Is There Salvation Outside the Church?
Father Peter Stravinskas, in his article Can outsiders be saved?, analyzes the subject of salvation outside the Church and Catholic doctrine. I offer you my summary in Spanish. -Father Jordi Rivero.
Saint Peter said: “For there is no other name under heaven (than Jesus) given to men, whereby we must be saved.” -Acts 4:12. Like other teachings, this must be understood in the light of the whole of Sacred Scripture and of the wisdom that the Holy Spirit gives to His Church throughout the centuries. See: development of doctrine
Saint Paul in 1 Tim 2:4: (God) who wills that all men be saved and come to the full knowledge of the truth. How is this desire of God reconciled with what Saint Peter said above and the fact that so many people die without knowing Jesus?
The Holy Fathers taught that there is no salvation outside the Church. Cyprian, for example, said: “You cannot have God for your Father if you do not have the Church for your Mother”. Nevertheless, these teachings referred to those who, having known the true faith, rejected it.
Saint Augustine thought that, the Gospel having been proclaimed everywhere, the Jews and others who did not accept Jesus would be condemned. This teaching had great influence because the Church was seeking the correct interpretation of what Saint Peter had said. But Saint Augustine’s interpretation did not come to be universally accepted. We must remember that even the Fathers and the saints make errors in that matter which is not clearly defined.
Later, Saint Thomas Aquinas also taught the necessity of belonging to the Church in order to be saved, but at the same time he taught the possibility of the “baptism of desire”: one can obtain salvation without in fact being baptized, if the person desired baptism; such desire is the result of the faith that works through charity, by which God, whose power is not bound to the visible sacraments, sanctifies the person interiorly. (ref.: Summa Theologiae III, q.68, a.2).
Pope Pius IX in Singulari Quadam taught the doctrine of “no salvation outside the Church” with some important nuances. He taught, for example, that some labor in “invincible ignorance” concerning our religion but observe with perseverance the natural law and its precepts, which God has “inscribed in the hearts of all”. These are ready to obey God and live an honest and upright life, so that they can, by the working of the divine light and grace, attain eternal life.”
Eighty years after the encyclical of Pius IX, Pope Pius XII published Mystici Corporis in 1943. In it he teaches that those who are outside the Catholic Church must be prompt to follow the interior movements of grace and to rescue themselves from that state in which they cannot be certain of their own salvation. For, although by a certain unconscious desire they may be related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer, they may remain deprived of so many and such powerful gifts and helps from heaven which can be enjoyed only within the Catholic Church.
In 1949, a letter of the Holy Office to Archbishop Cushing refers to the encyclical of Pius XII: “The Pope censures those who exclude from eternal salvation all men who adhere to the Church only by an implicit desire; he also censures those who falsely maintain that men can be saved equally in every religion.”
Between the First and Second Vatican Councils, the theologian Yves Congar taught that “elements” of the one true Church exist outside its visible boundaries. Another theologian, Henri de Lubac, continued that line. Both were official periti (Latin “experts”) at Vatican II, and both were named cardinals by Pope John Paul II.
The Second Vatican Council did not change the doctrine but rather crystallized almost 1900 years of theological development.
In Lumen Gentium the Council confirmed the doctrine that the Church is necessary for salvation because Christ, made present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the only way of salvation. The Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation.” All salvation comes through the Church of Christ; outside of this grace there is no hope of eternal life. This truth must be understood together with the following:
Referring to non-Catholic Christians, the Decree on Ecumenism taught that they too carry out many sacred actions of our Christian religion. These actions can truly engender a life of grace and can provide access to the community of salvation. Although they have defects, these communities are not without meaning and importance in the mystery of salvation, since the Spirit of Christ uses them as means of salvation. But these means of salvation derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church.
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John Paul II in The Unicity and Salvific Universality of Christ and the Church:
In connection with the unicity of the salvific mediation of Christ is found the unicity of the Church founded by Him. Indeed, the Lord Jesus constituted His Church as a salvific reality: as His Body, through which He Himself acts in the history of salvation. Just as there is one Christ, so there exists one single Body: “one, catholic and apostolic Church” (cf. Symbol of Faith, DS 48). The Second Vatican Council states in this regard: “the sacred Council… teaches, basing itself on Sacred Scripture and Tradition, that this pilgrim Church is necessary for salvation” (Lumen gentium, 14).
It is true that non-Christians -as the Second Vatican Council has recalled- can “attain” eternal life “under the influence of grace,” if they “seek God with a sincere heart” (Lumen gentium, 16). But in their sincere search for the truth of God, they are in fact “ordered” to Christ and to His Body, the Church (see there). They find themselves, therefore, in a deficient situation compared with that of those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation. Thus it is understood that, following the command of the Lord (see Mt 28:19-20) and as a requirement of love for all men, the Church “proclaims, and is bound to proclaim without ceasing, Christ who is ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life’ (Jn 14:6), in whom men find the fullness of religious life, and in whom God reconciled all things to Himself” (Nostra aetate, 2).
Author: Fr. Peter Stravinskas.
Summary by Fr. Jordi Rivero
