Why Do Non-Catholics Read the Church's Position Better Than Do the Vatican II Apologists?

Well, the debate at http://rcpstudy.blogspot.com/2007/05/outside-church-there-is-no-salvation.html brought some fruit. It was also a chance for me to reflect on the problem that the apologists of Vatican II have with the strict interpretation of the dogma.

Wendy said...
Well said Peter Albert. Kudos! You are obviously and learned man and well versed with the Traditions and documents (as well as Councils) of the Church. Please continue to post here. Thanks again!

July 24, 2007 10:39 AM
Peter Albert said...

Dear Wendy, no, I'm just a beginner in Catholic theology, but I've spent too much of my time searching for the truth outside of the Catholic Church to be satisfied with sloppy use of terms or easy labelling. I don't care if it's Mr. Sungenis who needs to be refuted if he fails to address key issues of salvation, instead unravelling the dogma so as to divide the Church! I'm sorry but it seems to me that many of the critics of the strict interpretation of the EENS would rather anathematize their fellow Catholics than tell the non-Catholics openly that they are lost if they do not use the Catholic Church's means of salvation.

You know, I spent the last couple of days reviewing the reactions to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith's recent explanation in the blogosphere. It is very illuminating that 90% of the non-Catholics got the message that the Cathollic Church insists on the traditional message of exclusive salvation, while 90% of the Catholic bloggers went an extra mile to disabuse their non-Catholic friends of even a hint that they should accept such a 'radical' interpretation...

In my blog http://breviary.blogspot.com I listed all the resources and blog references to EENS that I could find. I did this because I found this amazing that the necessity to convert to the Catholic Church (even if we grant that one is culpable if one rejects that option knowing this) was consistently swept under the carpet of PC terms. In my first post, I admitted that I would not have returned to the Catholic faith if I had not seen the absurdity of universal salvation--that God did not care about people's ideas about Him or that He could be worshipped any way since what mattered was either personal righteousness or even worse the believer's feelings towards God. If I had believed that God was a sentimental 'good uncle' I would not have had a clue that He required to be glorified and that my sins offended Him as the Lord.Dear Wendy, don't let anyone corner you with the label of a 'heretic' or a 'Feeneyite'--as a lay Catholic you deserve to be served the wealth of the Catholic dogma that is our standard for knowing what to believe. The Catholic dogma is immutable and just as the laws of physics, mathematics or nature are immune to any politicking, so are the infallible pronouncements of the Popes and Councils. At another forum, I was served a ridiculous (though dangerous) argument that the Council of Florence's definitions of the Church were aimed to settle contemporary issues--on those grounds for instance some claim that the Protestants are not covered by Eugene IV's statements on 'schismatics'--since those concerned only those who had separated from the Church by that time.

To reiterate Augustine, if it wasn't for the infallible pronouncements of the Church, I wouldn't know what to believe. For the above reasons, I'm not going to engage in the recent debates as to how 'conservative' the recent declarations of the Vatican are--most of them unfortunately are worded so ambiguously that they allow multiple interpretations. And I'm not saying that this tendency has started with Vatican II--in fact the 'aggiornamento' of John XXIII dates back to the liberal currents of thoughts which were well described in the Syllabus and parts of which were condemned under the terms 'modernism' and 'Americanism'.

Frankly, I might be among the few who miss the times when the fundamental questions of the Christian faith were matters of theological debates and so helped clarify the understanding of the Church. How far more concerned with the dogma was the Church at the time of Nicea, Ephesus or Chalcedon? I'm here fighting the battle for revisiting of the Church's teaching on its means of grace, but we need to seriously attack the reemerging Pelagianism and forms of Arianism.

Thank you once again, Wendy, for your kind words. I hope that this more personal intervention should serve as a sort of introduction as to why I believe what I believe.