I welcome you to a journey that I undertook two years ago and which brought me to a conclusion that there is no salvation at all outside the Roman Catholic Church.
Let's face it: there are only two alternatives when it comes to salvation--either God accepts all the people of good will regardless of the faith they profess about Him or He accepts only those who hold the one acceptable faith. So it all comes down to the choice between universal salvation or exclusive salvation.
Until the Second Vatican Council the Roman Catholic Church had been known to be the only church that affirmed it was the only one to hold the full and inviolate faith as stated in the Athanasian creed. But since in 1965 the bishops present at the Council signed on to the document that no longer unequivocally identified the modern Catholic Church with the only-saving Roman Catholic Church and granted that salvation could be obtained elsewhere. The church of the Vatican II then is no longer the safe haven of salvation.
So the question remains--if the post-Vatican II church is not the same as the eternal, exclusive Catholic Church, where is the latter? Where is the Church of Ignatius, Athanasius, Augustine, Benedict, Louis IX, Thomas Aquinas and all the saints who would rather die than apostatize and boldly converted the infidels, heretics, Jews and schismatics? Since the Lord promised that this Church would never be overcome by the gates of hell, it must stand until His second coming.
May this blog serve as a forum for all the sincere seekers of the Catholic Church in these difficult times!
In Christo
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2 comments:
Peter Albert,
your conclusion is that the Church is dead, that the gates of hell have prevailed. In order to be the instrument of salvation, the Church must be visible. Where is the Church? There's only one possible answer to that. I hope you find it soon.
God Bless,
Matt
Well, Matt, I thought I addressed this in my reply to PJP--let me cite this:
"PJP, you raised a very important question--where is the Church? Now, I suppose this is according to you a very simple question to answer, but it was not always so easy to answer, and I'll just bring up two historical cases when it was as difficult:
a) Athanasius vs. Arius
b) Great Western Schism.
In the first case, actually the Arian bishops ruled their dioceses and yet they lost their jurisdiction due to heresy.
In the second case, there were saints who supported in good faith papal claimants who later turned out to be antipopes.
Now, one lesson we might draw is that both issues were not seen at the time in the light they came to be seen by historians. So what were Catholics to do in those times? Use the means of salvation of the Church and convert the non-Catholics to the Catholic faith (again the Athanasian Creed comes in handy)."
I will add one more case in which it was difficult to discern where the Catholic Church was. That was England following Henry VIII's schism. The liturgical and doctrinal changes were in progress, yet many Catholics believed that the Church in England was part of the Catholic Church. However, centuries later Leo XIII declared the Anglican ordinations invalid on the basis of faulty form. The popes reestablished the Catholic hierarchy in England from scratch in the 19th century.
So, to cut the long story short, I am a Catholic by the virtue of baptism and holding Catholic faith. I am also ready to subject myself to the Roman Pontiff. Just tell me when was the last time that either John Paul II or Benedict XVI required anyone to subject themselves to them--was it towards the Orthodox or the Lutherans? No, in fact Cardinal Ratzinger in his book Principles of Catholic Theology, published in 1982, denied that the Pope should exercise primacy, as understood by Vatican I:
"Nor is it possible, on the other hand, for him to regard as the only possible form and, consequently, as binding
on all Christians the form this primacy has taken in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." (p. 198)
As far as I know the post-Vatican II popes have agreed that 'imperfect unity' with the Church is sufficient for salvation so, according to this relaxed view of EENS, I would be fine whether I would or would not acknowledge Benedict XVI's primacy of jurisdiction and not merely of honor.
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