By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 38
We continue on this challenging topic of salvation outside of the Church of God. The official Catholic teaching remains: “Extra Ecclesiam, nulla salus” — “outside of the Church, there is no salvation.” And yet people who are faithful to divine grace (which God gives to all) and to the natural law (which is written in men’s hearts) can be saved.
“If this is so, that is, that non-Catholics and even non-Christians can be saved, why bother to seek converts at home and send missionaries abroad?”
The answer is simple: Because Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate, commanded us to do it. And we reply, “Thy will be done,” and carry out with the work of evangelization. On the day that a faithful Catholic, be he a layman, religious, priest, bishop, cardinal, or Pope, chooses not to convert non-Catholics, woe unto him! St. Paul leaves no room for doubt on this matter: “Woe unto me, if I preach not the Gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16).
Here are four other good reasons as to why we must evangelize:
1) The Catholic Church, because she has all of Christ’s teachings and all the means of salvation, gives greater helps to salvation and assurance of it;
2) She enables people to reach a higher degree of glory which they shall enjoy for all eternity.
3) She gives the peace and blessings of the true faith on Earth; and
4) God desires to be known, loved, and served in this life — as well as in the next. Ignorance is not bliss!
We must never, ever let any fancy theory about the general salvation of non-Catholics undermine our apostolic and missionary endeavors. Jesus sent His apostles to evangelize, not to ecumenize. Since Christ gave us the command to go and teach all nations, and since all people have a right to know God their Father, Jesus Christ their Savior, and Mary their Mother, we must bring people, as many as possible, to the one true religion. Let us remember that “God our Savior . . . desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4).
The salvation of individual people who are faithful to grace and to the natural law is left to God’s designs, which He has not disclosed to us.
A question that naturally arises from this conclusion is: OK, unbaptized people in heathen lands may qualify for the privilege of salvation through fidelity to the natural law, but what about baptized people like Protestants and Orthodox and Anglicans, and every other little sect or denomination that crops up every other week?
While not being members of the Catholic Church, these Christians are our brothers, for they are in partial but imperfect communion with the Catholic Church by virtue of their Baptism. But — and this “but” is of paramount importance — whatever truth they have, they have received from the Catholic Church, since those things truly belong to and come from the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church ardently prays that all Christians may be one and enter into full communion with her. The Second Vatican Council taught that it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.
Here is the full text:
The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, explains: “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 846, citing Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, says:
“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.”
The number of the many converts to the Catholic Church, over the centuries, has been outstanding, especially those who have entered the Church at great personal sacrifice. Of course, a change from Catholicism to another non-Catholic body involves heresy or schism, and can never be justified: Such changes are always accompanied by moral difficulties; the intellectual conversion has barely any credibility.
The declaration of a staunch Anglican here is significant: “A man who is converted from Protestantism to Popery [Catholicism], may be sincere: he parts with nothing: he is only adding to what he already had. But a convert from Popery to Protestantism, gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as anything that he retains: there is so much laceration of mind in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and lasting” (Dr. Samuel Johnson in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Everyman: 1946).
(For some outstanding conversion stories, see Surprised by Truth, edited by Patrick Madrid, Basilica Press, San Diego: 1994. Also: Twenty-three Jewish conversions are related in Bread From Heaven: Stories of Jews Who Found the Messiah, edited by Ronda Chervin, Remnant of Israel, New Hope, Ky.: 1994.)
No Medium
The ultimate choice is between light and darkness. Those who examine seriously the claims of the Catholic Church come to realize that the choice is between her — and nothing.
John Henry Cardinal Newman recorded that, while still an Anglican, he “came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other. There are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the way to Atheism: Anglicanism is the halfway house on the one side, and Liberalism is the halfway house on the other” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, chapter IV).
Next article: Summing up and answering objections.
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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