The Unam Sanctam "Problem" Resolved (Can Non-Catholics Be Saved?)

FidoNetRC ^ | 1997 | Phil Porvaznik

[InterestedQuestioner]

"My only concern is that there are alot of Catholics in the general sense that put way to much emphasis on Mary as more than just a woman blessed by God, and I think it has alot to do with the title, "Mother of God"."


This is a very common concern among non-Catholic Christians. We Catholics believe that the Saints in Heaven Intercede on behalf of those of us on here earth, (Rev 8; 1-5) ) and we ask them to pray to God for us. The phrase that you quoted earlier is from the last line of the Hail Mary, a very common Catholic prayer: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen." (The rest of the prayer is taken from Scripture.)

People commonly ask us, "Why don't you just pray straight to Jesus?" By all means, we do, but we also ask the Saints to pray on our behalf as well. We Orthodox and Roman Catholics are descended from the men who lived and and slept with Jesus, our ancestors ate with Him. The History of Salvation is very personal to Catholics. The Saints are our family, and we ask them to pray for us, for as St. James tells us, the prayer of the righteous man availeth much (James 5:16). We do not believe that we are separated from the Saints by death, and and we see those in Heaven as members of the Church. We worship God on earth now, they worship God in Heaven. To put it another way, "Any friend of God's is a friend of mine."

Another reason that Mary is important to us is that we also believe Jesus gave Mary to Christians to be our spiritual Mother. This is reflected in the Gospel of John, where Jesus, immediately before He dies on the cross, gives Mary to the beloved disciple to be his mother.

Mary represents the way of the Christian: she carried Christ within her, and she brought Christ into the world, which is exactly what we Christians are called to do. Notice that at the start of Jesus' Ministry at the wedding feast of Cana, the servants approach Mary with their request. Her words are directed to all of us: "Do what He says." We see Mary as always pointing to Christ, whose handmaiden she is. She is also a model of Christian obedience to God. "Be it done unto me according to your word."

Mary is not God, but she is the handmaid of the Lord. Many non-Catholic Christians are uncomfortable with the Catholic Church's teachings about Mary, and I can understand that. For us, however, she was given the great Grace of a very important role in the history of salvation. We also believe that as a Saint in Heaven, she prays to God on our behalf, and we look to her as our Spiritual Mother, very much in the same way we look to the Church, the Bride of Christ, as our Mother.

[bornacatholic]

Well, said, brother.

We Catholics have had quite a fortnight or so on Limbo and EENS. Such easy, superficial, mundane topics :)

We are in agreement. But, what I instinctively am drawn toward you have had to struggle with and are therefore more adept at spelling out. Well, that plus you're a lot smarter.

We Christians have a lot of soul-searching to do this Lent. And it also wouldn't hurt for us to read that Resasourcement site you posted recently. Our Pope is where, IMO, we ought be. And that is Patristics and Ressourcement

[bornacatholic]

Google ressourcement + EENS and one link brings you to Rerum Novarum blog. Scroll down to EENS discussion.

Interesting. Writtten by former spx'er McElhinney

[TexConfederate1861]

Amen, Brother...I agree....:)

[TexConfederate1861]

The Patriarch of Rome is deserving of the Primacy of Honor,
(Primus Inter Pares) and anything else applies to the Western or Latin Church, not Eastern Christianity. As "Koko" stated earlier, Orthodox choose to overlook the unfortunate ramblings of the medieval Popes, etc. (in the interest of possible reunion)

[TexConfederate1861]

Orthodox Christians will never accept the type of Primacy that allows the Pope to decide doctrine & dogma.

Not gonna happen.

[TexConfederate1861]

Orthodox Christians will never accept the type of Primacy that allows the Pope to decide doctrine & dogma.

Not gonna happen.

[TexConfederate1861]

Kolokotronis is NOT RC...He is Orthodox Christian.

[TexConfederate1861]

I know...:)

[Kolokotronis]

"I know...:)"

I don't doubt that for one instant, brother! :)

You know, along the lines of heresy and the early Church, I have of late been re-reading The Spiritual Meadow by +John Moschos. I've noticed something which I hadn't picked up on before and that is the multiplicity of heretical sects which were in existence at the time he wrote (late 6th early 7th century). He writes almost continually of encounters between monks of the holy catholic Church and monks or adhereants of heretic sects. Most of these people were Monophysites or variations on Monophysites, but there were others too. There seem to be two common threads among these heretical groups. First, they claim to celebrate a Eucharist with the Real presence and second, they are all hierarchial. They appear to exist side by side in the same towns or adjacent monasteries or even adjacent pillars (stylites) with The Church in a sort of snarling co-existence. He also speaks of a whole series of mini schisms as where he remarks that a certain abbot or bishop, "...at the time being out of communion with the Archbishop of Jerusalem." He doesn't seem to attach much opprobrium to those little schisms. I have yet to run across anything that looks like proto Protestantism.

I mention this because I think we in The Church have an image of the pre-schism days after so many of the big heresies had been suppressed or driven utterly, even geographically, from The Church, as being a sort of fully united Christendom when in fact it appears that that was not necessarily the case, at least in the Holy Land.

By the way, I again recommend that little book.

[TexConfederate1861]

I will try and get it...By the way, what is your opinion on the current move by the Antiochians to intercommune with the Monophysites? (Copts & Armenians) I understand the Armenians are Nestorians....I mean, the way I understand it, These guys rejected Chalcedon.....

[Pyro7480]

By the way, what is your opinion on the current move by the Antiochians to intercommune with the Monophysites? (Copts & Armenians) I understand the Armenians are Nestorians

The Armenian-rite Catholics are no longer Nestorians, so that's an exception.

[Dionysiusdecordealcis]

I'm sorry but I cannot just let this pass.

Your prooftexts in this post fail to distinguish between formal membership in the visible Catholic Church and the Catholic Church as The Church of Christ in toto. The "new" theology that you oppose (Lumen Gentium and the other documents of Vatican II, Mystici Corporis, the 19thc documents I cited earlier, JPII in Crossing the Threshold of Hope) is "new" insofar as it makes precisely that distinction.

The "laxist" position does not deny that salvation is impossible apart from the See of Peter and the Catholic Church. On the contrary, we fully affirm that no one will enter heaven apart from membership in the Catholic Church that Christ founded upon Peter.

Our "laxist" position simply disagrees with your "rigorist" position over the nature of "membership" or "adherence" to the Church founded upon Peter--over how absolutely essential formal membership in the visible manifestation of that Church founded upon Peter is. In other words, over the possiblity that the Church Christ founded upon Peter is not exactly coterminous with the visible, historic structure we call the Catholic Church here and now. Please note that I am not thereby claiming a true "invisible Church" different from the visible Church. They are one and the same church but not absolutely identical in their boundaries. That's all the Vatican II documents claim. It is a necessary and important nuancing of "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" to avoid the risk that one totally identifies the visible church on earth with the Church of Christ founded upon Peter, lest one turn the mystery of the universal Church into an idolatry of the Church's visible structures.

PLEASE NOTE the underlying theological issue: the mystery of the Church--a theological mystery that cannot be utterly identical with any historical, visible structure. It would be easy to float away into saying that visible, historical church structures don't matter, that all denominations are equally paths to heaven. I WANT TO BE CLEAR THAT I AM NOT ADVOCATING THAT KIND OF INDIFFERENTISM. But I am insisting that Catholic theology itself requires that we treat the mystery of the Church with rigorous care and not totally reduce the Church to her visible structures.

Christianity is based on the scandal of particularity, the scandal that God saves us through incarnation in time and space. The Gnostics and others wanted to deny that particularity in favor of merely spiritual, universal, invisible salvation. I am not at all interested in that and I denounce that as error. I became a Catholic in large part because Catholic teaching insists that the historical, visible Church founded by Christ on Peter cannot be dissolved into a merely spiritual, invisible aggregate of all believers over time. Against my raving feminist colleagues I insist that Christ's action in time and space, his particularity in choosing only men for apostles carries significance for all time and governs us to this day. They cannot fathom why I would give so much authority to such particularity.

So I am not abandoning or downplaying the importance of formal membership in the visible, historic Church with its center in the See of Peter. But I am saying that the theological mystery of the Church founded by Christ on Peter cannot be reduced to that visible earthly structure. It subsists in it. And, if the Church of Christ is not absolutely coterminous with that visible, earthly structure, then there is room for salvation outside that visible earthly structure but within the Church of Christ founded upon Peter. The wonder of the mystery of the Church is that it is at the same time intensely focused on the visible, particular, historic structure of the Catholic Church with Peter at its visible head and also not identical with that but incredibly and profoundly more than that.

And so, our position (Lumen Gentium etc.) claims that visible formal membership in the concrete structures of the Catholic Church is not always coterminous with membership in the Catholic Church of which the successor of Peter is the earthly head.

Your documents in the post to which I am now responding do not directly address the issue we have been debating. You make them address the issue by your interpretation of them, but they do not explicitly address the exact nature of the "baptism of desire," the characteristics or possibliity of any non-formal membership in the Catholic Church.

In effect, the entire debate is over the nature of adherence by desire--just what that is, how it functions. You accept it in principle, even as you accept invincible ignorance in principle. You interpret both of these narrowly; Lumen Gentium, Mystici Corporis and the documents from the 19thc I cited yesterday explicitly enlarge your narrow definition. Your documents are silent; the ones I cited explicitly address the issue and do so in an "enlarged" way.

In response to my citations from the 19thc you cite other contemporary documents that simply are silent on the question of how the visible, concrete bishop-of-Rome headed historical Catholic Church relates to/overlaps with, is or is not utterly coterminous with the Church of Christ that subsists in the Catholic Church.

Your documents may have a sterner tone (certainly you think they do) and you read sterner tone as prooftexting for your minimalist interpretation of baptism of desire/invincible ignorance. I gave you documents that explicitly offer an enlarged reading of invincible ignorance and you refute them with documents that do not address that point.

Finally, anyone observing this conversation from outside either camp could scarcely fail to see that a lot of invincible ignorance is floating around on this thread. That was my point in my last post, which I thought would be my last. But it didn't seem to register with you: our conversations, with spouses, with adolescent children, with political opponents involve invincible and vincible ignorance. It is very true that often we should be able to understand the other's point--often our inability to disagree with a spouse or a colleague stems from willful pride, greed, animosity (lack of charity) etc. I am not saying that everytime a conversation ends up as "agreeing to disagree" we have invincible ignorance. I am, however, saying that sometimes honest, good faith irresolvable disagreements take place. That is invincible ignorance. Unless you, Hermann, wish to claim that everyone who disagrees with you is always at fault because he is willfully choosing not to entertain your ideas and willing to be persuaded, that his disagreements with you never stem from factors in his or your background for which he and you are not culpable, then you ought to be more generous with allowing for invincible ignorance than you are.

I am not interested in letting everyone off the hook. I am, however, convinced that all of us encounter aspects of invincible ignorance alongside tons of vincible ignorance in our day-to-day lives. Invincible ignorance is very frustrating. To me it's just so obvious that I'm right about X, Y, or Z. I can't see why someone else, someone like you, Hermann, can't see that the interpretation I'm giving (and Lumen Gentium, Pius XII etc. give) to Extra Ecclesiam is the right one. But I am not going to declare that Hermann's inability to see my point stems from Hermann's sinful, willful disobedience to the voice of conscience within him that is telling him, "Oh Hermann, listen up now, Dionysiusdecordealcis is right about this and if you want to escape hell you better listen to him."

No, I ascribe to Hermann good faith, honesty, integrity, when he sets forth a minimalist interpretation of Extra Ecclesiam. I believe that Christian charity requires me to think of Hermann this way and that, if I did not, I, not Hermann, would be guilty of sin.

Why I should not apply the same principles to at least some of those who, despite my best efforts and the best efforts of many Catholics far better skilled at explaining the reasons for accepting Catholic teaching in general, I must confess, I am powerless to understand. I am invincibly ignorant of the reasons why I should not be more generous toward those who are not yet Catholic but who are honest, good faith believers in Jesus Christ or (more rare but not impossible) honest desirers of Truth.

[Dionysiusdecordealcis]

Identical yes, coterminous, no. One has termini that are of a different sort than the other. See # 193. The debate is really about "termini" and boundaries. I'm simply applying a sacramental, incarnational principle: wondrously the Infinite and Absolute Creator stoops to our level and becomes incarnate. He is on th eone hand visible, bounded by his human nature, bounded in space and time. But He, the Divine Person, who is bounded is also obviously at the same time not bounded. The incarnation and his incarnate boundedness cannot be ignored in the manner of the Docetists or Gnostics but neither can the Savior be reduced to his incarnate boundedness.

It would be an awful lot easier to understand if we could go to the one extreme (Gnostic spiritualizing unboundedness) or the other (Adoptionist/Liberal merely human, bounded, prophet with an extra dose of the Spirit's unction) but our faith insists on holding both in tension.

Therefore, the Church is both bounded, terminated, structured in its visible, earthly form and we can be bounded, visible, formal members of that Church but the Church in toto, the Church founded by Christ upon Peter is not coterminous.

You have pointed out a fallacy in my terminology. I should have avoided saying not "identical" because it's potentially confusing--there is identity between the visible Church on earth headed by the successor of Peter and the Church founded by Christ on Peter, identity of subsistence, but not coterminousness because the one has clear, earthly termini and the other does not.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Your prooftexts in this post fail to distinguish between formal membership in the visible Catholic Church and the Catholic Church as The Church of Christ in toto.

I'm just pointing out the complete teaching on this topic by referencing points you seem to be ignoring. I am not "prooftexting".

The "new" theology that you oppose (Lumen Gentium and the other documents of Vatican II, Mystici Corporis, the 19thc documents I cited earlier, JPII in Crossing the Threshold of Hope) is "new" insofar as it makes precisely that distinction.

How can I be "opposing" Lumen Gentium, Unitatis Redintegratio, the new Catechism, etc. when I explicitly point to where they uphold what I am saying by quoting them and saying I agree with them?

I don't understand where you are going with this at all.

In other words, over the possiblity that the Church Christ founded upon Peter is not exactly coterminous with the visible, historic structure we call the Catholic Church here and now.

Where do you find this anywhere? Lumen Gentium says the Chruch of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. That means that the Catholic Church is the substance of the Church of Christ just like a singular human being is the substance of a particular human person. If a particular person is able to exist partly outside the substance of his own body and soul, the Church of Christ can extend beyond the Catholic Church, and this sort of explication can be harmonious with Lumen Gentium. The Catholic Church is the complete manifestation of the Church of Christ. Everything outside of her that has fallen away is only "ecclesial" - "Church-like". It partially resembles the reality of the Catholic Church, but it is not a part of the Church that is now missing.

PLEASE NOTE the underlying theological issue: the mystery of the Church--a theological mystery that cannot be utterly identical with any historical, visible structure.

I did note that. That's why I said you are dividing the Church into a physical visible reality - the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and an invisible entity - the Church of Christ. You appear to be saying what Leonardo Boff was condemned by the CDF for.

And, if the Church of Christ is not absolutely coterminous with that visible, earthly structure, then there is room for salvation outside that visible earthly structure but within the Church of Christ founded upon Peter.

Here is where you are speaking in riddles again. "No salvation outside the Church" does not mean its opposite.

You make them address the issue by your interpretation of them, but they do not explicitly address the exact nature of the "baptism of desire," the characteristics or possibliity of any non-formal membership in the Catholic Church.

By making a vow to receive Baptism, the person simultaneously makes a vow to become a member of the Catholic Church. They are of course Catholics, because to make a vow to receive Baptism, even implicitly, one must hold explicitly the rudiments of the Catholic Faith, and the resulting justification of the person unites them to Christ and His members in His spouse the Church in grace. The Catholic Church is defined as the union of all the faithful under the Pope and Bishops sharing in the Sacraments of Christ. Someone who has Baptism of Desire is sharing in the Sacraments in reality although not actually (yet), so they are in reality a member of the Church.

What seems to be confusing you here is that you appear to be trying to extend membership in the Church to people who do not hold the Catholic Faith, but explicitly uphold paganism, Judaism, or heresy. Someone who worships the demons, rejects Christ, or believes in his own fancies instead of divine revelation imparted to mankind through the Prophets and Apostles does not know Christ Jesus, and therefore does not hold the Catholic Faith.

[Kolokotronis]

"I will try and get it..."

Its on Amazon.

"By the way, what is your opinion on the current move by the Antiochians to intercommune with the Monophysites? (Copts & Armenians) I understand the Armenians are Nestorians....I mean, the way I understand it, These guys rejected Chalcedon....."

All I know about that is that there is a lot of talk going on along the idea that the distinction between the Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians is only in words and not belief. I know almost nothing about the talks, though. I thought it was the MP who was behind that but I guess it would make sense for the Antiochians to be involved. I have heard that by economia its OK to receive communion in Non-Chalcedonian and Armenian Churches if one of ours isn't available and vice versa but I don't know if that's just a rumor or really true. Never having found myself in that situation, I haven't given it much thought.

[Dionysiusdecordealcis]

I nowhere spoke of an invisible Church. I nowhere said that those who are not formal members of the visible church are members of an invisible church. I did not posit two churches. All I said was what JPII said in Crossing the Threshold and what the Vatican II documents say: although the fullness of the Church of Christ subsists in the visible Catholic church bounded by communion with the bishop of Rome, some can be saved who are not formal members of that visible church (are not within those visible boundaries). If such are saved they are saved through Christ and through the one single Church of Christ but they are not formal members of that Church. I cannot state it any plainer.

Because the mystery named Church of Christ does not have visible boundaries whereas the historical, visible, structured thing called the visible Catholic Church does have visible boundaries these two facts have to be kept in paradoxical tension theologically or the mystery is collapsed into non-mystery. But the reality of these two characteristics of the ONE (get that, ONE) Church of Christ means that the mysterious Church of Christ is not coterminous with the visible Catholic Church. Its fullness subsists in the visible Catholic Church but the visible Catholic Church does not and cannot, simply cannot, exhaust the unboundedness of the mysterious Church of Christ.

It's the same principle as the sacraments: the fullness of Christ, body, soul, divinity is present under the appearance of bread and wine but not present locally or sense-perceptibly. The visible Catholic Church is a time-bounded, space bounded, history-bounded reality on earth. It is the same Church as the one Church of Christ that constitutes the Corpus Mysticus of Christ himiself but the Corpus Mysticus of Christ is not and cannot be coterminous with the visible, bounded historic Catholic Church because the one is bounded and the other is not. And we are bound to believe in both and hold them in theological, mystery-paradox.

I'm sorry you perceive this to be a riddle. Sounds like invincible ignorance, again. Your interpretation is sooooooooooo obvious to you that mine seems a riddle to you. Mine is soooooooo clear to me that yours seems like a riddle to me. This will get us nowhere.

And please don't throw Leonardo Boff at me. It's very rude! ;)

[annalex]

By making a vow to receive Baptism, the person simultaneously makes a vow to become a member of the Catholic Church. They are of course Catholics, because to make a vow to receive Baptism, even implicitly, one must hold explicitly the rudiments of the Catholic Faith

Do I understand you correctly, Hermann, that a baptized (in a Protestant setting, but validly) Protestant is a capital-C Catholic Christian who fell off on the rest of the sacraments? If so, then do you not arrive at a community of Catholic Christians that is larger than the community of practicing Catholic Christians? And then, does Dionysius not speak of the same duality of boundary you do?

[donbosco74]

The minefield is treacherous. When you said,

...the Latin Church does not hold a blanket condemnation of Holy Orthodoxy or the Orthodox. The condemnation of the Feeneyites, which I assume is authoritative as I said, pretty clearly does.

To be better informed, you ought to know what led up to the so-called excommunication of Fr. Feeney, what the nature of the process was, of what it consisted and how it was eventually "lifted." By the way, the Church does not condemn a group of people, but only a false doctrine or proposition that anyone can hold. The Church cannot condemn a person, either. Excommunication is the extent of her power, which has temporal and supernatural implications, but is not a "condemnation" of the person. In any event, excommunication must be based on some specific denial of dogma. Disobedience, per se, is insufficient, because it presumes the order disobeyed was an absolutely just order.

To be better informed, you should also pay attention to the response the Feeneyites made to a "liberal" (Fr. P.J. Donnelly, S.J.), who published a theological paper at the time, in their next issue of From the Housetops, which includes this:

...in the modern liberal presentation of the Church’s doctrine concerning salvation outside the Church, there are contained THE FOLLOWING ERRORS:

1. One can be saved outside the Church.

2. One can be saved without having the Catholic Faith.

3. Baptism is not necessary for salvation.

4. To confess the supremacy and infallibility of the Roman Church and of the Roman Pontiff is not necessary for salvation.

5. One can be saved without submitting personally to the authority of the Roman Pontiff.

6. Ignorance of Christ and His Church excuses one from all fault and confers justification and salvation.

7. One can be saved who dies ignorant of Christ and His Church.

8. One can be saved who dies hating Christ and His Church.

9. God, of His Supreme Goodness and Mercy, would not permit anyone to be punished eternally unless he had incurred the guilt of voluntary sin.

10. A man is sure of his salvation once he is justified.

11. One can be saved by merely an implicit desire for Baptism.

12. There are two Churches, the one visible, the other invisible.

13. There are two kinds of membership in the Church.

14. Membership in the Church can be invisible or even unconscious.

15. To know and love the Blessed Virgin is not necessary for salvation.

Ever since that reply, there has been a mysterious silence from Rome, except to refer back to the so-called condemnation. These 15 false propositions have not been dealt with, as challenged there in that little old magazine, long ago. So, why the silence? They've had plenty of time. It's been 57 years, now. Are they waiting for the entire generation of people who were alive then to die off or something? Let's keep it in perspective: when Abp. Lefebvre consecrated 4 new bishops, the new Vatican cranked out her response in a couple of days!

You have to recall the climate and history of the time. Post WWII, nuclear warfare, Red China rising, Israel setting up shop, Communist USSR rattling sabers. IOW, lots of problems. It's fairly well known now that he was considering an ecumenical council, but to address the dangers to the faith, which would have had to include Communism. It could be that Pope Pius XII was looking toward the definition of the Assumption, the preparatory texts of which must have been already in the works, even early 1949. Did he expect that would cure all his ills? And remember, it was he who appointed Annibale Bugnini to high office. Not to excuse his reticence, but he was certainly kept busy those last years by ecclesiastics with an undercurrent of common purpose: delay the council until a more liberal pope can be its head.

Any way you look at it, the 15 points above, at odds with Catholic Tradition, have yet to be answered by the Vatican. In fact, each one of them has become conspicuously larger over the years, as successive popes have added to the appearance that the Church officially approves them.

[Kolokotronis]

You know, db, it is a minefield. I suppose I should just be pharisaical and say thank God I worhip God the way my people have for 1700 odd years and believe the same things in the same way they did. Truth be told, if there is never a reunion, it won't change my life one whit. Sometimes it does seem to me that if there is a reunion, however, my life might change decidedly for the worse.