From John Daly:
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) declared in its definition “Firmiter” that:
There is one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all
can be saved .... (Denzinger 430)
Pope Boniface VIII in his bull Unam Sanctam (1302) declares:
At the instance of faith, we are bound to believe and hold the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and her we do firmly believe and simply confess, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins .... Hence we declare, say, define and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature that he be subject to the Roman Pontiff. (Denzinger 468, 469)
In its decree Cantate Domino for the Jacobites, the Council of Florence (1439) pronounced as follows:
The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those who are outside the Catholic Church – not only pagans, but also Jews or heretics and schismatics – can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with her; and that so important is the unity of the ecclesiastical body that only those
remaining in her can profit unto salvation by the Sacraments of the Church, and that they alone will receive eternal rewards for their fasting and almsgiving, their works of piety and exercises of Christian soldiery; and that no one, no matter how great his almsgiving, and even if he shed his blood for the name of Christ, can be saved unless he remain within the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
(iv) In its decree on Original Sin (17th June 1536), the Council of Trent referred, in its opening words, to
…our Catholic Faith, without which it is impossible to please God. (Denzinger 789)
– an authoritative interpretation of St. Paul’s affirmation that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6)
(v) In his encyclical Mirari Vos of 1832, Pope Gregory XVI wrote the following:
We are now proceeding against another exceedingly fertile cause of the evils by which we grieve to see the Church afflicted at present, namely indifferentism: i.e. that perverse opinion, which is everywhere gaining ground thanks to the wiles of evil men, according to which the eternal salvation of the soul can be obtained by the profession of any faith provided that the norm of upright and decent morals be observed ....(Denzinger 1613)
(vi) In his encyclical Quanto Conficiamur (1863), Pope Pius IX speaksas follows:
But here ... it is necessary once more to mention and reprehend a most grave error by which some Catholics are wretchedly deluded – namely, those who think that men living in errors and as strangers to the true Faith and Catholic unity can arrive at eternal life. Nothing indeed could be more opposed to Catholic doctrine. (Denzinger 1677)
(vii) The same pontiff in his Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemned the proposition that “men in any religion can find the path of, and arrive at, eternal salvation.” (Denzinger 1716)
(viii) And the following protest is taken from Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis (1950):
Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.
These statements of the Magisterium could be supplemented by many others, as well as by the unanimous voice of Holy Scripture, the Fathers, the Doctors and the saints. The doctrine thus taught, without the smallest degree of equivocation or ambiguity, is:
(a) that it is absolutely impossible to be saved, to have one’s sins forgiven, or even to please God at all, except when united by faith to the unity of the Catholic Church and in submission to the legitimate Roman Pontiff; and
(b) that this doctrine is so firm and universal that it admits of not even a single exception – not even in the case of those who lay down their lives for Christ in a “Christian” sect.
Readers are unlikely to disagree with the above summary of the doctrine of the Magisterium on this point; for the wording of the texts is sufficient to dispel all doubt for anyone who is prepared to accept them at face value without attempting to force upon them a quite unnatural “interpretation” – or rather falsification – in order to make them accord better with what seems appropriate to him or with what he has learnt from some second-rate catechism or explanation of Catholic doctrine put together by a popularizing author rather than by a theologian of real status and merit.18 However it must also be made clear that these texts of the Magisterium do not represent the complete picture, in that a subtle theological distinction must be made before it is possible to attain a thorough understanding of how the conditions necessary for salvation may be fulfilled in practice even in exceptional situations.
Three Quite Recent Statements of the Magisterium
There have been three texts of the Magisterium19 which, without contradicting the other texts, or restricting the universality of their application, or even modifying their natural meaning in the slightest degree, have nevertheless gone further than them, in broaching two subjects not expressly addressed in those earlier decrees:
(a) the reconciliation, in a manner consonant with the perfect justice of God, of the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Church with the existence of men who are invincibly and therefore inculpably ignorant of the existence of this Church, and/or
of the obligation of joining her; and
(b) the exact borderline between those who are considered to be inside the Church, and those who are considered to be outside her, according to the terms of the dogma.
Long before the Magisterium had addressed these topics, some theological writers who had taken it upon themselves to address them and had reached conclusions concerning them that were simply incompatible with the dogmatic teaching of the Church already quoted.
It was to correct such errors – many of them actually heretical – that the Magisterium intervened and pointed out the correct limits of orthodoxy on these questions; but, alas!, these very interventions, whether because they were studied only superficially or because they were consciously distorted, were seized on by the liberals, the minimizers,
the indifferentists, as confirmations of the very errors they had set out to correct! Although no excuse can be made to exonerate those who thus abused the teaching of the Church, it must certainly be admitted that these statements of the Magisterium contain delicate theological nuances, and that to be properly understood they must be
read attentively and thoughtfully, preferably with the assistance of some trustworthy theological work specifically considering this topic.
The first of these pronouncements is Pope Pius IX’s allocution Singulari Quadam, delivered on 9th December 1854, of which I shall quote, and then analyse, the relevant section:
Not without sorrow have we learnt that another error, no less lethal [than the rationalistic error he has been condemning in the previous paragraphs], has taken possession of some parts of the Catholic world and lodged itself in the minds of many Catholics who think there to be good hope for the eternal salvation of all those who are by no means within the true Church of Christ [‘qui in vera Christi Ecclesia nequaquam versantur’]. For this reason they constantly wonder about the fate and condition after death of those who were not attached [‘addicti’] to the Catholic Faith, and, convinced by arguments of not the slightest force, they await a response from us in favour of this perverse notion. ( ...) As our Apostolic office requires, we wish your episcopal solicitude and vigilance to be aroused so that, as far as you can, you may drive out of men’s minds this opinion, no less impious than deadly, that the path of eternal salvation can be found in any religion. Use all the skill and learning at your disposal to show to the people committed to your care that these dogmas of the Catholic Faith are by no means opposed to the Divine mercy and justice.
It must be held by faith that no one can be saved outside the Apostolic Roman Church, that this Church is the sole ark of salvation, and that whosoever does not enter her shall perish in the flood; but it must also be held as certain that those who are ignorant of the true religion, if their
ignorance be invincible, are subject to no guilt on this account in the eyes of the Lord. But who would claim the ability to designate the limits of such ignorance in accordance with the nature and variety of peoples, religions, characters and of so many other things? (Denzinger 1646-7)
Such are the words of Pope Pius IX on the topic we are examining, words which, according to Mgr. Joseph C. Fenton, “have all too frequently been misinterpreted by Catholic writers who have examined them superficially.” (The Catholic Church and Salvation, p. 42)
Topic: Why Feeneyites Hate Catholic Teaching (Read 19118 times)