Steven Merten
Active Member
Pope Francis is under attack for saying that outside the Church there is no salvation:
it’s a “poke in the eye” says one Presbyterian.
Here is why he’s wrong
Here we go again: a new Pope says something that all his predecessors have said because it is what the Church has always taught, and some Protestant accuses him of personally adopting (I quote a Prebyterian minister writing in the National Catholic Reporter (aka fishwrap) a “dicey position”, as though he had a choice in the matter. According to the Reverend Bill Tammeus, when Pope Francis recently quoted Pope Paul saying “It’s an absurd dichotomy to think one can live with Jesus, but without the Church, to follow Jesus outside the Church, to love Jesus and not the Church”, he is “intentionally (my emphasis) offering a poke in the eye to people outside [his] faith tradition”.it’s a “poke in the eye” says one Presbyterian.
Here is why he’s wrong
Pope Francis is under attack for saying that outside the Church there is no salvation: it’s a “poke in the eye” says one Presbyterian. Here is why he’s wrong | Catholic Herald
Catechism of the Catholic Church 846
(No Salvation Outside the Church)
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:(No Salvation Outside the Church)
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.
CCC Search Result - Paragraph # 846
Papal Declarations on “No Salvation Outside the Church”
Pope Pius XII (A.D. 1939 – 1958): “By divine mandate the interpreter and guardian of the Scriptures, and the depository of Sacred Tradition living within her, the Church alone is the entrance to salvation: She alone, by herself, and under the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the source of truth.”
“Pope Leo XII (A.D. 1823 – 1829): “We profess that there is no salvation outside the Church …For the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. With reference to those words Augustine says: `If any man be outside the Church he will be excluded from the number of sons, and will not have God for Father since he has not the Church for mother.'”
Pope Pius IX (A.D. 1846 – 1878): “It must be held by faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church, no one can be saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not have entered therein will perish in the flood.”
Papal Declarations on "No Salvation Outside the Church" - Scripture Catholic
There Is No Salvation outside the Catholic Church
To state “there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church” does not mean that no Protestant, Jew, Muslim, etc., could be saved, but if he were saved, it would be by virtue of the Catholic Church and not his erring sect or religion. If he were saved, it would be because he was, by grace (or in the case of Protestants, by baptism), a member of the Catholic Church. Everyone who is in heaven is a member of the Church Triumphant and, ipso facto, a Catholic.
I do not think many people will deny that there are good and holy people in other religions. But this does not lessen the importance of the fact that all the graces in the world enter the world through the Catholic Church.
There Is No Salvation outside the Catholic Church - OnePeterFive