There is a controversial pamphlet ‘ Le Religioni non Cristiane:come la Chiesa Cattolica le considera?( Non Christian religions: how does the Catholic Church consider them?). The concluding sub heading asks ‘Why is Jesus Christ the unique Savior’? but does not ask ,’Why is the Catholic Church the unique means of salvation in which all non Catholics need to enter to avoid Hell?’.
One sub section prominently asks: 'How can those be saved who belong to non Christian religions?’The bishop then quotes Lumen Gentium 16 (LG 16) and makes no comment. There is no explanation.
Does LG 16 refer to explicit or implicit salvation? The text quoted does not say that it is explicit. If the bishop suggests that it was explicit then it would be heresy. It would contradict the ex cathedra dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus.Quelli che senza colpa ignorano il Vangelo di Cristo e la sua Chiesa ma che tuttavia cercano sinceramente Dio e coll'aiuto della grazia si sforzano di compiere con le opere la volontà di lui, conosciuta attraverso il dettame della coscienza, possono conseguire la salvezza eterna-Lumen Gentium 16, Vatican Council II
Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.-Lumen Gentium 16, Vatican Council II.
Since the LG 16 text does not say that it is a reference to explicit salvation it can be interpreted as: everyone explicitly needs to enter the Catholic Church to go to Heaven (ex cathedra dogma) and if there is anyone who has the baptism of desire, is in invincible ignorance or has a good conscience, in ‘certain circumstances’ (Letter of the Holy Office 1949), it will be known to God only- since it is implicit (subjective).
The pamphlets are approved by the Rome Vicariate (Vicariato) whose Prefect is Cardinal A. Vaillani. The Vicariato recently closed down the well known mission magazine Christ to the World (Cristo al Mondo) .It carried a report ‘Church has not retracted extra ecclesiam nulla salus’.
The dogma says everyone needs to be a visible member of the Catholic Church for salvation.Pope Pius XII called it the 'infallible' teaching.
Now, among those things which the Church has always preached and will never cease to preach is contained also that infallible statement by which we are taught that there is no salvation outside the Church.Here it is:
However, this dogma must be understood in that sense in which the Church herself understands it. For, it was not to private judgments that Our Savior gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposit of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church.- (Letter of the Holy Office 1949). Emphasis added.
________________________________________________________________________________1. “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215). Ex cathedra.
2. “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 Unam Sanctam, 1302.).Ex cathedra.
3.“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 only 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 fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. 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, 1441.)
Ex cathedra – from the website Catholicism.org and “No Salvation outside the Church”: Link List, the Three Dogmatic Statements Regarding EENS http://nosalvationoutsideofthecatholicchurch.blogspot.com/
Here is the pamphlet text made available on the website:www.sancarlo.pcn.net
(Click on Argomento Attualita. Then click on Come la Chiesa Cattolica Considera le Religione non Cattoliche. Then choose the language)
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First of all, the Catholic Church has a positive vision as regards non-Christian religions.
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Where does it find this positive vision?
This positive vision is expressed and justified by Vatican Council ii as follows: :
“The Catholic Church does not reject anything that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere respect those ways of life and conduct, those precepts and doctrines, which, though differ in many aspects from what she herself believes and proposes, nevertheless often reflect a ray of the Truth which enlightens all men” (NA 2).
Since these religions have only one origin: God, and only one goal: God, they contain rays of goodness, “elements of truth and grace as by a secret presence of God” (AG 9).
As regards expressions of revelation which God has made through the cosmos and humanity, these religions may, in a certain way, help those who profess them and live them with a sincere and upright heart to enter into a relationship with God.
Non-Christian religions further witness, in an insufficient and incomplete way of course, though always true, the presence and action of God, or at least of the sacred, in the world, and God alone knows how much this is needed especially today, as we live in a world which tends to eradicate every sign and gesture of the divine.
They are expressions of man’s search for an answer to his fundamental questions. As the Council says, men expect from the various religions “answers to the obscure enigmas of the human condition which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men: the nature of man, the meaning and goal of our life, moral good and sin, the origin and purpose of suffering, the way to true happiness, death, judgement and retribution after death, and finally, the ultimate and ineffable mystery which encompasses our existence from which we draw our origin and towards which we tend” (NA 1);
The Catholic Church therefore recognises that in the non-Christian religious traditions there exist “true and good things” (OT 16), “precious, religious and human things” (GS 92), “seeds of contemplation” (AG 11, 15), “rays of the truth which enlightens all men” (NA 2).
Even those who do not actually belong to the visible Church, they are objectively oriented towards her, they are part of that wider Church known only by God.
The non Christian religions therefore deserve an attention and esteem of Christians and their spiritual heritage is an effective invitation to dialogue not only on convergent, but also on the divergent elements.
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What are the main positive characterstics, common to ohter religions?
The different religions are expressions of the cultures of peoples, and preserve their spiritual richness;
They have transmitted and transmit treasures of wisdom and religiosity, and thereby sustain the human and spiritual journey of several generations;
Through them, every person establishes a relationship with God, with the Transcendent, finds resources for moral responsibility and nurtures hope for the life after death;
In different religions one realises and develops that natural desire to see God, which is common to every man and constitutes the basis of every religious attitude: this is a truth that Catholic theology has always affirmed, and which Saint Thomas of Aquino has explained very well in the first pages of the Summa Theologica.
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Does the Catholic Church also reveal the negative aspects in non-christian religions?
One should, however, never forget nor overlook the fact that non-Christian religions also contain false elements, theoretical and practical errors, malformations, deformations, distortions, reductive visions...
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What are the causes of these negative aspects?
These negative aspects, present in non-Christian religions, depend not so much and not only on the way in which these religions are professed or incarnated by different persons or by different peoples, in varied times and cultures. This also happens in the Christian religion.
But these negative aspects, these unauthentic elements, are due in great measure also to the very nature of the non-Christian religions. In fact these religions (except for the Jewish religion) are mainly the fruit and effect of man’s efforts and attempts to reach God and enter in contact with Him, although one does not exclude that, in some cases, the founders of these religions might have received some special gifts from above.
Thus, precisely due to their human origin, these religions easily contain deformed, erroneous and incomplete elements; often due to the fact that the divinities reflect man, they are in the image and likeness of the same limits and defects of man. The history of religions attests to the fact that in many cases men have made, imagined and constructed divinities in their own image and likeness. On the contrary the Bible, in the first pages, attests that it is God who created man in His own image and likeness and calls man to share in His life, giving him also the capacity and strength to realise such an objective.
The risk of giving rise to, and increasing, these negative aspects is still greater if one considers that man is a sinner, and lives under the influence of personal sin and of the world, and of “the prince of evil”: the devil.
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With regard to the positive and negative aspects present in non-christian religions, what does the Catholic Church do?
The Catholic Church:
respects and ‘assumes’ all that is good and positive in other religions;
at the same time, in the light of the Gospel, it identifies-purifies-frees people from the distortions and spurious elements in what is assumed, frankly denouncing all that is of non-value, inhuman and non-evangelical in them.
affirms the absolute novelty and originality of the Christian faith, which consists of the fact that in the Christian religion it is not man who approaches God, but God who comes closer to man, and who especially becomes man in Jesus Christ, who by his death on the cross and his resurrection, wants to save every man, giving him the Holy Spirit which makes man a child of God.
In this sense, the Christian religion does not say that men reconcile with God, but that “God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19).
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How could one summarize what has been mentioned above?
Non-Christian religions and religious traditions in general:
What do they express?
The anxiety of the human soul;
The yearning for the absolute;
The answer to the big questions of human existence.
What is their relationship with Christianity?
They are paths towards the Truth;
They contain semina Verbi (seeds of the Word of God: Jesus Christ).
They are enveloped in:
the mysterious paternity of God the Father towards all;
the universal effectiveness of Christ, the only and definitive Saviour;
the active presence of the Holy Spirit, which fills each and every one.
The positive religious aspects present in them:
They proceed from God;
They are Christ’s gift, a ray and reflection of His Truth ;
They are part of what the Spirit operates in the heart of men and in the history of peoples, in cultures and in religions;
They can assume a role of preparation for the Gospel, in so far as they are occasions or pedagogical instruments through which the hearts of men are stimulated in opening themselves up to the action of God.
Therefore, these positive aspects present in other religions, should be:
known;
respected;
appreciated by Christians.
Nevertheless, these positive aspects are:
awaiting purification / completion / fulfilment in Christ;
in an objective deficient situation;
mixed with negative elements;
ineffective ex opere operato (the action, the sign does not realise, through itself and by itself, what it signifies).
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What are the main characteristics of the christian religion?
The Catholic Church:
announces and communicates Christ who is the only Saviour of all;
is the only true Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church
offers man of every epoch, age, culture… the possibility to fully and authentically realise that fullness of truth and happiness towards which he aspires continuously.
The Christian faith has in itself an objective “extra” compared to other religions (though unfortunately Christians do not always reflect in their behaviour this “extra”).
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How are those who belong to non-Christian religions saved?
“Those who ignore, without any fault of theirs, Christ’s Gospel and His Church, and nevertheless are sincerely searching for God, and under the influence of grace try their best through good works to fulfil God’s will, made known to them through the dictates of the conscience, can achieve eternal salvation” (Vatican Council ii, Lumen Gentium, n.20).
(Note in the new corrected pamphlet there is a reference to Lumen Gentium 16 instead of Lumen gentium 20.The above passage is from Lumen Gentium 16)
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Those who are saved, are they always saved by Christ and his church?
Certainly, even though they don’t know it. In fact, all salvation comes from Christ-the Head, the only Saviour, through the Church which is His Body. It is therefore the duty of the Church to announce to all that “God wants all men to be saved and reach the full knowledge of the Truth” (1 Tm 2:4), through Jesus Christ who is the only Saviour of all.
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Why is Jesus Christ the only saviour?
Jesus Christ is the only saviour, because:
Since, by the will of God the Father, “only in Him there is salvation; for of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved” (At 4:12);
Since no one can know and enter in communion with God (the Trinity), except through Jesus Christ;
Christ is the complete and definitive Revealer of the Father and Saviour of men: He is the mediator and the only way to Salvation.
He is the one who, in so far as being the only begotten Son of God the Father, can bring to fulfilment the hunger and thirst in man’s heart for Truth and Happiness.
Jesus Christ is the “radiation of the glory” of the only God the Father. He is the Son in the fullest sense of God the Father and He is, therefore, the One who makes us know God perfectly and makes Him present in the midst of humanity. He is light and life, as St John proclaims in the prologue of his Gospel: “In him was life and the life was the light of men”.
The Primicerio
Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli
NB: If you’d like to deepen your understanding of the above subject, you could read (in addition to the other article by the same author: “Why is it necessary to announce Jesus Christ?”) the following pontifical documents:
Vatican Council ii:
Lumen gentium (LG) ;
Ad gentes (AG) ;
Nostra aetate (NA) ;
John Paul ii, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio,1991;
Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith (CDF):
Mysterium ecclesiae, 1973 ;
Dominus Iesus, 2000;
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