MAJOR: No salvation outside the Church [dogma]
MINOR: Heretics, Muslims, Jews, "Hindus in Tibet", etc. etc. ... can be saved somehow. [held by most Trads]
CONCLUSION: Heretics, Muslims, Jews, "Hindus in Tibet", etc. etc. can be in the Church somehow. [follows necessarily from the two premises]
You need to distinguish the minor. It's possible for any man to be saved. If they are outside the church God will provide a way unknown to us. This is purely subjective and unknowable to both the individual and us Catholics. But it must be held as possible unless you want to become a calvinist.
They are never saved qua Jew, heretic, etc. To frame the premise in such a way is misleading.
Now this is not VII theology. This supposed council asserted a permanent, objective invisible union amongst all people. And it further claimed that the foundation of this unity is objectively the so called truths existing in other religions as such. This is the source of their respect for all religions. This is a fundamentally different idea that is absolutely contrary to Catholic doctrine. It certainly does not flow at all from the mere concession as outlined above.
So let's start with the bolded above. You SAY you're distinguishing the MINOR, but then in the next two sentences simply deny the MAJOR, and start going on nonsensically about "purely subjective unknowable ... [or else] Calvinist."
In the next sentence you go on about how they're never saved "qua Jew, heretic". I guess you're implying that they're saved "qua Catholic" ... and that's precisely the common argument, except that I don't understand the point of it since you've already denied the MAJOR in the bolded, saying that those outside the Church can be saved, rendering the "qua" this or "qua" this entirely moot. If you can be saved outside the Church, then who cares about the "qua"?
This is a total mess, and just shows the desperation some people have to deny the dogma EENS, so that they come up with any load of nonsense, having already begged the question that Heretics, Muslims, Jews, etc. can be saved.
I actually made a tip of the cap to the "qua" type of argument, by saying "somehow", i.e. that they can be saved somehow. But if they're saved somehow, then they must bein the Church somehow as well. So if not only Catholics are in the Church but also these other people "somehow", the ... what does that do to the definition of Church, to ecclesiology? I say "somehow" because, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter how, but only that they are in the Church, since they have to be in order to be saved.
But, as I said, you effectiely denied the MAJOR right after you said you were distinguishing the MINOR. If you meant to distinguish the MINOR by saying that a Jew (for instance) might be saved, but not "qua Jew", but rather "qua Catholic", that's not really distinguishing anyway, since I already left the "somehow" open.
Let's accept that a Jew can be saved "qua Catholic". Well, that's saying the same thing as my initial syllogism ... that they are Catholic somehow, or in some way shape or form. Obviously they're not Catholic in the same way that a baptized member of the Church who professes the Catholic faith would but in some other unknowable way.
But then the Church consists not only of Catholics, but of all kinds of these other unknown and unknowable types who are somehow in the Church despite the knowable outward appearances.
Now, one rebuttal might be, akin to what Archbishop Lefebvre said once, that they're not inside the Church until their deaths, and at the point of their transition into eternity, that's when they enter the Church. Well, the problem there is that one of the EENS definitions explicitly states that their entry into the Church must happen before their death, and that of course stands to reason, since your eternal disposition does not change upon death.
Topic: More heresy from anti-Pope (Read 71959 times)