By RAYMOND DE SOUZA
Part 37
“Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus” — “outside of the Church there is no salvation” — is a formal Catholic teaching. There is only one Lord, one faith, and one Baptism (Eph. 4:5) and One Church of God, the Pillar and Mainstay of the Truth (1 Tim. 3:15). 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.
Naturally, an objection emerges in full force: If people can be saved like this, why should we try to convert them, anyway? Just let them be and God will take care of them. . . .
A couple of principles must be established in order properly to answer the objection. First of all, the people who do not know that the Catholic Church is the Church of Jesus Christ must make an act of love of God, of charity, in order to be saved. What is the act of charity? It is act of the person’s will, which includes the desire to do God’s will in everything. Now, since Jesus commanded everyone to be baptized into His Church, the desire to do God’s will in everything necessarily includes being baptized, since it is God’s will. The person who wants to do God’s will implicitly wants to be baptized, once he knows it is God’s will to be baptized.
It is important to emphasize that we are talking about those people who are truly ignorant of the reality of the Catholic Church, and of her essential role in the process of salvation — that is, through no fault of their own, non-guilty.
Since the Church stands plainly before the eyes of men like a city on a mountaintop, and the words of her ministers have gone forth to the ends of the Earth, those who know her but do not bother to join and prefer to remain in a little church of their own making and preference, do not fit into the description of “non-guilty ignorance.” Salvation is not easy for those who live deprived of the abundant graces at the disposal of those who belong to the visible membership of the Church.
We often hear about the case of children who are murdered by abortion or who simply die unbaptized. Our Lord did not reveal anything specific about innocent children who die before the age of reason and without Baptism. So, the common teaching is that they are admitted to a state of natural, but not supernatural, happiness. The Church has never said that they are sent to a place of suffering. We leave them to God’s mercy, since there is no clear revelation about it.
Now we can tackle a key aspect of the objection, usually proposed by the fanatics of ecumenism. They say that, since people of other religions are sincere, we should not try to convert them because, at the end of the day, “All religions are equally good. Believers in other religions, or in no religion, should be left alone, in good faith. It is enough if they are sincere. No one has the right to disturb them or criticize their beliefs or to try to change them.”
If the objection had any truth in it, then St. Francis Xavier wasted his time going to India and Japan, St. Paul should have remained in Damascus among the Jews, and Jesus made a mistake in telling the apostles, after the Resurrection, to go and preach to all nations, teaching them to observe everything He had taught them, and baptizing them. Jesus would have been wrong in saying that those who refused to believe would be condemned. . . . How judgmental!
Besides, the affirmation that “they are sincere” has as many holes in it as a piece of Swiss cheese. Who can deny that Adolf Hitler was sincere? Of course he was! When he had millions of Jews and Gypsies — along with anyone else he considered to be a threat to the Nazi regime — killed, he was being very much sincere! Stalin, Castro, Mao, and the rest of the Devil’s minions who have murdered millions were undoubtedly sincere.
But “sincerity” alone is never enough! Sincerity is no obstacle to causing harm. Sincere people can be dangerously mistaken, can do great harm, and can lead others to do the same. Anyone can see that sins and false ideas always harm human beings and human happiness, even in the possible rare occasions when the perpetrators are unaware of it and are not culpable.
More: Everyone does not believe that sincerity is enough: Anyone who needs an airplane pilot, electrician, builder, doctor, or chef wants not just a sincere person of good intentions, but a knowledgeable and reliable person, competent for the job. A sincere airplane pilot is not necessarily a good pilot!
Now, if sincerity, by itself, is evidently insufficient in all these areas of life, why on Earth should it be sufficient in the most important matters? We are talking about the very purpose of life, the truth about God and man and Christ, the truth about right and wrong, holiness and sinfulness, salvation and damnation! Would you entrust your soul and its eternal destination to the hands of a “pastor” or “guru” just because he is sincere, and truly believes in what he tells you? Of course not! Anyone knows that.
As to the claim that all religions are equally “good,” you don’t have to be Mr. Spock of Star Trek to see that this is not logical! No one who is logical — and here I really mean no one — can state that “all religions are equally good and true” in all sincerity.
It is equivalent to saying that truth and error are equally good, that God’s Revelation and human opinions are equally good, that to worship God or the Devil is equally good, that to offer prayers or practice human sacrifice is equally good, and that a religion which approves such indifferentism to truth is just as good as a religion which condemns it. That would amount to sheer mental suicide.
However, one could still return to the initial objection and say that, after all, if a heretic or a pagan can still be saved by following the natural law, would it not be more charitable to let him be?
That’s for our next article.
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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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