Part I: The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements of the Church

There are several documents issued by the Church's supreme teaching authority which deal with the revealed doctrine that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church. The latest editions of Denzinger's Enchiridion symbolorum carry upwards of twenty citations directly pertinent to this dogma, taken from official documents issued by the Holy See and by Oecumenical Councils. If a man wants to learn exactly how the Catholic Church itself understands and teaches this revealed truth, he can obtain this information by reading and studying these official and authoritative statements of the ecclesiastical magisterium.

Actually, however, it is not necessary to study every one of these statements individually. It so happens that there are eight of these pronouncements which, taken together, bring out every aspect of Catholic teaching on this subject that the Church has included in its authoritative documents. Hence an examination of these eight statements will show us every aspect and facet of the Church's official and authoritative teaching about its own necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation.

The eight documents in which these pronouncements are contained are:

(1) A profession of the Catholic faith issued by the Fourth Lateran Council, the twelfth in the series of Oecumenical Councils, in 1215, during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III.

(2) The Bull Unam sanctam, published by Pope Benedict VIII, on November 18, 1302.

(3) The decree for the Jacobites, the Bull Cantate Domino, published by Pope Euginius IV on February 4, 14142, and included in the Acta of the Council of Florence, the seventeenth among the Oecumenical Councils.

(4) The allocution Singulari quadam, delivered on December 9. 1854, the day after the solemn definition of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, by Pope Pius IX, to the Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops gathered in Rome for that definition.

(5) The encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, addressed by Pope Pius IX to the Bishops of Italy on August 10, 1863.

(6) The encyclicals letter Mystici Corporis Christi, published on June 29, 1943, by Pope Pius XII.

(7) The letter Suprema haec sacra, sent by the Holy Office, at the command of Pope Pius XII, to His Excellency the Most Reverend Archbishop of Boston, on August 8 1949, 1949.

(8) The encyclical letter Hunani generis, issued by Pope Pius XII on August 12, 1958.

Each of the eight chapter that go to make up the first part of this book will consider the teachings of one of these documents on the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of eternal salvation. The documents will be studied in chronological order.

As authoritative statements of the teaching Church, all of these pronouncements by the Holy See and of Oecumenical Councils must be accepted with true internal consent by all Catholics. What they teach on the subject of dogma is what all Catholics are bound in conscience to hold. It is definitely not enough for Catholics to receive these declarations with what has been called "respectful silence." It is not sufficient that they merely refrain from overt statements rejecting what has been taught in these authoritative documents of the ecclersia docens. Every Catholic is strictly bound in conscience to make what the Church has taught in this way his own view, his own conviction, on this subject. And, as a result, it is objectively wrong for any Catholic to hold an explanation of the Church's necessity for salvation which is in any way incompatible with what the Church has taught authoritatively about this dogma.

The first three of the eight documents studied in this book limit themselves, mainly, to the assertion as a dogma of the faith of teaching that no man can be saved outside the Catholic Church. A dogma is a truth which the Church finds in Scripture or in Divine apostolic tradition and which, either in solemn judgment or in its ordinary and universal teaching activity, it presents to its people as a doctrine revealed by God and as something which all are obligated to accept with the assent of divine and Catholic faith. Since the teaching that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church is a dogma, men are obligated in conscience to believe it as certainly true on the authority of God Himself, who has revealed it. Objectively the refusal to believe this teaching with an of of divine faith constitutes heresy. The public denial by a Catholic of this or any other dogma of the Church is something that carries with it a loss of membership in the true Church.

The first three of these pronouncements are contained in documents of the Church's solemn teaching activity. The other five belong to the ordinary magisterium of the Holy See. Four of these, the teachings contained in the allocution Singulari quadam and in the encyclical letters Quanto conficiamur moerore, Mystici Corporis Christi, and Humani genris, were issued by the Sovereign Pontiff himself. The other statement treated in this book, that of the Holy Office letter Suprema haec sacra, is an act of a Roman Congregation. Thus, according to the rule set forth in canon 7 of the Codex iuris canonici, it must likewise be considered and described as an act of the Holy See.

All of these statements of the Church's ordinary magisterium are authoritative. Pope Pius XII spoke of the Holy Father's own ordinary teaching power in the encyclical Humani generis, in a passage which has special reference to the teaching set forth in encyclical letters.

Nor must one think that the truths proposed in encyclical letters do not demand assent by themselves (assensum per se non postulare), since in writing such letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their teaching authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in encyclical letters already appertains to Catholic doctrine for other reasons. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their Acta take the trouble to issue a decision on a point hitherto controverted, it is obvious that this point, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, can no longer be considered a question open to discussion among theologians.1

The following passage, taken from the letter Taus libenter, written by Pope Pius IX on December 21, 1863, to the Archbishop of Munich, gives a clear view of the doctrinal authority of the Holy See's statements, including pronouncements issued by the Congregations of the Roman Curia.

Even in the matter of that subjection which must be given in the act of divine faith, it should still not be restricted to those things that have been defined in the obvious decrees of the Oecumenical Councils or of the Roman Pontiffs or of this See, but must also be extended to that which is taught as divinely revealed by the ordinary magisterium of the entire Church spread throughout the world and, which, as a result, is presented as belonging to the faith according to the common and constant agreements of the Catholic theologians.

But, on the matter of that subjection to which all Catholics who are engaged in the work of the speculative sciences are obliged in conscience, so that, by their writings, they may bring new advantages to the Church, the members of the assembly [a convention of German theologians] must take cognizance of the fact that it is not enough for them to receive and to venerate the above-mentioned dogmas of the Church, but that it is also necessary that they subject themselves to the doctrinal decisions of the Pontifical Congregations and to those points of doctrine that are considered by the common and constant agreement of Catholics as theological truths and conclusions which are so certain that opinions opposed to these points of doctrine still merit some other theological censure, even though they may not be designated as heretical. 2

The directions given almost a hundred years ago by Pope Pius IX are just as valid and necessary now as they were when the Taus libenter was first written. It is and it always will be the duty and the privilege of the Catholic to accept and to enjoy the body of truth given to the faithful in the official declarations of the ecclesiastical magisterium.3 And, from a study of the eight documents cited in the first part of this book, we can see exactly what the Catholic magisterium has taught about the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal salvation.

Footnotes:

1 The Latin text of Humani generis is carried in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXIII, 5 (Nov., 1950), 383-98. The paragraph here quoted is n. 20, p. 389. Subsequent references to The American Ecclesiastical Review will use the abbreviation AER.

2 Dezinger, Enchiridion symbolorum, 30th edition (Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1954), nn. 1683 f. Further references to the Enchiridion symbolorum in this volume will use the abbreviation Denz.

3 For a more extensive treatment of this subjection cf, Fenton, "The Humani generis and the Holy Father;' Ordinary Magisterium," in AER, CXXV, 1 (Julu, 1951), 53-62.

End.

Introduction

In his encyclical Humani generis Pope Pius XII referred to a statement by his great predecessor, Pope Pius IX, to the effect that the noblest function of sacred theology is that showing how the doctrine defined by the Church is found in the sources of revelation -that is, in Sacred Scripture and the divine apostolic tradition- in the very sense in which the Church has proposed it. This book is the result of a laborious and humble effort to do this with reference to what the ecclesiastical teaching authority has taught and defined about the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal salvation.

Few dogmas of the Catholic faith have been commented upon and interpreted in the twentieth-century theological and religious literature as frequently and extensively as that which teaches us that there is no salvation outside the true Church of Jesus Christ. Hence any new book on this subject ought at least to try to offer some theological advantage on this subject not already available in currently accessible Catholic literature. The author of this present work sincerely believes that its publication is justified for these three reasons:

(1) The book quotes, and quotes at length, pertinent statements and definitions by the Holy See and by the Church's Oecumenical Councils on the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal salvation. It analyzes these pronouncements and brings out explicitly the Catholic teaching referred to and implied in them. Then it examines the dogma, as it has been stated and explained by the Church's magisterium, in light of what the sources of revelation have to say about the nature of the Church and about the processes of salvation and sanctification. Thus it is able to show that what the Church itself has always taught and defined on this subject is precisely what the divine message, contained in Scripture and tradition, has to say about salvation and about God's supernatural kingdom.

Any person who is at all familiar with what the great mass of religious and theological writings of our times have had to say about this dogma is quote well aware of the fact that, in an overwhelming majority of cases, these writings have been mainly, almost exclusively, concerned with the proving and explaining how this dogma does not mean that only members of the Catholic Church can be saved. This, of course, is perfectly true. The ecclesiastical magisterium, in teaching and gaurding this dogma, insists that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church and at the same time likewise insists that people who die without ever becoming members of the Catholic Church can obtain the Beatific Vision.

But if we, for all practical purposes, limit our explanation of the dogma to an assurance that it does not mean that every man who dies a non-member of the Catholic Church is not necessarily lost forever -as so many modern writings on this subject seem to do- we tend to lose sight of the central mystery of God's merciful dispensation in the supernatural order. For, let us not forget, the revealed truths about the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of eternal salvation belong to the order of great supernatural mysteries. They belong with God's revealed doctrine about grace, about the process of salvation, the work of the Redemption, and the Blessed Trinity. In showing how the teachings of the ecclesiastical magisterium are contained in the sources of revelation in the very sense in which they have been stated and defined by the Church itself, we can see this dogma of the Church precisely as the accurate and authoritative expression of revealed mystery.

(2) During the pontificate of the present Holy Father three authoritative documents issued by the Holy See have instructed the members of the Church about the meaning of the dogma that there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. Two of these are encyclical letters, the Mystici Corporis Christi, issued June 29, 1943, and the Humani generis, dated August 12, 1950. The third is the Holy Office letter Suprema haec sacra, addressed by order of the Holy Father on August 8, 1949, to the Most Reverend Archbishop of Boston. The doctrinal section of this last document is devoted exclusively to an explanation of this dogma. It is the most completely detailed statement of this teaching ever set forth in an authoritative document of the Church's magisterium.

There would obviously seem to be, not only room for, but actual need of, a book that would present and analyze the teaching on this subject brought out in these three recent documents from the Holy See. And, in the lack of any other work in English devoted exclusively to the explanation of this portion of Catholic doctrine and written since the appearance of these three documents, the present book is humbly offered in the hope that it may satisfy that need.

(3) In the Humani generis the present Holy Father sternly rebuked some contemporary Catholic writiers because, as he said, "they reduce to an empty formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to attain to eternal salvation." Actually this particular part of Catholic doctrine is unique in that an inaccurate interpretation or presentation of it by a Catholic writer does actually constitute, in most cases, the reduction of this teaching to an empty formula.

Furthermore the vagaries of some writers, particularly in the field of popular religious literature, on the subject, are in some way explicable in terms of the peculiar history of the tractus de ecclesia within the body of scholastic theology. A sketch of this history is available in the present volume, since I believe that the man who knows something about the basis of some of the more colorful misinterpretations of the dogma will be in a better position to appreciate and to defend the genuine teaching of the Church in this field.

This introduction would not be complete without an expression of sincere gratitude to the Very Reverend Dr. Francis J. Connell, C.SS.R., for these last fourteen years my brilliant and faithful associate in the work of The American Ecclesiastical Review. He has been kind enough to read and to correct the manuscript of this book with the same charitable care he has given to the readings and the correction of all I have written for the publication since out association began.

End.