be the duty and the privilege of the Catholic to accept and to enjoy the body of truth given to the faithful in the official declarations of the ecclesiastical magisterium. [For a more extensive treatment of this subject cf. Fenton, "The Humani generis and the Holy Father's Ordinary Magisterium," in AER, CXXV, 1 (July, 1951), 53-62.] And, from a study of the eight docuмents cited in the first part of this book, we can see exactly what the Catholic magisterium has taught about the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal salvation.
Logged

Offline ryanaugustine

Re: The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements of the Church
« Reply #1 on: August 14, 2017, 10:06:31 AM »
Logged

Online Stubborn

  • Supporter
Re: The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements of the Church
« Reply #2 on: August 14, 2017, 11:20:51 AM »
Logged

Offline Lover of Truth

Re: The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements of the Church
« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2017, 11:23:40 AM »
A sheep is a docile and accepting creature. The same is true of good Catholics. When you see an authoritative docuмent that presents a teaching contrary to what you have always believed the initial Catholic response is to doubt your belief rather than to naturally conclude that the authoritative docuмent has erred.
Logged

Online Stubborn

  • Supporter
Re: The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements of the Church
« Reply #4 on: August 14, 2017, 04:58:13 PM »
Quote from: Lover of Truth on August 14, 2017, 11:23:40 AM
A sheep is a docile and accepting creature. The same is true of good Catholics. When you see an authoritative docuмent that presents a teaching contrary to what you have always believed the initial Catholic response is to doubt your belief rather than to naturally conclude that the authoritative docuмent has erred.
Except for when it comes to your heretical postings because you've worked hard at making it that way.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5
« previous next »