Non-Catholic Communities As “Means Of Salvation”
By FR. BRIAN W. HARRISON, OS Many dissident traditionalists claim that Vatican Council II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (UR) is irreconcilable with traditional Catholic doctrine. The passage most commonly singled out in support of this claim is the affirmation in article 3 of the Decree that “the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using [non-Catholic communities] as means of salvation.” Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his followers in the Society of St. Pius X, for instance, have for decades denounced this conciliar teaching as heterodox. While SSPX writers acknowledge that non-Catholics can sometimes be saved in their separated communities, they insist that, according to Catholic orthodoxy, no one can ever be saved through, by or because of those communities, as is entailed in…Continue Reading