Ladislaus said:Note that Caminus and SJB both refuse to answer my original question. That shows a complete lack of honesty, refusing to answer a question simply for fear of where it may lead.
It's a very simple question.
There's a Bible-believin Protestant who attends Protestant services, believes that the Catholic Church has it all wrong, and accepts, among other things, sola Scriptura and sola fide. Of all the Protestants in the world who fit that description, if they died without being disabused of these beliefs, could any of these be saved?
trad123 said:The CMRI/SSPV/SSPX would all respond in the affirmative of such a possibility.
They would say he has to be invincibly ignorant. Ladislaus is talking about someone who is culpably ignorant. If CMRI did say he could be saved, they would somehow twist the sense of "invincibly ignorant" to let this Protestant off the hook. For instance, that he is invincibly ignorant because he has been prejudiced against Catholicism by his parents. I am meeting with their priest again soon and I'll ask him some questions to see how far they take "invincible ignorance."
Like Ladislaus, I do not believe invincible ignorance is exculpatory, and I believe in St. Augustine's definition of those outside the Church as the massa damnata, all those who have never heard the Gospel.
Ladislaus, you say believing in the Catholic Church itself and what it proposes for belief constitutes the formal motive of faith. Do you have any backup for that?
I understand where you're coming from because that ends all confusion. If belief in God revealing is the formal motive of faith, and God can reveal outside the Church, then this could lead you to adopt a stance similar to Garrigou-Lagrange, where simply believing in and following the natural law in one instance is enough to prove supernatural faith in God. Is this simply rationalism and Pelagianism cloaking itself with the term "supernatural faith," as I said earlier, or, since obedience to the natural law requires actual grace, is supernatural faith involved after all?
A compromise can be reached. Someone who obeys the natural law CAN have supernatural faith -- since they are corresponding with prevenient grace, which comes from God. But more than that is required for justification. An act of supernatural faith does not result right away in charity, perfect contrition and the remission of sins.
The question then arises as to when justification occurs. Ordinarily, it is at the moment of baptism. If Ladislaus is right and the formal motive of faith is not just God revealing as "the universal God," the God of nature, but God revealing as the Catholic God, the God of the Church, then it is as the moment that one commits himself to believing everything the
Catholic Church teaches, it is at the moment one decides to become Catholic that he becomes eligible for justification.
This of course opens up new problems, because some will say "What if someone is instructed by Protestants and knows about the Trinity and Incarnation and baptism, but not the Catholic Church -- can they be saved?" No. So much for that problem.
This is by no means a dogma, but it actually makes sense, and it eliminates many difficulties. Not to mention that it is fully consonant with my experience. I was a sort of wavering "Christian" for two years, but everything began to click when I committed myself to becoming Catholic. It is from that moment that I believe I can trace my new self as having emerged, rather than from the moment that I began to believe in Jesus Christ, but in a confused and disorientated and corrupted way. I had a girlfriend and saw nothing wrong with it, I just believed in my incorrect version of Jesus Christ.
But for now, I have decided that the Church has left this question -- "What is the minimum amount of knowledge required for justification?" -- open. If we accept what Pius XII and the VII Popes teach, it is not open for speculation, and implicit faith can save. Luckily, I do not accept what they teach. But I am giving ground in that I no longer will accuse those who teach diferently than me, so far, of heresy on this matter, depending on how they define "implicit faith." For instance, Bishop Fellay spoke something close to heresy when he said a Hindu could be saved, because Hindi don't believe in one God but several. Bp. Fellay didn't specify that this Hindu, to qualify for his version of implicit faith, would have to believe in one God who is a rewarder, at which point he would have ceased attending Hindu services ( if they have any ). If pressed to explain himself, perhaps Bp. Fellay would have mentioned that.
I do not believe that believing in one God who is a rewarder is enough to save, but how can I call it heresy when this opinion has been circulating for four hundred years and was never specifically condemned? If God is going to punish me for wimping out and saying that implicit faith isn't heresy, I will tell him that ( a ) I didn't believe it personally and ( b ) His Church never condemned it. But until then, I concur with Ladislaus that this theory of implicit faith is only proximate to heresy, rather than with the Feeneyites or Richard Ibranyi that it is heresy.
When Gregory XVI reproved those who believe you can be saved in any religion whatsoever, I tried to convince myself this was directed against the implicit faith idea. But that was wishful thinking.
Summo Iugiter Studio, Gregory XVI
"Finally some of these misguided people attempt to persuade themselves and others that men are not saved only in the Catholic religion, but that even heretics may attain eternal life."
I find it hard to believe that he would dismiss this whole centuries-long implicit faith controversy with one throwaway comment. If that were his intent, he would be much more likely to have written a formal denunciation. The sense of his comment is clearly aimed at those who say "You can be saved as a Protestant" or "You can be saved as an Orthodox" -- those who say, in effect, that other religions are means of salvation.
Those who explain implicit faith carefully ( no, not you, Abp. Lefebvre ), say that those who are saved IN another sect are saved IN the Catholic religion. This is probably why Mgr. Fenton is considered by Caminus to have upheld the EENS dogma -- while to people like me he seems to be busting it apart -- because he was very, very meticulous about how he defined implicit faith. He punctiliously "informs" his readers that someone who is invincibly ignorant can be a member by desire and thus IN the Catholic Church. He objects to those he considers less careful, who say such a person is joined to the soul of the Church or is not a member in any way. He objects to this because such formulations make the implicit faithers easy to attack.
As for Cantate Domino, it says that pagans, Jews, heretics, schismatics will go to hell unless they are JOINED TO THE CHURCH before the end of their lives. Those who teach implicit faith carefully, like Mgr. Fenton, do make sure to specify that those who are eligible for salvation by implicit faith are joined to the Church.
Yeah, they may have found a loophole, and maybe they are quibbling with words -- deal with it. It's just like St. Thomas and limbo. To avoid teaching the Pelagian heresy, he came up with the ludicrous concept of a happy place in hell. And it worked. He avoided heresy. He is still surely wrong on this one, but not a heretic.
Mgr. Fenton was wrong when he said that the Church has always taught implicit faith, but the wording of the Church decrees doesn't rule it out either. There is a case that can be made that it is not a development of doctrine, but a revelation of what was always latent. The reason is that the early Church Fathers spoke of those who could have been saved by implicit faith before the coming of Christ, which leaves the door open for speculation about implicit faith after His coming. Until the Church says something like "The idea that you can be saved in another sect by implicit faith -- CONDEMNED," then I'd have to say people are free to speculate, as distasteful as that is for me to admit. I am like St. Augustine waking up after a long slumber in a new semi-Pelagian world, but what can I do?