On The Hope of Salvation for Those Outside the Visible Church

A reader writes:

I recently read your article “Just Exactly Where is the Church?”. In it you mentioned that

“Rather, the Church teaches that because validly baptized non-Catholics are real members of the Body of Christ, they share in the life of the Blessed Trinity and therefore share with Catholics the hope of salvation”

I was wondering how this can be reconciled with the fact that the following statements are condemned in the Syllabus of Errors by Pius IX as

17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. — Encyclical “Quanto conficiamur,” Aug. 10, 1863, etc.

18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church. — Encyclical “Noscitis,” Dec. 8, 1849.

As I explained in the article, it remains the teaching of the Church that “Outside the Church there is no salvation”.  That’s because the Church is, in the final analysis, the company of the saved.  To be saved is to be in the Church, just as to go swimming is to be in the water.  Can’t do one without the other.  So if you are “not at all in the true Church of Christ” then of course you are not saved.

But the key point to remember is that we don’t know where “outside the Church” is.  “Outside” is, according to the Church herself, most certainly not equal to and co-terminous with membership in the visible Catholic Church.  And that is a tradition that goes all the way back to Our Lord himself:

John answered, “Master, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he does not follow with us.” 50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not forbid him; for he that is not against you is for you.”(Lk 9:49–50).

The point is that the sacraments are not intended as reducing valves to make sure that the fewest people possible have access to the grace of God.  They are intended as sure encounters with grace.  So we are bound by the sacraments, but God is not bound and can give his grace to any person of good will who seeks him:

All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Ro 2:12–16).

This means that *any* person of good will who is responsive to the grace of God (Jews, Protestants, Muslims, pagans, and everybody else included) is in *some* kind of union with the Church.  That union is not *perfect*, but it is nonetheless *real*, but it is often something “known only to God”.  So it is not the case that the Protestants you ask about are “not at all in the true Church of Christ”.  Nor is it the case that they are in “nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church”.  They are, as I pointed out, in *partial and imperfect, but real* union with the Catholic Church.  In various ways, such as through valid baptism, Scripture, Trinitarian prayer, service to the “least of these” Jesus name, as well as myriad other means of grace given by our Lord, Protestants unite themselves with Christ and thus with the Catholic Church, though not fully since they are often still ignorant of the fullness of Christ’s revelation in the Church.  In this, they are in the predicament of the young Apollos, who “spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John” (Ac 18:25). Priscilla and Aquila, instead of driving him away as a heretic, instead “took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately.” (Ac 18:26). This is our task as Catholics, not to send away those who are as obedient as they know how to be to such light as they have.

The other question is more along the logical implications of what you have written. Under your definition, wouldn’t we consider even those who adhered to Arianism or any Christian heresy as our brothers and sisters in Christ with an equal hope of salvation?

I’m not sure what you mean by “equal” here.  We all have an equal hope of salvation in the sense that salvation is offered to all.  How we respond to it can be enormously varied and making theological mistakes is no necessary bar to Christ’s grace working in our lives.  The proof of this is precisely that the Church *has* included Arians in the Roman Martyrology:

Nicetas the Goth (the Great) M (RM)
Died c. 378. Saint Sabas and Nicetas are the two most renowned martyrs among the Goths. It is interesting to note that Nicetas, an Ostrogoth born along the Danube, should rightly be considered a heretic, yet he is listed in the Roman Martyrology. Through no fault of his own, he and many of his kinsmen and neighbors were converted to Christianity by the Arian Ulphilas. In good faith, he was also ordained as an Arian priest. But doctrinal differences are often forgotten in the name of Jesus. Nicetas was martyred by King Athanaric, in his attempt to eradicate the name of Christ from his territory bordering on the Roman Empire. About 370, Athanaric began a systematic persecution. He caused an idol to be carried in a chariot through all the towns and villages he suspected were sheltering Christians. Those who refused to adore were put to death, usually by burning the Christians with their children in the houses or those assembled together in churches. At other times they were stabbed at the foot of the altar. Nicetas was burnt to death. His body was taken to Mopsuestia in Cilicia, which is why his name is especially remember in the East (Attwater, Benedictines, Husenbeth). 

Likewise, St. Isaac the Syrian was a Nestorian (though also appears to have been “in transition” in his thinking.

Moral: It’s not our business to waste a lot of time trying to adjudicate the final destinies of people who are in error about things the Church teaches, nor to compartmentalize the world into Who’s In and Who’s Out.  Where people are in error, we should speak the truth in love.  But it is God’s job to work out who is and is not saved.

Why were the Apostles themselves very strict to remind the faithful to be wary of those who proclaim heresy (2 John 1:10)?

For the obvious reason, that heresy is dangerous to the soul.  But the apostle does *not* tell us to assume that those who believe or speak error are cut off from the Church or the grace of God.

I am not quiet sure how your explanation prevents heresy from being identified as not a big deal in the end. It would seem that as long as there is some implicit agreement in belief with Catholicism, which is true for any heresy, the person who holds that heresy is to entertain good hope that they are saved?

Our hope is not in perfect theological knowledge and understanding, but in Jesus Christ.  Why is it so important to try to guess at somebody’s eternal destiny at all?  Both despair *and* presumption are sins against the virtue of hope.  We are no more to presume that somebody will surely be saved than to assume they will surely be damned.  The counsel of our Lord is “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.” (Mt 6:34).   Our task is to correct the error and proclaim the truth as best we can, not to sit on God’s throne and make guesses about the fate of those who hold the error.

Also, isn’t the idea of wanting to convert to the Catholic faith to be merely united perfectly in this life to God a bit weak? Because if one is saved, one does enjoy a perfect union with God after death anyway so why bother having to suffer relationship problems and shattering the peace within family members over a conversion that gets one to the same place without it?

But you don’t know that you will “get to the same place without it”.  What you *know* is that if you deliberately and persistently ignore what God has revealed to you, you *will* go to hell.  What you don’t and can’t know is what God has revealed to your neighbor and whether he is striving to obey that light to the best of his ability.  Beyond that, I feel obliged to add that if you truly believe that being motivated by the desire to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength is “a bit weak” then you don’t grasp what lies at the very heart of the entire Christian revelation too clearly.  What lies behind your question is the assumption “Why bother loving God if you don’t have the lash of fear at your back?” Jesus doesn’t warn us of damnation because otherwise there’s no point obeying God.  He warns us of damnation because it is *possible*  for us to choose it.  For the same reason, our parents warn us of the terrifying possibility of being crushed by a truck if we run into the street.  But the point of the warning is not for us to live in terror, but to come to live in happiness as adult in loving family.

I know this is an old article but I was hoping if you could clarify this issue for me because I am currently looking in to this matter and I am finding it very hard to reconcile certain things with the pre-Vatican II Church.

May God bless you in your ministry and thanks in advance for your help!

There are not two Churches, pre- and post-Vatican II.  There is one Church with a continuous teaching that develops over time under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  The teaching is articulated by the Magisterium to whom Christ said, “He who listens to you, listens to Me.”  What *is* a real (and heretical) phenomenon in the life of the Church is the emergence of a Traditionalist Movement in the Church (a movement that is *newer* than Vatican II because it is entirely a *reaction* to Vatican II that propose a heretical vision of two Churches “pre and post Vatican II” and then demands that we choose the former and reject the latter.  It is a phenomenon that has accompanied developments in the Church’s teaching ever since the Judaizers in Acts 15 rejected the newfangled teaching of the Council of Jerusalem.  There is *nothing* in the teaching of Vatican II, nor in the doctrinal developments that have occurred since then, that is incompatible with the Tradition.

May St. Nicetas the Goth intercede for you that you not fall prey to the errors of Reactionary rejection of the Church since the Council.  It is, ironically, Traditionalist rejection of the Council and the Magisterium that is the *real* modernism.