From Monsignor Fenton

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 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:

   (1)  a profession of the Catholic faith issued by the Fourth Latern Council, the twelfth in the series of Oecuмenical Councils, in 1215, during the pontificate Pope Innocent III.

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

   (3) 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.

   (4) 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.

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

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

   (7)  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.

   (8)  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.  (Hello? LoT)

   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 American 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.

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Emphasize mine throughout.  LoT