[editor- I have been in correspondence with some well know Catholic Apologists and Priests. To my shocking dismay all of them don't seem to think explicit belief in Jesus is necessary for salvation. After discussing this problem with others in CFT, we will share with you what was "anonymously" sent us to address this serious problem of basic belief. While CFT would rather go further into the dogma, if this first step isn't reached, deeper more complicated aspects cannot be fruitfully discussed.]
"Taking Jesus as Lord and Savior" is this Catholic?
part I
by Anonymous
Introduction
I wish to challenge a theological opinion which is now almost
universally held by Catholics, including those who would consider themselves
conservative or even traditionalist in outlook. Many approved theologians have long held this opinion. Indeed, it first surfaced in the mid-sixteenth century. Since then it has gradually spread throughout the Catholic world in seminaries and theological faculties,
and in recent times seems to have been held by nearly all bishops, possibly even popes in their private capacity.
For the position I will criticize is even insinuated – though not clearly affirmed or rigorously implied – in the main document of Vatican Council II and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, as we shall see, it has been rather unexpectedly undermined by the Instruction Dominus Iesus, issued in 2000 by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – in a passage that seems to have passed
unnoticed by most commentators.
What, then, is this theological opinion which I maintain is false, and even
proximate to heresy? Quite simply, it is the proposition that at least some people dwelling
on earth in the Christian era who die as non-Christians can reach eternal salvation by
virtue of a supposed ‘implicit faith’ in Jesus Christ. In other words, I will argue that ever
since Pentecost, when the Gospel was first promulgated publicly, an absolutely necessary
condition for the salvation of persons with the use of reason is that they die as Christians,
that is, having arrived at an explicit, conscious faith in Jesus Christ as God and Savior.
This issue of course has been very well known to Catholics of Saint Benedict
Center and those of like mind for sixty years now. For it is very much part of the conflict
that began after World War II in the Archdiocese of Boston as a result of the forthright
expressions of Fr. Leonard Feeney and his SBC friends regarding the dogma extra
Ecclesiam nulla salus.
I do not propose to consider that dogma in its entirety, only
what might be described as the ‘first half’ of it.
Let me explain. In a profession of faith of the year 1442 which is one of the
cornerstones of the doctrine I want to defend today, the Ecumenical Council of Florence,
in the Bull Cantate Domino, made the following declaration.
Note that it introduces the
doctrinal content with language so solemn as to leave no doubt that this content is being
proposed infallibly and irrevocably, as a matter of divine and Catholic faith:
"The Most Holy Roman Church, founded by the word of our Lord and
Savior,. . . firmly believes, professes and preaches that no persons living outside
the Catholic Church – not only pagans but also Jews, heretics and schismatics –
can come to share in eternal life, but will go into the eternal fire . . . unless they
are aggregated to her before the end of their life”
This assertion makes crystal clear who, exactly, is to be understood as being in
fact “outside the Catholic Church”. It lists four categories of persons: “pagans, Jews,
heretics and schismatics”.
I am going to limit myself today to the first two of those four
categories: pagans (who, in the parlance of the 15th century, certainly included the
Muslims) and Jews. In other words, all non-Christians: all those who do not believe in the
Trinity and the Incarnation. (I certainly believe also the ‘second half’ of the dogma,
namely, that those who die as “heretics and schismatics” cannot be saved either.
However, the question as to who, precisely, was understood by the Florentine Fathers to
be counted as a heretic or schismatic involves some complexities which I shall not
attempt to discuss today.)
I shall limit myself, in short, to a defense of the belief, solemnly confirmed by
Florence, and backed up again in the following century by the Catechism of the Council
of Trent, that nobody dying as a non-Christian – that is, as a pagan, Jew, Muslim, atheist
or agnostic – can reach eternal life.
We could summarize this aspect or component of the
ancient extra ecclesiam dogma by changing one word of it: extra Christianismum nulla
salus. For whenever we refer to “Christianity”, in contrast to other world religions or
philosophies, we always have in mind the explicit profession of faith in Jesus Christ. In
what follows I shall abbreviate this doctrinal thesis I am defending by the initials ECNS.
As an appropriate point of reference for the contrary position which I am challenging, I
shall refer critically to a book by one of its best known and most authoritative exponents,
the well-known Jesuit theologian Fr. Francis A. Sullivan in his book:
