Avery Cardinal Dulles
Posted on 02/22/2008 1:58:09 PM PST by NYer
Ooohh, that's gonna get a reaction!
How do these heretics rise to power in the Catholic, Methodist Church et. al. while spouting this false doctrine? You would think that during their tenure their beliefs would have come under scrutiny before now.
Has the church adopted the Peter Principle like the rest of the corporate world?
To think that Cardinal Dulles was once affiliated with Fr. Leonard Feeney and the St. Benedict Center!
bump for later
Perhaps explaining who can be damned would have been an easier task for the cardinal.
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I have heard the arguement that those who have not heard the Gospel (so therfore have not refused it) yet believe in God and respond to the Law of God written on their heart have indeed the possibility to be saved by the Name of Jesus, though they may have never heard it, due to the mercy of a loving God.
I am not so wise that I would exclude this. Maybe there are some here that would have an arguement against this - I would like to hear it.
Cheers
Mel
In what way is Cardinal Dulles a heretic?
I have to say that the majority position in Orthodoxy seems to be that we simply don’t know what happens outside the bounds of The Church and it is inappropriate to circumscribe whither the Spirit might go. Salvation/theosis is indeed found within The Church. Beyond, well, who can say?
God's normal and primary extension of sanctifying grace is through His Sacraments. It is true that "God is the Author of the Sacraments, but He is not bound by them." Even so, they are His ordinary means of sanctifying grace. In that non-Christians and even non-Catholic/Orthodox Christians do not avail themselves of the Sacraments - Confession or Reconciliation being especially germaine in this discussion - it is difficult to see how, without innumerable extraordinary interventions into the free will of such people at death, God can pull very many through under such conditions. Well, one might say, a perfect act of contrition could suffice for such people. Indeed it could. But, as a matter of practical experience, how many non-Catholics even have the slightest notion that, at a bare minimum, such a contrite state of soul is necessary to be saved? I would venture fairly few!
The Church is beginning to show signs of backing away from tolerating an almost implicit universal salvationism common over the last couple of generations, and backing in toward the center. The rigorism of the first half or more of the Christian era went too far in one direction, to the point where it was considered flat-out impossible for any non-Catholic to be saved. God would be little better than a monster for creating souls He knew from all eternity had no chance whatsoever to be saved. The excessively hopeful expectations of salvation for non-Catholics of more recent times went too far in the other direction. God, in such a scenario, instituted Sacraments and called people to the Narrow Way for no serious purpose, since virtually everyone can attain salvation, Sacraments or no.
The "correct" answer may lie in the unpacking of what it means to be in a state of sanctifying grace, what is required by God to be considered in that state, and, realistically, how many people outside of the sacramental system are likely to attain it.
Given that it's possible for non-Catholics to attain such a state, even deprived of the Sacraments due to particular circumstances, God isn't a monster. Yet, to the extent that people are accountable through evidence supplied by their own consciences, people who cannot bring themselves (even - and this is important - with the availability of the "actual grace" given by God to do it) to a state of "perfect contrition" at death are still judged justly, and with a consistency that can harmonize itself well with a true need for the Sacraments as the "ordinary means" of salvation.
Salvation, at bottom, is very difficult for non-sacramental Christians to achieve, and even harder for non-Christians. At the very least, we should presume such is the case, lest the graces gained for us on the cross should be watered-down. We are all still responsible for our sins, and the presence of sanctifying grace in one's soul at death seems to be an absolute requirement. This may grate on lot of people here, yet the concept is only one step removed from what most of them would say themselves (often rather cavalierly) about all non-Christians. The Bible is used by them to support the notion that, unless one embraces Christ as He would want to be embraced, one cannot be saved. Though the Church, as I've tried to make clear, isn't quite that absolutist about it, as a practical matter, She can respond to that notion with a "Just so!"
I think you’re getting at what the catechism used to call (maybe still does) “Baptism of Desire” and the “natural law”. The natural law, which the 10 Commandments reflect, is inherent in human beings, human nature is basically good (Catholic viewpoint, not Calvinist), not evil, and someone who has never been introduced to Christ or baptized may still say “yes” to God in the limited capacity possible to him by adhering to the natural law and following a true desire to know truth and goodness. There’s a joke that “ignorance is the 8th sacrament”...in other words, we don’t know, but God may forgive an awful lot because someone just did not know any better. But a person, Christian or not, will be accountable for saying “no” to God, that is following malicious or evil tendencies, regardless of Baptism.
Well, I’m not a theologian, hope I explained OK, if not someone is sure to correct me.
This is a truly distressing article, that casts the rather vague pronouncements of Vaticn II in the worst possible light. A better tool than that could not be given to the ultra-traditionalists. I trust that the cardinal did not mean to send an indifferentist message, but that is the only note that I distinctly pick up in this.
Thnak you for bringing some order into this with your enlightened post.
If that is the majority Orthodox position, then I agree.
Cardinal Dulles, musing upon the salvation of the unevangelized, in the third to the last paragraph tells us that “How that happens is known to God alone”, then, like God, tells us exactly how God does it in the last paragraph.
Thanks for that!
Mel
Thank YOU.
An excellent discussion, M. Thank-you.
From the following article:
But they also had the biblical narrative of the "pagan" Cornelius who, the Acts tell us, was "an upright and God-fearing man" even before baptism. Gradually, therefore, as it became clear that there were "God-fearing" people outside the Christian fold, and that some were deprived of their Catholic heritage without fault on their part, the parallel Tradition arose of considering such people open to salvation, although they were not professed Catholics or even necessarily baptized. Ambrose and Augustine paved the way for making these distinctions. By the twelfth century, it was widely assumed that a person can be saved if some "invincible obstacle stands in the way" of his baptism and entrance into the Church.
On Salvation Outside the Catholic Church (Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.)
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