While many modern (usually liberal) Roman Catholics deny the teaching of “outside the Church there is no salvation,” such is the dogmatic teaching of Roman Catholicism. Note the following from one traditional Roman Catholic author:
. . . the Catholic
Church has infallibly defined at least three times the dogma extra ecclesiam
nulla salus est (outside the Church there is no salvation):
There is but one universal
Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved. (Pope Innocent
III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.)
We declare, say,
define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of
every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. (Pope Boniface VIII,
the Bull Una Sanctam, 1302.)
The most Holy Roman Church
firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the
Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics,
can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire
which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are
joined with her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body
that those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the
Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for
their fats, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the
duties of a Christian solider. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it
may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be
saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.
(Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1442.)
In keeping with this
infallible teaching, the Church has repeated again and again that outside of
her no one may be saved:
Pope Saint Gregory
the Great (590-604): “Now the holy Church universal proclaims that God cannot be
truly worshipped, saving from within herself, asserting that all they that are
without her shall never be saved” Moralia, XIV:5).
Catechism of the
Council of Trent (1566): “infidels, heretics, schismatics and excommunicated persons”
are “excluded from the Church’s pale” (Catechism of the Council of Trent,
McHugh & Callan Translation, [Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books and Publishers,
reprinted 1982], page 101).
Pope Leo XII (1823-1829): “. .
.we profess that there is no salvation outside the Church . . . the Church is
the pillar and firmament of truth, as the apostle Paul teaches. (1 Tim. 3) In
reference to these words St. Augustine says: ‘Whoever is without the Church
will not be reckoned among the sons, and whoever does not want to have the
Church as Mother will not have God as Father’” (Ubi Primum, inaugural encyclical
of Pope Leo XII, May 8, 1825).
Pope Pius VIII (1829-1830): “ . . .
the people must be assured, Venerable Brethren, that the profession of the Catholic
Faith is alone the true one, since the Apostle tells us that there is one Lord
and one baptism. As Jerome says, the man who eats the lamb outside of this
house is profane, and the man who is not in the ark of Noe is going to perish
in the deluge. Neither is there any other name apart from the name of Jesus
Christ given to men by which we must be saved” (Traditi Humiliati Nostrae,
May 24, 1829).
Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846): “The
holy universal Church teaches that it is not possible to worship God truly
except in her (the Catholic Church); all who are outside her will not be saved”
(quoting Pope St. Gregory the Great) (Summo Iugiter Studio [1832], n.
5).
Blessed Pope Pius IX (1846-1878): “It must
be held as a matter of faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church, no one
can be saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not
have entered therein will perish in the flood.” (Singulari Quadem)
The Catechism of Pope
Pius X (1903-1914): “Outside the true Church are: Infidels, Jews, heretics,
apostates, schismatics, and excommunicated persons . . . No one can be saved
outside the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, just as no one would be saved
from the flood outside the Ark of Noah, which was a figure of the Church.” (Christopher
A. Ferrara, EWTN: A Network Gone Wrong [Pound Ridge, N.Y.: Good Counsel
Publications, 2006], 71-73)
Such was reiterated
during Vatican II. In Lumen
Gentium we read the following in paragraph 14:
This Sacred Council
wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself
upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning
on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His
Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation.
In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and
thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as
through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the
Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to
remain in it, could not be saved.
They are fully
incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ
accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are
united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with
Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The bonds
which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the
sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion. He is not saved,
however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in
charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in
a "bodily" manner and not "in his heart." All the Church's
children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to
their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to
respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be
saved but they will be the more severely judged.
Catechumens who,
moved by the Holy Spirit, seek with explicit intention to be incorporated into
the Church are by that very intention joined with her. With love and solicitude
Mother Church already embraces them as her own.
