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THE THEOLOGICAL PROOF FOR THE NECESSITY
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
Part I
• It is a commonplace among teachers of scholastic theology that
the thesis on the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvationis
one of the most difficult to impart accurately and effectively.
Part of this difficulty is inherent in the subject itself, since the
necessity of the Church is one of the basic aspects of its character
as God’s supernatural kingdom on earth. Thus this truth
properly belongs to the central mystery of God’s dispensation
to His adopted children. In some measure, however, this dif­
ficulty stems from the fact that students are affected by certain
fairly widespread but utterly untheological presentations of the
doctrine on the Catholic Church's necessity for salvation.
Unfortunately, some presentations of this dogma are obviously
attempts to explain it away, rather than objectively to explain its
meaning.
The intolerably bad effects of this untheological teaching can
best be obviated by the use of the genuine theological demon­
stration of the Church's necessity for salvation. The true theology
of the “extra ecclesiam nulla salus" must not and cannot detract
from the mystery of the Church itself. Yet it is certainly capable
of showing up as unfounded a kind of tepid and unrealistic
attitude towards Christian life which neglect or misinterpretation
of the dogma about the Church’s necessity is wont to generate.
And, because the complete theological demonstration of this
thesis is very seldom set forth in the modem literature of scho­
lastic theology, the present article will attempt to outline what is
manifestly one of the most urgently needed sections of the
sacred doctrine.
Any theological demonstration is the certain and complete
proof that a given statement or thesis actually forms a part of the
deposit of divine public revelation which Our Lord committed to
the Church in which He dwells and which the Church guards and
teaches infallibly until the end of time by the power of the Hob
Ghost. It begins with an accurate statement of the thesis ot
conclusion, drawn from the pertinent datum of positive theologiIt then analyzes this statement, and situates the compooent
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concepts against their proper background in the field of revealed
truth. Thus, in one and the same process, the pertinence of the
thesis to the original deposit of divine revelation is manifested
and the full meaning of this thesis as an expression of Christian
truth is set forth. Such actually is and must be the proper
theological treatment of the proposition that the Catholic Church
is really necessary for eternal salvation.
The first and in some ways the most important step in the
fashioning of this theological proof must be the accurate state­
ment of the proposition with which we are concerned. The
immediate norm of divine faith is the teaching of the Catholic
Church itself. Hence, any theological demonstration should
begin with an examination of the various authentic declarations
of the Church on the subject under discussion. Only thus can we
arrive at an accurate presentation of the truth which the theo­
logical demonstration is meant to prove and to elucidate.
As a prelude to the work of consulting and listing the authentic
ecclesiastical pronouncements on the necessity of the Church for
salvation, however, we should notice the various forms which
modern theologians and writers on theological subjects have
given to their theses on this subject. Basically modem teaching
on this point can be reduced to six formulae. The correctness and
the adequacy of each one of these six formulae can, of course, only
be determined by a process of comparison with the official state­
ments of the Church itself.
(A) The visible Catholic Church is sometimes said to be
necessary for salvation with the necessity of precept alone.
(B) Occasionally the visible Catholic Church is described as
necessary for salvation with the necessity of means, but only as
the ordinary means of salvation.

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(C) One method of explaining the Church's necessity for
salvation is to hold that all this teaching involves is an affirmation
of the fact that the various divine gifts which prepare for and
constitute salvation actually belong to the visible Catholic
Church.

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(D) Another and a hitherto rather popular method of ex­
plaining this teaching has been to hold that no man can enter
heaven without having been at least a member of the soul of the
Church on earth at the time of death.

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(E) Some writers have held that, in order to be saved, a man
must actually be a member of the visible Church.
(F) The traditional scholastic expression of the thesis on the
Church’s necessity for salvation is the statement that, in order to
be saved, a man must, at the moment of his death, either be a
member of the visible Catholic Church or sincerely desire to
become a member.
These six basic formulae frequently appear in combination
with one another. Thus Edouard Hugon’s explanation of the
Church’s necessity for salvation employs the first, the fourth, and
the sixth among them. The great Dominican professor of the
Angelico distinguished between the necessity of belonging to the
soul of the Church and the obligation of belonging to its body. He
taught that the axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” signifies
that there is a "necessity of means to belong to the soul of the
Church, not merely by desire but actually, and to belong at least
by desire to the body of the Church, and to belong to the body
of the Church in reality in the measure in which one knows it and
is able to perform this duty.”1 Rejecting as inadequate any
explanations based on “good faith,” on a soul of the Church, on
an invisible Church, or on a mere necessity of precept, the
illustrious French Jesuit Jean Vincent Bainvel combines the
second, the fifth, and the sixth of our formulae in his teaching.
He holds that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation, and
that all of those who are saved are members of the Church, even
though they enter it only by desire.2
The German writer, Dr. Karl Adam, employs the second, the
third, and the fourth of our formulae in the following passage
from his The Spirit of Catholicism.
True there is only one Church of Christ. She alone is the Body of
Christ and without her there is no salvation. Objectively and practically
considered she is the ordinary way of salvation, the single and exclusive
channel by which the truth and grace of Christ enter our world of
space and time. But those also who know her not receive these gifts
from her; yes, even those who misjudge and fight against her, provided
they are in good faith, and are simply and loyally seeking the troth
without self-righteous obstinacy. Though it be not the Catholic Church

1 Bars de Figlise paint de salui (Paris: Pierre Tequi, 1927), p. 364.
*Cf. Is There Saltation Outside the Catholic Church? translated by
Fr.Weidenhan (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1920), pp. 25 ff.

NECESSITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

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itself which hands them the bread of truth and grace, yet it is Catholic
bread that they eat. And, while they eat of it, they are, without knowing
it or willing it, incorporated in the supernatural substance of the Church.
Though they be outwardly separated from the Church, they belong to its
soul?
There are numerous doctrinal pronouncements on the Church’s
necessity for salvation, as we can readily see from an examination
of the text of Cavallera’s Thesaurus doctrinae catholicae or the
index of Denzinger’s Enchiridion symbolorum. If we examine a
selected five of these texts, however, we shall find in them all of
the basic truths which the Church has proclaimed about its own
necessity. The first of these five passages is to be found in the
first chapter of the Fourth Council of the Lateran. The second
occurs in the Bull, Unam sanctam, written by Pope Boniface VIII.
The third is in the Decree for the Jacobites, issued by the
Oecumenical Council of Florence. The fourth is in the allocution
Singulari quadam, given by Pope Pius IX, while the fifth and last
is to be found in that same Pontiff’s encyclical Quanto conficiamur
moerore.
The Fourth Lateran Council teaches that “there is one uni­
versal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is
saved.”4 It is important to note that the expression "fidelium
universalis Ecclesia," employed by this Oecumenical Council, is
exactly the equivalent of the formula “catholicorum coUectio,"
which Gratian’s Decretum attributed to Pope Nicholas? In the
language of the Church the fiddis is and has always been the
Catholic, the full-fledged member of the true Church of Jesus
Christ. An ecclesiastical document like the so-called seventh
canon of the second Oecumenical Council could qualify the
catechumen as a Christian.® The title of fiddis, however, was
always reserved for the baptized person fully joined to Our
Lord’s society by its external bonds of unity.
It is thus the visible Catholic Church, the society formed by the

•Tie Spirit of Catholicism, translated by Dom Justin McCann, O.S.B.;
(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1931), p. 175.
4 Cap. 1, cf. Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiridion symbolorum (Freiburg itn
Breisgau: Herder, 1937), n. 430.
‘C. 8, D. I, “de cons.’*
•Cf. Hefele-Leclerq, Histoire des conciles (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1908),
Η, 38 ff.

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Catholics or the fideles throughout the world, which the Council
describes as so requisite for salvation that outside of it no one
at all is saved {extra quam nullus omnino salvatur). In conse­
quence, the teaching which holds the Church to be the “ordi­
nary” means of salvation can never be accepted as an explanation
of the truth proposed in this statement. If the Church were
actually and merely the “ordinary” means of salvation, the
Council would have been decidedly in error in stating that outside
of that Church “no one at all {nullus omnino)” would be saved.
Moreover the teaching that the visible Church is requisite for
salvation only with the necessity of precept must also be rejected
in the light of the Lateran Council’s pronouncement A thing
which is necessary only by the necessity of precept is incumbent
only upon those to whom the promulgation of the precept has
come. The fact that the Fourth Lateran declared the visible
Catholic and Roman Church to be necessary in such a way that
outside of it no one at all would be saved is clear indication that
this assembly did not consider the Church as requisite merely
with the necessity of precept.
In his Bull, the Unam sanctam, issued Nov. 18, 1302, Pope
Boniface VIII taught that “at the bidding of faith, we are
compelled to believe and to hold the one holy, Catholic, and
apostolic Church. We firmly believe and unfeignedly proclaim this
[Church], outside of which there is neither salvation nor the
remission of sins.”7 This document ends with the statement:
"Therefore we declare, say, define, and pronounce that for every
human creature, to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is absolutely
necessary for salvation {omnino de necessitate salutis)."
*
The Unam sandam speaks in such a way as to reject the notion
that the Catholic Church is requisite for salvation merely with the
necessity of precept or merely as an ordinary means. Its ma®
importance in this section of sacred theology, however, is to be
found in the fact that it also excludes any serious attempt to
explain the Church’s necessity by saying that the axiom “«W
ecdesiam nulla solus” means only that the graces leading to
salvation belong to the Church or that a kind of pertinence to
“the soul of the Church” in this world is sufficient for eternal
salvation. According to this pronouncement of Pope Bomfaœ

‘

7 DB, 468.

469.

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VHI, a man must be subject in some way to the Roman Pontiff,
the Vicar of Christ on earth and the visible head of the Catholic
Church, in order to enjoy everlasting life. Unequivocally, then,
the Unam sanctam holds that a man must be in some manner
attached to the visible Catholic Church in this world if he is to be
in the number of the blessed in heaven. Thus not only is it true
that the salus belongs to the Church Catholic, but that the man
who will attain it must also be counted among those who have in
some way joined its company.
It is, of course, impossible to make any rational or accurate use
of the term “soul of the Church” in explaining the necessity of the
Catholic Church for eternal salvation. Current theological
literature tells us of three ways of explaining the meaning of this
expression. First of all there is the perfectly acceptable doctrine
which expresses the function of the indwelling Holy Ghost in the
Catholic Church by speaking of Him as the Soul of this society.
If, utilizing this terminology, we state that, in order to be saved,
a man has to belong to the Soul of the Church or be a member of
the Soul of the Church we either fail to attempt an explanation of
the very thesis under discussion or we indulge in mere gibberish.
If the formula means that a man must have the Holy Ghost
dwelling within him in the life of sanctifying grace in order that
he may attain to the beatific vision, then this teaching is perfectly
correct, but it fails to explain the function of the visible Catholic
Church with reference to salvation. If, on the other hand, it
means that in some way we are to become “members" of the
Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in order to be saved, then it is
reduced to mere unintelligibility.
Secondly there is the teaching which identifies the soul of the
Church with sanctifying grace and with the various infused
graces, both theological and moral, that belong with it. When this
doctrine is employed in teaching that pertinence to the soul of the
Church is requisite for salvation, there is not even an attempt to
account for the teaching contained in the Unam sanctam. There
is no question whatsoever about the fact that grace and the
various infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost are requisite
for salvation. The thing that theology is bound to explain is the
function of the Church with reference to salvation and to the
acquisition of these other supernatural gifts, since, according to
Pope Boniface, there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

(to be found only in justification, or the infusion of sanctifying
grace together with its attendant suoernatural habits) outside
of the Church.
Thirdly there was the notion that the soul of the Church was
some kind of an invisible society of the just, a company of those in
the state of grace even outside the confines of the visible Catholic
Church. Prior to the appearance of the encyclical Mystici
corporis there were a good many Catholic writers and lecturers
who attempted to explain the necessity of the Church in terms of
this fictitious assembly, asserting that, in order to be saved, a man
had at least to be a member of this invisible society. The ap­
pearance of the Mystici corporis, officially denying the existence of
such an invisible society or Church, has been an unquestionable
blessing for the Church of God in our times.
The central truth or mystery of Christ’s dealings with the
children of men consists in the fact that His company is actually
the visible Catholic Church, an organization within which good
members and bad members will be mingled together until the end
of time. The divine teaching on the necessity of the ecdesia for
man’s salvation has reference to the fact that, in order to obtain
the Beatific Vision, a man must be connected in some way or
other with this definite and visible organization. The Unam
sanctam shows that it is impossible to explain the divine doctrine
about the Church’s necessity by teaching merely that the gifts
of God which prepare for and constitute salvation belong to the
visible Church. It insists that, in order to be saved, each man
must in some manner be subject to the Roman Pontiff, the vicar
of Christ on earth and the visible head of His Church.
Furthermore, in his Unam sanctam, Pope Boniface VIII taught
that the Church is requisite not only for salvation but for the
remission of sins. Now the remission of sins takes place only in
and through the process of justification. As a matter of fact, it is
what might be called the negative aspect of this process. The state
of sin is a condition of aversion from God. It is the voluntary
privation of the life of sanctifying grace in an intellectual creature
meant by God to possess that supernatural life.
Hence the removal or remission of sin (original or actual)
consists in the conversion of the man to God. In this process the
sin is remitted in and through the supernatural conversion of the
man to God in the life of sanctifying grace. For every man who

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comes into the world as a member of the family of Adam, the
infusion of gratia prima involves the remission of sin. Furthermore
sin can be remitted only in the process of conversion to God.
Since the only conversion towards God possible for man is the
supernatural life of sanctifying grace, there is no remission of
original or mortal sin without the infusion of this supernatural
life. According to the Catholic dogma, brought out in the Unam
sanctam, the Church is requisite for eternal salvation in exactly
the same measure that it is necessary for this infusion of the
gratta prima or for the remission of sin.
The Decree for the Jacobites, issued by the Oecumenical Council
of Florence, enlarges upon this concept. Insisting that the
visible Church is necessary for all men, in so far as those who are
not attached to it at the end of their lives will never attain to the
Beatific Vision, the Decree teaches also that those works which
would be highly meritorious if performed under the direction of
Christian charity will be of no value when performed by a person
who is outside the Church in such a way as to be turned away
from his salvation. The man who is not “within the Church” as
he must be in order to be eligible for the Beatific Vision will not
find the works of Christian piety or even the reception of the
Christian sacraments profitable for him unto salvation. The
Council's teaching on the necessity of the Catholic Church is
found in the following paragraph.
It [the sacrosanct Roman Church, established by the voice of Our
Lord and Saviour] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that none of
those who do not exist within the Catholic Church, not only pagans,
bnt Jews, heretics, and schismatics, can become partakers of eternal
life; but that they are going to the everlasting fire which is prepared for
the devil and his angels, unless they become attached to it (nisi . . .
eidem fuerint aggregati} before they die. And [it firmly believes, pro­
fesses and teaches] that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is of such
value that the ecclesiastical sacraments are profitable unto salvation,
and that fastings, almsgivings, and the other duties of piety and exer­
cises of the Christian combat bring forth eternal rewards only for those
who remain within it : and that, however great his almsgiving, and even
though he might shed his blood for the name of Christ, no one can be
saved unless he remains in the embrace and in the unity of the Catholic
Church.9
•PB, 714. The teaching on the necessity of the Church for the remission
of sins is that of St. Augustine, in his Enchiridion, cap. 65, and in Sermone

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During the earlier history of Christianity there was never
anything like a concerted effort to explain away the necessity of
the Church for salvation. Hence the Pontifical and Conciliar
documents to which we have referred thus far dealt with what
was, for the men of the times during which these documents were
written, a truth that entered into the very center of the Catholic
dogmatic message and which they had never seen seriously
contradicted. So unquestionable did this truth appear to the
men of Christian civilization that the very heretics who broke
away from and launched themselves against the Catholic com­
munion never dreamed of denying the dogma of the Church’s
necessity for salvation. The teaching occurs in the heresiarcb
Calvin’s Institutio Christianae religionis10 and in several Protestant
statements of belief. Among these latter are the Belgic Confession
of 1561,11 the Scotch Confession of 1560,12 the Irish Articles ol
Religion of 1615,12 and the Westminster Confession of 1647?
*
The last-named document, incidentally, speaks of the visSdi
Church as something outside of which there is ordinarily no
salvation. This manner of speaking was and remains quite in
harmony with the peculiar ecclesiology manifest in the West­
minster Confession, although it is quite inadequate as an ex­
pression of the divinely revealed truth about the true Church of
Jesus Christ.
During the nineteenth century, however, the traditional
Catholic teaching on the necessity of the Church had become
obscured or confused in some Catholic circles. Hence Pope Pius
IX found it necessary to insist upon this dogma and to take
measures to overcome the misunderstanding generated by a
somewhat naive “Catholic liberalism.” His most extensive
treatment of the dogma on the Church’s necessity is to be found

LXXI. The second sentence in the citation from the Council expresses t®
of the central truths in the ecclesiology of St. Augustine. Cf. De Baptist
contra Danatistas, Lib. 4, cap. 24; Sermo ad Caesareensis Ecdesiae ÿfeit·
n. 6; Epist. CXLI, n. 5.
10 Cf. Book IV, chapter 1, n. 4. In Tholuck’s edition (Edinburgh, 1874), H.
230.
11 Cf. Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (New York: Harper and Brothers»
1882), III, 418.
« Cf, ibid., Ill, 458.
» Cf. ibid., HI, 538.
«Cf. ibid., Ill,657.

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in his Allocution, the Singulari quadam, pronounced on Dec. 9,
1854.
In this Allocution the Holy Father dealt with two distinct
errors then troubling the minds of European Catholics. Having
completed his teaching on rationalism, the first of these errors, he
proceeded to deal with the other.
Not without sorrow have we seen that another error, and one not
less ruinous, has taken possession of certain portions of the Catholic
world, and has entered into the souls of the many Catholics who think
that they can well hope for the eternal salvation of all those who have
in no way entered into the true Church of Christ. For that reason
they are wont to inquire time and time again as to what is going to be
the fate and the condition after death of those who have never yielded
themselves to the Catholic faith and, convinced by completely inadequate
arguments, they expect a response that will favor this evil teaching.
Far be it from Us, Venerable Brethren, to presume to establish limits
to the divine mercy, which is infinite. Far be it from us to wish to
scrutinize the hidden counsels and judgments of God, which are “a great
deep,” and which human thought can never penetrate. In accordance
with our apostolic duty, we desire to stir up your episcopal solicitude
and vigilance to drive out of the mind of men, to the extent to which
you are able to use all of your energies, that equally impious and deadly
opinion that the way of eternal salvation can certainly be found in any
religion. With all the skill and learning at your command, you should
prove to the people committed to your care that this dogma of Catholic
faith is in no way opposed to the divine mercy and justice.1®

The basic approach of Pope Pius IX to the dogma of the
Church’s necessity was such as to show very clearly that the great
Pontiff regarded this particular truth as one about which the
faithful should be particularly well informed. The contradiction,
or even the weakening of this dogma must be regarded as an evil
which the Bishops of the Catholic Church are bound to oppose
with all the intellectual forces at their disposal. And, we must
remember that the Holy Father was not dealing with any crass
denial of the axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus." He was faced
with a situation in which it was taken for granted that non­
Catholics would be saved through the use of those spiritual
resources available to them as non-members of the Church of
Christ, apart from any real acceptance of the Catholic faith or of
“DB, 1646.

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the Catholic Church. It was precisely this attitude or opinion
which Pius IX characterized as impious and deadly.
The Singulari quadam then goes on to give the fundamental
explanation of that teaching which the Holy Father had com­
manded the Catholic Bishops to expound to their own flocks.
They had been told to show those over whom they were placed
that the Catholic dogma on the necessity of the Church for
salvation was in no way opposed to the truths about the divine
justice and mercy. They were to proceed in this fashion.
Certainly we must hold it as of faith that no one can be saved outside
of the apostolic Roman Church, that this is the only Ark of Salvation,
that the one who does not enter this is going to perish in the deluge
But nevertheless we must likewise hold it as certain that those who labor
in ignorance of the true religion, if that [ignorance] be invincible, will
never be charged with any guilt on this account before the eyes of the
Lord. Now who is there who would arrogate to himself the power to
point out the extent of such ignorance according to the nature and
the variety of peoples, regions, talents and so many other things?
For really when, loosed from these bodily bonds, we see God as He is,
we shall certainly understand with what intimate and beautiful a bond
the divine mercy and justice are joined together. But, while we live
on earth, weighed down by this mortal body that darkens the mind, let
us hold most firmly out of Catholic doctrine that there is one God, one
faith, one baptism. It is wicked to go on inquiring beyond this.1*
In this allocution the statement that no one can be saved
outside of the Catholic Church is presented definitely as a matter
of divine faith, as one of those truths which God has revealed to
the world through Jesus Christ and which Our Lord teaches
infallibly within the company of His disciples. Hence any
attempt at explanation of this teaching which involves exceptions
to or a denial of this absolute truth must be rejected as contrary
to the divine teaching itself. Thus the statements which follow
upon this basic pronouncement in the Singulari quadam definitely
must not be interpreted as involving anything like a weakening
of the dogma itself.
The second statement in the foregoing paragraph, the one to the
effect that invincible ignorance of the true religion will not be
accounted as an offense by God, was requisite for a proper
explanation of the dogma in the time of Pope Pius IX, and it

»PB, 1647.

remains no less necessary in our own day. Acting upon a dis-;
tinctively Protestant notion of God’s kingdom on earth, some of
the enemies of the Catholic Church had misinterpreted the dogma
of the Church’s necessity to mean that men would be considered
blameworthy for invincible ignorance of the true Church. Such
*
of course, is not the true and traditional meaning of, this dogma.
Unfortunately, however, a certain number of Catholics had been
uncritical enough to imagine that a straightforward explanation
of this dogma would involve the blasphemous doctrine that men
are blameworthy precisely by reason of their invincible ignorance.
Pope Pius IX demanded that the Bishops of the Catholic Church
exert themselves to drive this deadly misconception from the
minds of their subjects. He attacked it, consequently, in his own
Allocution.
The fact of the matter is, of course, that the possibility and
existence of a genuine invincible ignorance about the true Church
of God has nothing whatsoever to do with the Church’s real
necessity of means for eternal salvation. If the Church were
requisite merely in terms of the necessity of precept, then the
existence of a really inculpable ignorance with reference to it
would automatically excuse all of those held in the ties of that
ignorance. But it so happens that the Church is necessary for
salvation with the necessity of means. Hence, those who have
hitherto remained in ignorance of the true Church through no
fault of their own still need this society in order to attain to the
Beatific Vision.
In order to understand this portion of the Singulari quadam it
is absolutely essential to keep in mind the truth which forms the
essential background to all of the Catholic teaching about the
necessity of the Church for salvation, the divinely revealed
doctrine that the salvation of mankind is something intrinsically
supernatural and something of which the family of Adam is
rightly deprived because of original sin. For this twofold reason,
then, eternal salvation must not be considered as something
naturally due to man. Salvation, as the term itself indicates,
implies a transfer from an undesirable status to a condition of
blessedness. Concretely, the salvation of any human being
involves a transfer from the fallen family of Adam to that com­
pany which is known as the Body of Jesus Christ.
The man who is not thus brought or transferred into the Body

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of Jesus Christ, but who remains merely a member of the fallen
family of Adam, will not attain to the Beatific Vision. Even
though such a man has had no means of knowing the existence of
the true Church of Jesus Christ, and consequently is in no way to
blame for not entering this society or not even desiring to enter it,
he will still remain deprived of the Beatific Vision if he departs
from this life in such a condition. The mortal sins which he may
have committed in this life, together with original sin itself,
would suffice to constitute him as unworthy of heaven. The fact
that he had not been incorporated into the one supernatural
society within which the divine fellowship is to be found in this
world would render him ineligible for the essentially supernatural
beatitude of the Church triumphant.
As the Singulari quadam reminds us quite forcibly, it remains
true that no one can judge accurately about the extent and the
location of truly invincible ignorance with reference to the true
Church of Christ in this world. Thus, to state the matter concrete­
ly, it is quite impossible for us to say whether or not some
individual Protestant, living in a region where the Catholic
Church flourishes, is invincibly ignorant of that Church by reason
of his upbringing and his prejudices. As a matter of fact, such a
judgement does not fall within our competence as preachers of
Catholic truth. Actually we are and we remain the ambassadors
of Christ, charged with the entirety of that message, but only
with that message, which Jesus Christ teaches within our com­
munion. The truth that the Catholic Church is actually requisite
for eternal salvation forms an integral part of that message. The
truth about the culpability or the lack of it in any outsider’s
ignorance of the true Church is definitely not a part of the
teaching with which we are entrusted. Consequently, as Pope
Pius IX warns us, we are only abusing our commission when we
attempt to form a judgment on such matters.
Actually the truth which God has in fact revealed on the
subject of the Church's necessity for salvation clearly implies the
tremendous need for genuine apostolic activity on the part of all
Catholics and especially on the part of priests. It is the will of
God that no man should be lost or deprived of eternal salvation·
Yet, in the providence of God, no man will be saved outside of the
Body of Christ which is the Catholic Church. It is within our
power to bring the Church and its divine message to the peoples

NECESSITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

227

of the earth. Hence, if we should be lax in our apostolic endeavors,
we must be considered as recreant in our love for and gratitude to
Christ.
As a matter of fact the lax or “liberal” interpretation of the
dogma concerning the Church’s necessity for salvation is es­
sentially a screen for a tepid or non-existent missionary spirit. If
the way of salvation were really open to men in all religions or in
all religious societies, then there would certainly be no valid
reason for pouring out the best blood of the Catholic Church in the
never-ending effort to. plant the company of Christ among the
peoples of the world. The missionary labors of the Catholic
Church are expended, not to bring about a mere improvement in
the condition of people who would have been in a position to be
saved in any event, but actually to carry the message and the
means of salvation to those who sit in darkness. The work of
converting men to the Church of Christ aims not at bringing an
easier way of salvation but at bringing the very hope of salvation
to the beneficiaries of Catholic preaching.
Those in whom God has implanted a sincere desire and prayer
for the means of salvation will receive them: but they will receive
them from the Church itself. Hence it is the duty of all those
who have been favored by God with membership in the Church to
do whatever is in their power to forward the apostolic work of
Christ. Such is the teaching of the Singulari quadam.

For the rest, as the cause of charity demands, let us pour out con­
tinual prayers to God that all nations everywhere may be converted to
Christ. And let us do all in our power to bring about the common
salvation of men, for the hand of the Lord is not shortened and the
gifts of heavenly grace will never be lacking to those who sincerely
wish and pray to be comforted in this light. Truths of this kind must
be most deeply implanted in the minds of the faithful so that they may
not be corrupted by the false doctrines which tend to encourage the in­
difference of religion which we see slowly being spread abroad and
strengthened to the ruin of souls.1T
Any doctrine which, even under the pretense of explaining the
axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” actually presents the Catholic
Church as an agency not really requisite for salvation is rightly
designated by the Singulari quadam as fostering or inculcating

n DB, 1648.

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

religious indifferentism. For it is by no means characteristic of
this indifferentism to say that one religion is as good as another.
What is essential to it is the mistaken notion that man can achieve
his ultimate end outside of and apart from the true Church of
Jesus Christ.

Joseph Clifford Fentom
The Catholic University oj America,
Washington, D. C.

Fifty Years Ago
In the March, 1898, issue of The American Ecclesiastical Hmm,
the leading article, entitled "Gethsemane," is by Dr. Alfred Loisy. It is
a commentary on the biblical account of our Lord’s agony in the Garden.
[There seems to be nothing in the article indicative of a lack of ortho·
doxy, though biblical experts might perceive a tendency toward die
views which later rendered the unfortunate author one of the leaders of
Modernism]. . . . Writing under the heading “What shall be Ids
Name?” Fr. William Stang explains the law of the Church requiring a
Christian name to be conferred in baptism. He points out, however,
that sometimes a name is presented which at first sight may not appear
to be that of a saint, though in reality it is a modified form of some
saint’s name, and adds a list of approved names with varied forms in
which they may appear. Thus, Elsie is a form of Adelaide, Brian of
Bernard, Pierce of Peter. . . . Against three communications to the
contrary, H.J.H. defends his view that children who die without
baptism may subsequently, in virtue of prayers offered for than,
be given the grace to elicit the requisite acts for admission to eternal
happiness. . . . The Analecta section contains the apostolic letter cf
Pope Leo XIII approving the constitutions of the Sisters of St Joseph
in the United States. ... In the answer to one of the theological
questions the view is expressed that baptism can be conferred if one
person pours the water while another says the words, as long astht
former is acting at the command of the latter. In this event, the writer
asserts, the action of the one pouring the water is a mechanical ad,
directed, not by his own, but by the other’s intention. [I doubt if fins
view would find favor with many theologians].... Professor Prinzivalli
writes from Rome of the discovery, in the old palace of Tiberius on the
Palatine Hill, of a mural engraving of our Lord on the cross, with
the name “Chrestus" written over his head. The Professor believes
that die engraving was tile work of a pagan soldier who had served
in Jerusalem and who may have been present at the Crucifixion.
F.J.C

Answers to Questions
INTERRUPTION OF THE DIVINE OFFICE

Question: One evening lately I had anticipated two Nocturns
of the following day’s Office, but circumstances rendered it
impossible for me to say any more that night. In view of the
teaching of moralists that only a three hours’ interval is per­
mitted between Nocturns, was I obliged to recite these two
Nocturns again the following day?
Answer: The three hours' interval which moralists say is
permissible between Nocturns refers to the merely lawful, not the
valid fulfilment of the obligation of the Office. Furthermore, this
ruling does not bind sub gravi—in other words, if a priest, without
any reasonable cause separated the Nocturns by more them three
hours, he would commit a venial, not a mortal sin. And, even in
this event, he would not be bound to recite again the Noctum or
Nocturns already recited. For, once a portion of the Office has
been duly recited within the time permitted for the fulfillment of
this obligation, there is no obligation to repeat it, however long a
period may elapse before the breviary is again taken up.
Furthermore, if the priest has a sufficient reason for stopping
after the second Noctum and leaving the third until the following
day, he is guilty of no sin whatsoever. The sufficient reason need
not be a grave reason—it may be any utility to oneself or to some
one else. Thus, a sufficient reason to interrupt the Office after the
second Noctum until the next day would be present if the pnest
were summoned to some task of the sacred ministry, and felt
somewhat fatigued on his return, if a brother priest dropped in
and he wished to show him due hospitality, if he were unexpectedly
ashed to prepare a special sermon for the following day, etc.
From this it will be evident that the questioner not only was not
bound to recite the first two Nocturns again, but that he was
guilty of no fault at all in deferring the recitation of the third
Noctum until the following day, since it was impossible for him to

say any more that night. (Cf. Damen, Theologia moralis [Rome,
WJ, I, n. 1123.)

229

THE THEOLOGICAL PROOF FOR THE NECESSITY
b.
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
‘ ' Part II
In his encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, dated Aug. 10,
1863, Pope Pius IX brought Out one aspect of the Church's neces­
sity which had not been stressed in the other pontifical docu­
ments to which we have referred. The other pronouncements
were formulated in such a way as to show that the theological
axiom "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" could not be explained by
saying that the Church was merely the ordinary means of sal­
vation, or that it was-necessary only-with- the- necessity of pre­
cept, or that some nebulous membership in or appurtenance to
the “soul of the Church" was sufficient for salvation, or that it
meant simply that the divine gifts in line with salvation belonged
to and with the visible Church itself. The Quanto conficiamur
moerore made it clear that the axiom could not be interpreted to
mean that salvation is restricted to actual members of the Cath­
olic Church. Furthermore it set forth authoritatively the truth
that the desire to enter the Church, apart from which salvation
is not achieved, need not .be the explicit desire of the actual
catechumen.
.
,·.'■■■■■
In taking up the teaching on the necessity of the Church, the
Quanto conficiamur moerore begins with a perfectly clear and un­
compromising condemnation of indifferentism, reminiscent of
that which Pope Gregory XVI had written into his Mirari nos
arbitramur more than thirty years before.1 Like his predecessor,
Pope Pius IX spoke out strongly against the error of indifferent­
ism, the error which held that those who live by false teachings and
are strangers to the true faith and to Catholic unity can attain to
eternal life. The salvation which is not to be found outside the
Catholic Church is presented here in the Quanto conficiamur
moerore as the obtaining of this vita aeterna. ...........
>· And here I must mention and reprove a most serious error into which
some Catholics have fallen, imagining that men living in errors and
' 1 The Mirari vos arbitramur condemned the teachings of Lamennais and
others in the periodical L’Avenir. This encyclical’s condemnation of indiffer­
entiam is found in Denzinger-Bannwart's Enchiridion symbolorum (Freiburg
im Breisgau, 1937), n. 1613. This work will be cited in the article as DB.
290

1

A

■

NECESSITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH'

291

apart (alienos) from the true faith and ,from the Catholic,unity can
attain to eternal life. This,· of course, is .completely opposed. to Catholic
doctrine.2,, .. .. :
.;.
.... . .
.... ,
The sentence which follows upon this passage in the encyclical
is long and extremely complicated. It cannot be understood ex­
cept in terms of the traditional theology of the Church;
1 s
' It’ is known to us and to you'that'those who labor in ’invincible
ignorance of our most holy religion, and who, carefully observing the
natural law and its precepts which God has· inscribed'in the'hearts
of all; and ’ being ready to obey God, dive an honest and upright· life
can, through the working of the.divine light! and grace, attain' eternal
life, since God,-who clearly sees, inspects1,i and knows the minds, the
intentions,, the thoughts and the habits .of. all, will, by! reason of His
supreme goodness and kindness, never .allpws anyone who has not the
guilt of .wilful sin ta be punished by eternal sufferings.2 ·,
»
. ■,
■ ; Now we would tragically misconstrue· themeariing of this sen­
tence if we were to interpret it as à kind of
* weakening of or an
exception to the Catholic, dogma that the: Church itself is neces­
sary for salvation. As a matter of fact,’ all that Pope Ptus IX did
in this sentence was to bring forward certain pertinent theological
truths which had always been taught in thé Catholic schools and
which must be considered ifwe are tb understand the teaching
about the necessity of the Church. In so doing the great Pontiff
broughtout the fact that the Catholic teaching on this,point
had never meant and. had never even appeared ;to,mean that
actual membership in the Church was requisite, with the neces­
sity of means, for eternal salvation.,
; ,·
■. None of the. official ecclesiastical ; documents which we have
dted for their teaching on the necessity, of the Church· for sal­
vation have mentioned actual membership jo. the Church. It is
true of course that the text of these documents to .which we have
appealed does not in any case directly state or even imply by
itself that membership is not necessary, , i If, they were the only
sources of information about· the Church’s teaching on this sub­
ject, then there might be some excuse for imagining that the
authors of these documents were of thè'opinïon that aman could
not be saved without actually being a member of the true and
visible Church of Jesus Christ. We really have at our dispo­
sition, however highly important dogmatic sources which show
’M, 1677.

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

us very clearly that the Pontiffs and the Fathers who issued the
documents with which we are concerned were fully aware of the
fact that a man can be saved even though he is not a member of
the Church although, in truth, no one is saved outside of that
Church.
From the very beginnings of Christian history, the Church of
God has been wont to reverence and honor as its own and as the
glorious recipients of eternal salvation those martyrs who suffered
death for the faith, even when these martyrs were not baptized.
The Pontiffs and the conciliar Fathers who have given us our
official teachings on the necessity of the Church for salvation
were all fully aware of the truth St. Augustine set down in his
De civitate Dei, that the eternal glory of a man who died for
Christ before he could receive the baptismal initiation into the
Church of God was far greater than that of the person who de­
parts this life immediately after receiving the sacrament of bap­
tism. St. Augustine had written that:
Those who have been baptized when they no longer could escape
death, and have departed this life with all their sins forgiven, hare
not so great merit as those who did not defer death, even though they
were able to defer it, because they chose rather to end their life by
professing Christ than to come to His baptism by denying Him.4
Furthermore, the men who formulated and expressed those
statements about the necessity of the Church for salvation were
cognizant of the fact that a person who died while intending to
receive baptism, but before he had the opportunity actually to
be baptized, could be saved by reason of that very desire. The
constant teaching of the Church on this point is summed up by
St. Ambrose in his De obitu Valentiniani.
But I hear that you are sad because he [Valentinian II] did not
receive the sacraments of baptism. Tell me, what else is there in us,
apart from will, apart from petition? But for a long time, and even
before he came into Italy, it was his desire that he should be initiated
[into the Church by baptism]. Recently he made it known that he
wished to be baptised by me and it was for this reason, rather than for
any other causes, that he decided to summon me. Does he not have,
therefore, the grace he has desired ? Does he not have what he prayed
fcr? Certainly he has received it because he prayed.®

« De civitate Dei, Lib. XIII, cap. 7. C5EL, XL, ii. 622; MPL, XLI, 381.
* De obiiu Valentiniani, n. 51. MPL, XVI, 1374.

*
MK

NECESSITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

293

Thus, when the ecclesia docens has taught that the true and
visible Church of Jesus Christ is so constituted that outside of it
“no one at all can be saved,” it has obviously understood that
men like the martyrs of whom St. Augustine spoke, and like the
catechumen about whom St. Ambrose spoke, were, like the
actual fideles or members of the Church, not “outside” it. When
the Popes and the Bishops who pronounced the various dogmatic
formulae dealing with the Church’s necessity used the expression
“outside the Church,” they obviously meant to imply that the
unbaptized martyr and the catechumen dying in the state of
grace were, with reference to this point at least, “inside the
Church,” together with all the Catholics or fideles who are joined
to Our Lord by the outward bonds of ecclesiastical unity.
The doctrine that a man can be “inside the Church,” in the
sense of being in a position to receive eternal salvation, while he
is not actually a member of that Church, which is a visible and
highly organized society, is obviously something quite difficult to
teach accurately and adequately. Yet this doctrine is nothing
more or less than the truth manifestly revealed by God to His
Church. Many a scholastic theologian has tried his hand at what
seemed at the time to be a workable and pedagogically apt
formula for explaining the catechumen’s status “inside the
Church.” Alphonsus a Castro and Francis Suarez simply cut the
Gordian knot and taught that the catechumen should be con­
sidered as a member of the Church.6 Both appealed to well known
papal decisions. In one of these rescripts Pope Innocent II
taught that a local Church could and ought to offer its prayers
and Masses for a man who had lived and died as a holy presbyter
of that Church but who, it developed after his death, had never
been validly baptized.7 In the other, Pope Innocent III dealt
with the case of a Jew who wished to enter the Church but who
could find no one to baptize him when he was at the point of
death. This man had immersed himself in water and had pro­
nounced the baptismal formula for himself. The Holy Father
informed the Bishop of Metz that if the man were still living, he
• Cf. Alphonsus a Castro, in the De iusta haereticorum punitione, Lib. I,
cap. 8, in the Opera Alphonsi a Castro (Paris, 1571), col. 1096 f. and Suarez, in
the Tractatus de fide, Disp. IX, sectio I, in the Opus de triplici virtute theologica
(Lyons, 1621), p. 160.
; ’Cf. DB, 388. · . .

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ought to be properly baptized, since the act he had performed
was invalid. If, on the other hand, the man were already dead,
the Bishop and his flock could be certain that he had gone to
heaven “propter sacramenti fidem, etsi nem propter fidei sacra­
mentum."1
Despite the manifest brilliance of these theologians, the theory
of Alphonsus a Castro and of Francis Suarez never achieved any
real success in the field of Catholic theology. Thé evidence that
Catechumens were not actually members or parts of the visible
Church militant was far too strong. Today, of course, their po■ sition is entirely untenable. John Lens and Francis Sylvius, how­
ever; essayed another and a less radical simplification.’ Both of
these distinguished writers; taught that the baptism of water is
only the ordinary means for entrance into the Church militant
(quite a different position, it must be remarked, from that which
pretends that the Church itself is only the ordinary means of
salvation), and held that a catechumen in the state of grace is
invisibly integrated into the visible Church prior to his death, if
.he should die without having the opportunity to receive the
sacrament of baptism. There was something fantastic about this
explanation, and it never attracted any important number of
adherents in the theological world.
What seems to have been the best explanation of all was offered
.by John Wiggers, like Lens a member of the faculty of sacred
theology in the University of Louvain. According to Wiggers:,

: . No one can be saved ’ outside of thé Church, that'is, without being
-•in it either acually and in reality; or by . desire ànd intent (desideria et
affectu). For when any person, in the light of the true faith, is con­
verted to God with all his heart and wishes to be incorporated into the
Church; in such way that it is not his fault that he is not externally
and really incorporated into it, then he can be saved by reason of that
desire (mediante illo voto). In the same way, under similar circum­
stances, he can be saved by the intention of baptism. In like manner a

>Cf.Z>B,413.
* Ct. Sylvius, in the work entitled Libri sex de praecipuis fidei nostrae απύηnersiis cum nostris haereheis, Lib. HI, qu. 1, art. 3, in’the Opera Francisa
Sylvii (Antwerp, 1698), V, 238. John Lens, a Louvain theologian, who died a
1593, is the only authority cited by Sylvius in support of hisJtheory. I have
not been able to find a copy of Lens’ De una Christi in terris'Jicclesia libn ses
(Louvain, 1588).

NECESSITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

295

man could be saved from shipwreck even if he did not actually go
aboard another and an undamaged craft so as to be within it But if
he holds on to it with his hands, he will be brought with it to the
shore and safety. These desires and wishes are like hands, which people
of this sort use to grasp and to hold on to the ship which is the Church,
although they never enter it absolutely, really, and in a bodily manner.10

Now it is important to note that the encyclical Quanto confici­
amur moerore not only takes it for granted that a person who is
not a member of the Church can be saved, but also teaches that
salvation is possible even for one who is (and who presumably re­
mains) in invincible ignorance of this Church. According to this
document, the people who observe the precepts of the natural
law, and who are prepared to obey God, and who lead an honest
and upright life can attain eternal life through the working of the
divine light and of the divine grace, even while they remain in
invincible ignorance of the true Church of Jesus Christ. Yet this
teaching is by no means a novelty in the Catholic doctrine and in
the Catholic Church. It is manifestly implied in the teaching of
the Council of Trent on justification and the preparation for
justification in adults.
After explaining, in the fifth chapter of its Decretum de justi­
ficatione that the reception of sanctifying grace by an adult who
has hitherto been in a state of sin or aversion from God involves
the work of grace and our own real co-operation, the Council, in
the subsequent chapter, goes on to explain the acts by which
adults are disposed to receive the supernatural life from God.
Now they are disposed to justice itself when, aroused and aided
by divine grace, receiving faith from hearing, they are freely moved
towards God, believing those things to be true which have been divine-,
ly revealed and promised, and especially that the sinner has been
justified by God through His grace and through the redemption which
is in Christ Jesus ; and when, understanding themselves to be sinners,
they, by turning themselves from the fear of divine justice, by which they
are beneficially terrified, to consider God’s mercy, they are raised up to
hope, trusting that God will be kind to them for the sake of Christ
And then they begin to love Him as the font of all justice, and there­
fore they are moved against sin by a certain hatred and detestation,
that is, by the sort of penance which should be performed before

'’John Wiggers, in his Commentaria de virtutibus theologicis (Louvain, I6S9),
p.109.

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baptism. And finally [they are disposed to justice] when they propose to
receive baptism, to begin a new life, and to keep the divine com­
mandments.11
Thus, according to the Council of Trent, there are six distinct
steps which enter into the preparation for the reception of the life
of sanctifying grace, or, in other words, for the forgiveness of sin.
According to Pope Boniface VIII, in his Unam sanctam, the
Church is requisite for the forgiveness of sin, or for justificatif, in
the same way that it is necessary for eternal salvation.12 Hence,
from the consideration of these six factors of the disposition for
justification, we can see the kind of knowledge of the Church
which is requisite for the reception of grace and for salvation itself.
The six factors are, (1) faith, (2) salutary fear of God’s justice,
(3) hope, (4) amor initialis, (5) penance, and (6) the proposal to
receive baptism, to begin a new life, and to keep God's com­
mandments. Obviously the key to the understanding of our
problem is faith itself. From the Catholic teaching about what
explicit belief a man must have in order to be saved, we ran see
the perennial Catholic truth that a man may be in a certain
measure inside the Church and may be saved without having
any explicit knowledge of the Church as such.
Now the faith by which men are saved, the faith which neces­
sarily enters into the preparation for justification on the part of
an adult, is proposed by the Council of Trent as fides ex auditu.
It involves the acceptance of the message actually revealed by
God Himself. Thus a mere expression of willingness to believe
what God has revealed if He has really given any message to the
human race would not constitute the requisite faith. This faith
is the actual and unquestioning acceptance of the doctrine which
we know as the divine public revelation.
There has always been, however, some question as to the
amount of this divine public revelation which a man must be­
lieve explicitly in order to be saved, or in order to receive the life
of sanctifying grace. It is absolutely certain that there is no
possibility of salvation for an adult unless he believes explicitly
at least the two truths that God exists and that He rewards
those who seek Him. Furthermore it is also certain that this
salutary belief must consider God as the Author of the super-

“ Sessio VI, cap. 6. DB, 798.

15 CL DB, 468.

NECESSITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

297

natural order, that is, as giving His creatures a reward or re­
muneration far greater than their status as creatures would de­
mand. What has divided the theologians over the centuries has
been the question about the need of explicit belief in other prop­
ositions of faith for eternal salvation.
As far as the actual documentation of the Church is concerned,
it would seem that explicit belief in the redemptive work of Christ
is required. In the chapter of the Decretum de justificatione from
which we have just cited, the Council of Trent speaks of the adult
preparing himself for justification as “believing those things to be
true which have been divinely revealed and promised, and es­
pecially that the sinner has been justified by God through His
grace and through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”13
It is certainly difficult to interpret this statement as other than
an indication that the Council was convinced that there would be
no justification apart from explicit belief in these truths.
Nevertheless, there have been divergent teachings on this point
in Catholic theological literature. Thus Billuart teaches that
since the gospel has been sufficiently promulgated, explicit belief
in both the Trinity and the Incarnation must be considered as
necessary for all, with the necessity of means, for eternal salva­
tion. Billuart regards the time when the gospel of Christ could
be said to have been sufficiently promulgated as something about
which we have no certain information. He hazards the opinion,
however, that the gospel could be said to have been sufficiently
promulgated about forty years after Our Lord’s ascension into
heaven.11
Melchior Cano offers an interesting variation of this opinion.
He holds that explicit faith in Christ is necessary for eternal and
final salvation, while an implicit faith suffices for the remission of
sins and thus for justification.15 Suarez and the Salmanticenses,
were of the opinion that, since the promulgation of the gospel, an
explicit faith in Christ is per se a necessary means for salvation,
but that, as a matter of fact, some people are saved apart from
this means per accidens. This opinion, for ail practical purposes,

“Sessio VI, cap. 6. DB, 798.
11 Cf. Billuart’s Tractatus de fide, Dissertatio III, art. 2, in the Cursus tkeolo
pae (Paris: Lecoffre, 1904), V, 29 f.
“Cf. Cano’s Retectio de sacramentis in genere, Pars II, conclusio 3, in the
Melckioris Cani opera theologica (Rome: Filiziani, 1900), III, 230 ff.

i:
I-

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is equivalent to the teaching of Blasio Beraza in our own times.
Beraza holds that explicit faith in Our Lord as a mediator is not
absolutely requisite for salvation even in New Testament times.11
These are highly interesting opinions, and they serve to throw
light on the problem of the Church’s necessity for salvation in so
far as they show that no theologian demands as absolutely req­
uisite for eternal salvation any explicit belief in the Catholic
Church itself. Hence it is obvious that the very schola theologorum
which has insisted most strongly upon the validity of the doctrine
that the Church is requisite for salvation never intended to teach
and cannot legitimately be interpreted as teaching that a man
had to be an actual member of the Church, or, absolutely speak­
ing, even had to possess explicit knowledge of the Church as God’s
kingdom on earth in order to attain eternal salvation. The men
who expounded the Church’s teaching about its own necessity
have always explained that teaching against the background of a
theology which states that a man can be saved by a desire of the
Church even when that desire was merely implicit.
Thus, even from this point of view, it would be absurd to
qualify the teaching of the Quanto conficiamur moerore, telling of
the possibility of salvation for a man who lives in invincible ig­
norance of the Church, as in any way an attenuation or a partial
abandonment of the dogma on the Church’s real and absolute
necessity for salvation. The statement we have seen was nothing
more or less than an official pronouncement of a doctrine which
had long been taught as an integral part of the same science of
sacred theology in which the teaching on the Church's necessity
is expounded and developed. It forms one of the many truths
which must be taken into consideration when we study and teach
that no one can be saved outside of the Catholic Church.
There is, however, still another aspect to this statement in the
Quanto conficiamur moerore to which the theologian must advert
if he is to formulate the teaching on the necessity of the Church
accurately and adequately. The encyclical of Pope Pius IX
speaks of the possibility of salvation for those who sedulously (the
Latin "sedulo” conveys the idea of continued action) obey the
natural law and who live an honest life. It speaks of this possi-

“Cf. Beraza’s Tractatus de virtutibus infusis (Bilbao: El Mensajero del
Corazon de Jesus, 1929), pp. 448 ff.

NECESSITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

299

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I

bility as available to such people “through the working of the
divine light and grace.”
Now a person “sedulously” observing the natural law is mani­
festly one who is living for a long time without committing a
mortal sin. It is, however, the common teaching of Catholic
theology that, in the status of fallen nature, no one can remain
for any considerable time without committing mortal sin apart
from the aid of supernatural grace.17 Furthermore, it is most
probable that the grace, apart from which a man will not actually
observe all the natural precepts taken collectively over any con­
siderable period of time, is sanctifying grace itself.18
Thus, far from implying that a man can merit eternal salvation
by purely natural acts, performed outside of the Catholic Church,
the encyclical letter of Pope Pius IX really teaches that the man
who observes all the natural law can attain eternal salvation
through that life of grace which he already possesses. And, if he
has the life of grace, he has already gone through that process by
which he was disposed to or prepared for justification, which, ac­
cording to the Council of Trent is “not only the remission of sins,
but also the sanctification and renovation of the inward man
through the voluntary reception of grace and the gifts, whence
man is changed from an unjust person into a just person.and
from an enemy into a friend, in order that he may be an heir ac­
cording to the hope of life eternal.”19
In other words, the man who is sedulously observing the natural.
law in such a way as to avoid mortal sin for a considerable period
of time is one who has already made an explicit act of super­
natural faith, in which the belief in the Church was at least im­
plicitly contained. With this faith, and with the real hope in God
which followed upon it, he made his act of love for God, the act
of the theological virtue of charity, inseparable from the life of
sanctifying grace in adults. In this act of charity, the man who
sedulously observes the natural law formulates the real intention,
to do whatever God has commanded, and to associate himself
with God, even in this life. The association or fellowship with
0 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Sumina theologica, la-IIae, qu. 109, art. 8.
” Cf. the Salmanticenses, Tractatus de gratia Dei, Disputatio II, dubium, 6,
in their Cursus theologicus (Paris and Brussels, 1878), IX, 249 ff, and Billot,
De gratia Christi (Rome: The Gregorian University, 1928), pp. 70 ff.
” Sessio VI, cap. 7. DB, 799.

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God in this world demanded by Christ as a necessary means to
salvation is the reality or communion which we know as the
visible Catholic Church. Hence, by and in his act of theological
charity, the man who has avoided mortal sin for a long time has
already desired to enter the Catholic Church, even though he is
not explicitly aware of the actual existence or status of that
Church.
This, then, is one aspect of the meaning of the dogma on the
Church’s necessity for eternal salvation. Even a person who is
invincibly ignorant of the true Church can, through an act of
explicit faith in God as the head of the supernatural order, and
through an act of charity for God known in this supernatural way,
be in the state of sanctifying grace and friendship for God which
is the beginning of eternal life in this world. Such a person,
through his supernatural faith and charity, implicitly but sincere­
ly wills to be within the community of fellowship with God and
Christ. This community of fellowship, in the merciful designs of
God’s providence, is the visible Catholic Church, the visible
Church of the Roman communion.
Such is the lesson brought home in the subsequent sentence of
the Quanto conficiamur moerore.
But it is a perfectly well known Catholic dogma that no one can
be saved outside of the Catholic Church, and that those who are con­
tumacious against the authority of that same Church, and who are
pertinaciously divided from the unity of that Church and from Peter’s
successor, the Roman Pontiff, to whom the custody of the vineyard
has been committed by the Savior, cannot obtain eternal salvation.81
In this lesson two distinct truths are enuntiated. In the first
place the encyclical assures us absolutely that no one can be
saved outside the Church. The second tells us that no one of
those who remain separated from the Church through their own
fault are in a position to attain eternal life as long as they remain
in that status. It is tremendously important, however, to realize
that the first statement is in no way restricted to the extent of
the second. The first informs us absolutely that no one can be
saved outside the Church. The second tells us that those who
pertinaciously remain separated from the unity and from die
leadership of the Church in this world are most certainly in the

*>DB, 1677.
β

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301

category of those “outside the Church,” and have placed them­
selves in a position such that, while they remain in this status,
they cannot attain eternal life. Thus it would be an obvious mis­
interpretation of the encyclical’s teaching to imagine that it
meant to say that no person could be judged “outside the Church”
except those who pertinaciously and thus voluntarily refuse to
enter its communion even after they are aware of the validity of
its claims. Actually any human being who is not really a member
of the Church and who has not at least an implicit real desire to
dwell within it is “outside the Church,” and is thus one of those
in whose favor the missionary charity of Catholics must be
exercised.
We must not lose sight of this fact. Separation from the Church
always is objectively an evil, even in the case where the person in
this status is not blameworthy in the sight of God precisely for
being “outside the Church.” The man who is "outside the
Church,” in the sense in which this expression is employed in the
dogmatic formulae about the Church’s necessity for salvation, is
definitely turned away from God, his ultimate end, by original
sin, or by mortal sin, or by both. No one, however, is guilty in
the sight of God precisely by reason of his separation from the
Church except those who remain outside of it pertinaciously,
knowing that God wills that they should enter it.
Hence it would be quite erroneous to interpret the teaching of
the Quanto conficiamur moerore to mean that all of those who are
outside the Church and thus in need of Catholic missionary
charity have sinned against God in not coming in to the Church.
It is quite possible to be “outside the Church,” without, to use
Newman’s old phrase, “having sinned against the light."
Actually, according to the divine constitution of the Church
itself, the responsibility for bringing those outside the fold into
the company of Christ rests, not upon the outsiders, but upon the
Church itself. Broadly speaking, the Church is not simply a goal
towards which the people of the world are supposed to run of
their own accord. It is the living society of the disciples, com­
missioned and commanded to bring itself and its message to the
children of men. If contact is not made with those outside the
fold, the fault lies, not with these people, but with the Catholics
who have been recreant to their missionary vocation.

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This, after all, is the filial conclusiôn of the Quanto conficiamur
moerore.
''
\· rît ■.>'· ■ .
God forbid that the children of the Catholic Church should ever
in any way be the enemies of those who are in no way joined to us
in the same bonds of faith 'and of charity. But let them [the Catholics]
rather strive1 al ways to attend'these people when they [the non-Catholics] are poor or sick or afflicted with any other-ills, and help them
by all the services of Chriitian charity. Primarily, let them-strive to
take them out of the darkness-of error, in which they unfortunately live
and bring them back,to Catholic , truth and to the loving Mother Church
which never ceases to hold out , its maternal hands to them affectionately
and to call them back to its embrace in order that, founded and strength­
ened in faith, hope, and charity, and bringing forth fruit in every
good work, they may attain eternal salvation.21
.
In the final analysis, ; the teaching on, the necessity of the
Catholic Church thus appears as the dominant motive force in
the charity of Catholic njissionary endeavor. The Church itself,
the society or, community .within which alone in this world the
fellowship of God and Christ-is to be found, is absolutely neces­
sary for salvation, with the .necessity of means; According to the
divine revelation, infallibly4proposed in the dogma of the Church,
both the members of this society and those who sincerely, even
though only implicitly, (desire to live within it, are “inside the
Church” in such a way as to be able to live the life of sanctifying
grace which is the beginning of eternal salvation.
All of those who are not members of the Church, however,
whether they desire to enter it or not, stand in real need of this
society. If they long to be in God’s household on this earth, they
actually will to live as members of this visible society. If they
do not, and consequently they are unfortunately averted from
God and deprived of the' supernatural life Christ died to procure
for them, they ought to haVe the benefit of the Church, through
which they may be brought to life everlasting.
The fact of the matte? is; as Pope Pius IX pointed out so
effectively, that the responsibility for bringing this needed benefit
to the persons for whom-Christ died on the Cross devolves directly
upon the members of the Catholic Church. Primarily, of course,
it is the duty of the Catholic hierarchy, of the apostolic collegers
it now exists in the company of Christ. We should not forget, in

«UB, 1678.

■

■· ' > >··'■ ■

'

...........

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this instance, the terrifying words of St. John , Chrysostom with
reference to the responsibility of the individual Catholic bishop.

To pass over everything else: if ohe'sdtil1 depart unbaptized, does
not this subvert all his own prospect of-salvation? The loss of one
Soul carries with it a penalty which no language can represent For if
the salvation of that soul was of such value that the Son of God became
man and suffered so much, think how .terrible a punishment the losing
of it must bring.22

In this passage St. John Chrysostom speaks directly of the
Bishops of the Catholic Church. The primary responsibility for
the work of bringing the means of salvation to those souls for
whom Our Lord died devolves upon them. They constitute the
apostolic college, the band of men commissioned by Our Lord to
carry His message and His Church, to those for whom He offered
the sacrifice of Calvary. Hence it is primarily their business and
their obligation, as a group gathered Sunder the presidency of
Peter, to expend · every effort and to utilize every resource at
their command to bring the means of salvation to those who are
not members of the true Church.
‘ ’
We must not forget, however, that the obligation to work
effectively and sincerely to bring non-Catholics into the Church
is in no way limited to the apostolic college. It is true that this
obligation devolves upon them primarily. Yet it is an obligation
to a work in which the Catholic people themselves are bound to
cooperate. All the doctrine of Catholic Action constitutes a
warning to the people of the Church that they are expected to
aid their hierarchy in the apostolic work and that they are rec·
reant to: their Christian vocation if thfey fail to enter into this
activity.
·.■:.■·
Thus, in the last analysis, the teaching on the necessity of the
Catholic Church for salvation does not seek to blame non­
Catholics as a group, for failing to enter the Church. It is inclined,
on the other hand, to militate against what might be a certain
complacency on the part of the Catholics themselves. It insists
upon the obligation which God has laid upon the members of His
Church to do all in their power to bring the necessary means of
salvation to the souls for whom Ours Lord died. Its practical
effect must be, not to irritate and insult those who. are unfortuaIn Aciux Aportalorum homilia tertia, n. 4. MPG, LX, 40.

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nate enough to be non-members of Our Lord’s Church, but to
stimulate the members of that Church to expend every effort to
bring the fellowship of Christ in God’s kingdom on earth to people
who need it so badly, and who are so unfavorably placed with
reference to eternal salvation by the fact that they are not
members of the Church.
This, the essential and manifestly charitable practical attitude
of the Catholic Church towards those who are not its members,
is brought out most effectively in the present Holy Father’s en­
cyclical, the Mystici Corporis.

Most affectionately we invite all of them individually that, yielding
of their own accord and freely to the inner impulses of divine grace,
they should take care to remove themselves from that status in which
they cannot be secure about their own eternal salvation, seeing that
even though they may be disposed towards the Mystical Body of the
Redeemer by a certain kind of desire and longing (desiderio ac vote)
which they do not understand, they still lack so many and such great
heavenly favors and helps which they may enjoy only in the Catholic
Church. May they all therefore enter the Catholic unity and, joined
with us in the one structure of the Body of Jesus Christ, may they
come together unto the Head in the society of the most glorious love.
With never ceasing prayers to the Spirit of love and truth, with hands
upraised and outstretched, we await their coming, not to the house of
a stranger, but to the house which is their own and their Father’s.53
It is important for us to realize that, when we speak of the
theological proof for the proposition that the Catholic Church is
necessary for eternal salvation with the necessity of means, the
proposition must be understood as expressing all of this truth
brought out in the various official pronouncements of the ecdesia
docens. The Church as a society, as a thing, is presented to us in
the divine public revelation as a necessary means for salvation.
Those who are fortunate enough to have the grace of membership
in this Church have satisfied this one of the conditions for salva­
tion in an unmistakable way. N on-members of the Church may
possibly be “inside the Church” as the community of fellowship
with God by reason of a real, though perhaps only an implicit,
desire to live within it. Their status, however, is distinctly un­
favorable and unfortunate from the spiritual point of view. Thus

22 A AS, XXXV, 7 (July, 1943), 243.

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305

it is the business of the Church, which as a society is animated
and motivated by the charity of Christ Himself, to bring this
means of salvation certainly and effective to all of those for whom
Our Lord offered the sacrifice of His life.
The theological proof of this teaching must be based upon the
consideration of the revealed teaching about salvation, and on the
concept of the Church itself as God’s kingdom on earth.

Joseph Clifford Fenton
The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

The Church's Divine Mandate

The universal divine mandate with which the Church of Jesus Christ
has been by Jesus Christ Himself incommunicably and absolutely com­
missioned concerns itself with eternity, with heaven and the super­
natural—with that order of things which, on one side, it is of the
strictest obligation for every rational creature to consider and to which,
on the other side, it is necessary by the very nature of things to co­
ordinate the remainder.
The Church of Jesus Christ is certainly acting within the limits of
its mandate, not only when it puts into souls the first indispensable
beginnings and elements of supernatural life, but also when it assists
and encourages the growth of this supernatural life according to the
opportunities and the capacities of persons and in the ways and by the
means which, in the Church’s judgment seem suitable also, with the
purpose of preparing capable and efficient collaborators with the apos­
tolic Hierarchy and clergy. It is Jesus Christ Himself who made the
solemn declaration that He came precisely that souls might have not
only some beginning or some element of supernatural life, but that they
might have it in greater abundance. “I am come that they may have
life, and have it more abundantly.”
—Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, issued June 29,1931.

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would do. He started looking over the books on his shelves. He’d
find something deep, something that would impress the people, yes,
and the priests who would be there, too. He’d show them, most of
them were youngsters anyway, that the old fellows had fire in them
yet, and could beat these young fellows any day, when it came to
getting up and giving a good sermon.
Now, what would be a good book to start from? Title after title
he passed over, saying to himself that he had seen it in the library
of some one of the priests of the district. He wouldn’t use one that
they were familiar with, for then the impression would be lost.
He’d have to find one they didn’t know about. Finally, his gaze
rested on one which he had had ever since he had left the seminary.
He had never seen it in any other rectory that he had visited. This
was it, and from the title it should have some good stuff for a Forty
Hours sermon. Le Quatrième Évangile, that was it, the Fourth
Gospel, where St John tells about the Last Supper. Of course, his
French was somewhat rusty these days, but with the aid of a dic­
tionary he should be able to get some ideas. Now, if those ideas
were just deep enough, he had what he was after. Thumbing hur­
riedly through the book, he decided that it was deep, all right, and
laid it on his desk so that he would have it close to hand when he
sat down to prepare the sermon.
It had been a long time since he had tried to preach a sermon
on the Scriptures. Maybe he should give hi's people some of that
stuff. It might do them good, and it would certainly be different
from what he had been giving them in the past. Maybe a change was
what they were waiting for. If that was it, then that was what they
would get. He’d see what kind of an impression the sermon made on
the people over in Wheeler. If they were interested he’d try it at
home, too. Give them some good, solid, meaty stuff, that was the
idea.
With a fire and enthusiasm which he had not know in years
when it came to preparing a sermon, Fr. Wall seated himself at his
desk and started writing furiously as he noted sections of the book
which he intended to take up.
{Tobe continued)
Thomas Owen Mastin

The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

THE THEOLOGICAL PROOF FOR THE NECESSITY
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
Part III
The theological proof for the necessity of the Catholic Church is
a strict demonstration of the fact that what the Church actually
teaches on this subject in its official documents is manifestly con­
tained in the sources of divine revelation. In its Pontifical and con­
ciliar pronouncements, the ecclesia docens teaches as a part of God’s
own message the truth that the Church is necessary for salvation, in
the very real sense that outside of it no one at all can be saved. Fur­
thermore, from these same ecclesiastical pronouncements, we learn
that a person may be said to be “outside” the Church when he has
neither membership in this visible society nor any intention of enter­
ing it. Finally, the doctrinal utterances of the ecclesia docens inform
us that even an implicit desire to enter the Church may be effective
unto salvation in a person who is invincibly ignorant of the one true
fold of Jesus Christ, although they also point to the highly important
fact that the spiritual position of any person who is not a member of
the Catholic Church is disadvantageous to himself and objectively
contrary to God’s will.
This complex truth, set in its proper background of the Catholic
dogma about the Church of Christ, and seen as one of the basic theses
in the Catholic theology of the missions, stands out in the deposit
of divine public revelation. The theological proof is the process
whereby we indicate the way in which this thesis is contained in
Scripture and in divine apostolic tradition, the two sources of divine
public revelation. Furthermore, precisely because it manifests the
thesis or conclusion in its place in the deposit of faith, the theo­
logical proof offers an invaluable understanding of this truth. When
the Vatican Council taught that reason, enlightened by faith, could
gain a most fruitful understanding of the divinely revealed mysteries
by way of analogy of these mysteries with the natural objects of
human intelligence and through the connection of the mysteries
among themselves and with the last end of man, it was referring to
the theological demonstration.1
1 Session III, chapter 4. Cf Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum (Freiberg
in Breisgau: Herder, 1937), n. 1796.
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What the Vatican Council had to say on this subject is perfectly
exemplified in the theological proof of the thesis on the Church’s
necessity for salvation. The analogy between the mystery and the
natural objects of human intelligence has been used to produce the
various technical terms that enter into the thesis and its explanation.
The words appearing in a modem presentation of this thesis by
authors like Zapelena and Parente did not occur in the scriptural or
in the earliest patristic enunciation of the same doctrine. Terms like
“the necessity of means” and “visible society,” to mention only two
of them, were introduced into this section of theology because the
theologians as a group, and ultimately the ecclesia docens itself,
found that the meanings these expressions conveyed in the world
of nature could be of service in the formation of an absolutely cor­
rect and unequivocal statement about the mystery of God’s kingdom
on earth.
The process of analogy with things of the natural order serves
the science of sacred theology chiefly in the development of an
acceptable terminology. The theological demonstration as such,
however, is effected primarily through the observation of the con­
nection and interrelation of the revealed mysteries among them­
selves. Such is manifestly the case in the proof of the Church’s
necessity for eternal salvation, as that proof is elaborated by the
foremost theologians of our age. In their writings they cite the
connection of the Church with Our Lord, with the true and nec­
essary worship of God, and with the sacrament of baptism as factors
in the theological evidence that the teaching on the Church’s real
necessity for salvation is contained in the deposit of faith delivered
to the Church by the apostles as the divine message of Christ.
Taken as a group, modem theologians have presented a valid and
effective proof of the Church’s necessity. They have used these
arguments from the necessity of union with Our Lord, of the true
religion, and of Christian baptism, along with many other factors,
to produce a demonstration of the fact that men really need the
visible Catholic Church in order to attain the life of heaven. Unfor­
tunately, however, they have not taken what would appear to be
anything like sufficient cognizance of one “connection” which, of
itself, is capable of giving that proof an apodeictic perfection and an
enlightening power far beyond what that proof contains in its pres­
ent state of development. They have not integrated the basic scrip-

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363

tural theology of salvation itself into their demonstration, and there­
by they have overlooked what can and should be a decisively
effective factor in this proof. Scripture itself shows salvation as
essentially involving a social concept. It is the divine gift by which a
man is transferred, by the beneficent power of God, from one social
entity to another.
The primary purpose of this series of articles is to show how the
proof of the Church’s necessity for salvation attains a genuinely
new perfection when it includes an analysis of the New Testament
teaching about that salvation which comes to men through the
sacrificial death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest benefit
which this hitherto somewhat neglected dement in the theological
proof of the Church’s necessity brings to sacred doctrine is a mani­
festation of the fact that the Catholic Church is something essential
to and inhering in the process of salvation itself. As it stands in too
many of the modem manuals of sacred theology, the proof of the
Church’s necessity is constructed in such a way as to leave room for
the suspicion that the visible society of Our Lord’s disciples is not
essentially and connaturally a factor in the process of salvation at all,
but that it enters this process solely by reason of a positive divine
ordinance. The man who is deceived into adopting this view as an
opinion has lost sight of one of the most important truths in all the
deposit of sacred teaching. Actually the Catholic Church, by reason
of its nature as God’s kingdom on earth, enters into the very con­
cept of salvation, in such a way that tire salvation described in the
divine public revelation cannot be understood at all adequately
except in terms of this visible society.
In order to understand how an exposition of the New Testament
theology of salvation can perfect the demonstration of the Church’s
necessity, we must know something about the status of this proof in
modem writings. In their treatment of this particular proof, the
more recent theologians exhibit an amazing diversity of presenta­
tion. Indeed, those individuals who habitually deplore what they be­
lieve to be drab uniformity of modem theological writing would be
hard pressed to explain or justify their attitude if they took the
trouble to examine even a few twentieth-century presentations of
this proof.
Much of this diversity can be attributed to the fact that some of
the authors have tried to show that the Church itself is only neces-

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sary as the ordinary means of salvation or by reason of a divine
. precept. Others have confused the issue by intruding into their
proofs certain elements which go to show that appurtenance to
or membership in the “soul of the Church” must be considered as
requisite for salvation. Such tentatives have had the inevitable
effect of beclouding the issue, and of obscuring the meaning of the
documents which they must adduce. The ecclesiastical documents
are such as to support only the basic contention, that the visible
Catholic Church, the kingdom of God on earth, is actually necessary
for all men.
Despite this diversity of treatment, however, the modem theolo­
gians as a group have worked very effectively to demonstrate their
thesis. Most of them tend to list separately the pertinent documents
of the ecclesia docens, the texts from Holy Scripture, passages from
the Fathers, and a certain number of rationes theologicae. Billot
and Herrmann2 have been especially successful in utilizing the
biblical texts in the elaboration of a genuine theological proof.
They have thus integrated their demonstration much more effec­
tively than have some of their confreres.

Most of the texts employed in the “proof from Scripture” by
modem theologians deal directly with the necessity of union with
Our Lord or with the Church itself. The strictly ecclesiological
texts are again divided into two classes, those which deal with the
commission and the power of the Church, and those which treat
of the evil of voluntary separation from it.
The texts that refer to the necessity of union with Our Lord for
the attainment of salvation are employed as the prerequisite for a
demonstration of the fact that the Catholic Church, as the Mystical
Body of Christ, is itself necessary. Three texts are used quite fre­
quently for this purpose. The first is the passage in St. John’s Gos­
pel containing Our Lord’s statement : “I am the door. By me, if
any man enter in, he shall be saved. ...” 3 The second, also from
the fourth Gospel, records Our Lord’s words to St. Thomas the
Apostle: “I am the way’, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh
2Cf. Billot, Tractatus de ecclesia Christi (Rome: Gregorian University,
1927), I, 117 ff; Herrmann, Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae (Paris:
Vitte, 1937), I, 373 ff.
3 John, 10: 9.

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365

to the Father but by me.” * The third is a doctrine taught by St.
Peter in his discourse to the Sanhedrin after he and St. John had
been taken into custody because of the miraculous cure of the lame
man in the temple. It is the statement that “Neither is there salvation
in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men,
whereby we must be saved.” 0
The principal texts pertinent to the divine commission of the
Church are found in the final chapters of the Gospels according to
St Matthew and St. Mark. The first of these contains the words
Our Lord spoke to the eleven disciples just before His ascension.

.. .All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.
Going therefore, teach ye all nations : baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of
the world. 6
The citation from the second Gospel is even more directly and
perfectly demonstrative.
And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world and preach the
gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth
not shall be condemned.7

The theologians also point to the texts in which the evangelists
speak of the instructions Our Lord gave to the twelve apostles and to
the seventy-two disciples when they were being sent to preach the
kingdom of God in His name. The first of these passages is found
in St. Matthew’s Gospel.
And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words: going
forth out of that house or city shake off the dust from your feet
Amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom
and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that city.8

The first Gospel also records that Our Lord’s discourse included
the statement: “He that receiveth you receiveth me: and he that
receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.” 9 St Luke’s account of
the sending of the seventy-two contains a negative version of this

* John, 14:6.
sActr, 4: 12.

e Matt. 28: 18-20.
7 Mark, 16: 15-16.

8 Matt. 10:14-15.
*Matt. 10:40.

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same doctrine. “He that heareth you, heareth me: and he that
despiseth you, despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, despiseth
him that sent me.”10 Both of these texts are widely used in the
proof from scripture for the thesis that the Catholic Church is neces­
sary for eternal salvation.
Taken simply by themselves, these last two texts serve primarily
and directly to prove only that the Church is necessary with the
necessity of precept. They show that a man or a community sins
against God in rejecting the message which Our Lord preached and
which the apostles and their fellow-workers proposed in His name.
The passage from the last chapter in St. Mark’s Gospel has a far
greater probative force even when taken individually. It indicates
that men can achieve salvation through the doctrinal mission of
the Church as well as that they will be condemned if they reject its
teachings. The parallel text from St. Matthew implicitly teaches
the necessity of the Church when it states His promise to be with
the Church while it fulfils the mission He has entrusted to it.
Another group of texts employed in the scholastic presentation
of our proof deals directly with the evil of leaving the Church.
Several of the theologians quote from St Matthew’s Gospel the
warning “And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as
the heathen and the publican.”11 Others point to the words of St.
Paul’s epistle to Titus :

A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid:
Knowing that he that is such an one is subverted and sinneth, being
condemned by his own judgment12
The theologians also point to another text which deals with this
same truth, and which has a more effective probative value for their
thesis than the others. It is found in the Second Epistle of St. John.

Whosoever revolteth and continued! not in the doctrine of Christ
hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine, the same hath both
the Father and the Son.
If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not
into the house not say to him : God speed you.
For he that saith unto him : God speed you, communicateth with his
wicked works.13
r» Luke, 10: 16.
■Wf. 18: 17.

12 Titui, 3:10-11.
«7/ John, 9-11.

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The immediate implication of these texts is the lesson that it is
an evil thing to abandon the Church and the faith of Jesus Christ.
The last citation also brings out the truth that the continuation in
the doctrine as one of the faithful, as a member of the society of
the disciples, carries with it fellowship with God. It does not, by
itself, prove that there is no other way to gain this fellowship with
God, and hence, taken individually, this final series of texts does
not constitute an apodeictic proof of the necessity of the Catholic
Church for salvation.
Far more important than the proof from scripture alone is the
ratio theologica properly so-called, which most of the writers unfor­
tunately separate from the scriptural and patristic evidence in favor
of their thesis. In by far the greater number of modem theological
works, the ratio theologica is composed of several elements, in such
a way that the thesis is established, not by any one integrated proof,
but by a series of arguments. In almost every case the cumulative
eSect of these various demonstrations is amply suffident, although
various individual elements of the argument in a few theological
works are not completely satisfactory.
In modem manuals one of the most popular individual arguments
in the strictly theological proof of the Church’s necessity for salva­
tion is the one based upon the necessity of baptism. The numerous
modem authors who employ this argument reason that the Church
is manifestly necessary for salvation because it is so intimately
connected with baptism, which is itself requisite for the attainment
of eternal blessedness. The sacrament which God has instituted as
the means for obtaining the beginning of the life of grace and the
remission of original sin is the rite of initiation into the sodety of
Our Lord’s disdples.
Another tremendously popular theological argument for the
Church's necessity is that based upon the necessity of that faith
which the Church alone preaches infallibly and authoritatively. It
follows that because acceptance of the divine message preached by
Our Lord is incumbent upon men if they are to obtain salvation, that
men stand in obvious need of the society which divine revelation
indicates as the one divinely commissioned and inerrant guardian
and teacher of that revelation. Akin to the demonstrations based
upon the necessity of baptism and that of faith are those demonstra­
tions which manifest the Church’s necessity in terms of man’s need

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for the means of salvation and for the ecclesiastical ministry, to be
found properly only within the Catholic society. Several of the
theologians make special mention of the power of the keys, which
obviously belongs to the true Church alone.
Each one of these demonstrations taken individually is valid
as a proof that the Catholic Church is really necessary for salvation
with the necessity of means. Taken together, their force is unques­
tioned. Unfortunately, however, proofs of this sort have a ten­
dency to make the Church look like something which is in itself
an extrinsic factor in the economy of salvation, and as necessary
for eternal life only by reason of a positive enactment by God. To
a lesser extent this shortcoming is shared by the proof from the
necessity for a true religion, or an authorized worship of God, which
is to be found only in the Church of His Son.
Another class of proofs centers around the concept of the
Church as the institution so intimately united with Our Lord that
it is called His Mystical Body. The theologians reason correctly that,
because union with Our Lord is necessary for the attainment of
those blessings which come to us only through Him, the Church it­
self must be considered as manifestly necessary in terms of its ident­
ity as the fellowship of Christ. The Church is not merely a society
within which a man can find association with the Saviour. Objective­
ly it is the company of Christ, the supernatural family or household
of God within which He dwells. Hence the proof based upon this
characteristic manifests the Church, not as a merely acceptable
society, but as a fellowship within which a man must live in order
to achieve the Beatific Vision.
Most of the modem theologians who employ this argument make
no effort to restrict themselves to any one of the many designations
of the Church. They speak of this society, not only as the Mystical
Body of Christ, but also as the kingdom of God on earth, as the
New Israel, and particularly as the Church of the promises. They
realize that the efficacy of their proof depends entirely upon their
success in bringing out the truth that the deposit of divine revela­
tion represents the Catholic Church precisely as the recipient of the
various and ineffably glorious promises which Our Lord made to the
company of His followers. They point to the fact that when Our
Lord said “I am with you all days,” He was promising to be present
in the visible Catholic Church, and that when He declared that the

•Ï

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369

gates of hell would not prevail against His Church, He was speaking
of a prerogative of this same visible society.
Several modern theologians integrate into their proof the doctrine
that man stands in real need of the ecclesiastical ministry. This
ministry exists only in the Catholic Church. In short, they teach
that the visible Catholic Church and its divinely instituted resources
are requisite for union with Our Lord, apart from whom there
is no possibility of eternal salvation.
In this tremendously complicated process of proof, modem the­
ology presents irrefutable evidence that the salvation which Our
Lord merited for men by His sacrificial death is not to be obtained
outside of His Church. Nevertheless, the effectiveness and the
clarity of this demonstration would be greatly improved by an
integration into it of the basic theology of salvation itself. The
fundamental truths which God has revealed to us about the process
of salvation stand out clearly in the New Testament, especially in
the Epistles of St. Paul. This particular section of sacred teaching
> is considered in the theological treatise on grace, and particularly
in the treatise on the effects of Our Lord's passion and death. Thé
Summa theologica contains a magnificent exposition of this truth in
the 49th question of its third part.
Salvation itself is something which God has procured for man
through the passion of Christ. As its very name implies, salvation
involves a transfer from one status to another, from an unfavorable
and even fatal condition to a position of security and perfection.
In the supernatural order, salvation consists in the process of bring­
ing a man from a condition of aversion from God through sin into
the status of one who lives the life of grace.
Now the inspired word of God clearly teaches, and the science
of sacred theology rightly explains, that this process of supernatural
salvation is intrinsically a social as well as an individual reality. A
man is said to be saved by the meritorious power of Jesus Christ
when he has been freed from the bonds of sin and constituted as an
adopted child of God and as a brother of Our Lord through the life
of sanctifying grace. This passage from the state of sin to the state
of grace is what we may call the individual aspect of salvation.
There is, however, a social or corporate aspect of this same
divine gift, just as essentially pertinent to it as its individual con­
notation. The corporate aspect of salvation is to be found in the

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transfer of a person from the kingdom of Satan into that social
entity which we know as the kingdom of God or the Mystical Body
of Jesus Christ.
The dominion of God’s chief spiritual enemy over unregenerate
and sinful mankind is clearly asserted in sacred doctrine. Satan’s
rule over the multitude subject to him is, of course, in no way
completely parallel to Our Lord’s sway over the company of His
associates. Nevertheless he actually exercises a certain kind of
dominance, and is so placed that Our Lord Himself could speak
of His principal foe as "the prince of this world.”14 In his Summa
theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that Satan actually may be
said to govern those in the state of aversion from God and that thus
he may be termed the head of these individuals.15 It follows, then,
that the people subject to Satan in this way constitute a sort of
loosely organized community, united by the one evil will of their
chief.
This community is the thing which the early theologians called
the ecclesia malignantium.16 Its work is directed by Satan against
God and against God’s supernatural kingdom in this world. Primar­
ily the process of salvation involves a transfer from this ecclesia
malignantium into the kingdom of God on earth, the Mystical
Body of Jesus Christ, the true ecclesia sanctorum.
These two companies are intermingled on earth. Every man on
earth belongs to one or to the other of these social units. An individ­
ual who is held by the bonds of original sin, together with mortal
sin or even apart from it, is definitely under the power and the
direction of Satan, and thus forms part of his kingdom. The great
mystery of God’s economy with His followers is the fact that God’s
kingdom on earth in this, its final status before the end of the world,
is a visible and fully organized society. The work of Satan’s realm
is directed against this visible community, the Catholic Church of
Jesus Christ.

ujohn, 12:31; 14:30; 16:11.
15 Cf. Summa theologica, Illa, qu. 8, art. 7.
15 The expression is taken from Psalm 25:5. The new translation has
“conventum male agentium.” For a discussion o£ the use of this expression
in the early post-Reformation Catholic writings, see the article “Scholastic
Definitions of the Catholic Church,” Part I, in The American Ecclesiastical
Review, CXI, 1 (July, 1944), 59 ff.

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Because God’s kingdom on earth is a visible society, it is possible
to be one of its members and at the same time to be subject to Satan
through the aversion from God inherent in the status of mortal
sin. Thus the Catholic who lives in the state of sin constitutes him­
self as a traitor to Our Lord. He lives, by God’s mercy, as a citizen
within the City of God, and at the same time, by reason of his own
malignity, he places himself under the control of the enemy of God.
In any event, die salvation of an individual involves a passage
from the dominion of Satan into the kingdom of God. In the case of
a person who has not been baptized, this means a transfer from a
community ruled over by the spiritual enemy of God to the com­
munity or family which is truly and supematurally God’s kingdom.
In the case of a Catholic who has fallen into sin, it means the aban­
donment of the ties which have bound this hitherto unworthy and
disloyal member of Christ to the enemy of Christ, and the comple­
tion within this person of the bonds of unity which attach him to his
Saviour within the company of the disciples. In other words, it
means that he acquires charity and grace, which belong to the in­
ternal bond of unity. In this latter case the process of salvation is
essentially a return to loyalty within the kingdom of God.
St Paul's Epistles show us very clearly this intrinsically social
connotation of salvation. Thus the letter to the Colossians entreats
the Christians to remain
Giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be
partakers of the lot of the saints in light:
Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath trans­
lated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.1T

To be under the power of darkness was not to be a neutral with
reference to God and His supernatural kingdom. According to St
Piul, the condition of these people was that of enemies.

And you, whereas you were sometime alienated and enemies in mind
in evil works:
Yet now he hath reconciled in the body of his flesh through death,
to present you holy and unspotted and blameless before him.18
The Epistle to the Galatians insists upon the social or corporate
character of salvation. It speaks of Our Lord Jesus Christ "Who

17 Col, 1: 12-13.

18 Col., 1:21-22.

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gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present
wicked world, according to the will of God and our Father.”1’
The same lesson is brought out in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Therefore because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he
also himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same: that, through
death, he might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to
say, the devil :
And might deliver them who through the fear of death were all their
lifetime subject of servitude.20

St. Peter’s words at the conclusion of his missionary sermon on
the first Christian Pentecost stress the corporate or social aspect
of salvation.
And with many other words did he testify and exhort them, saying:
Save yourselves from this perverse generation.
They therefore that received his word were baptized : and there were
added in that day about three thousand souls.21
He brought out the fact that the salvation with which Christian
teaching is concerned involves a removal from the perverse or
crooked generation, from a social unit turned away from God. The
attainment of this salvation, however, was understood to involve
affiliation with the company of Christ, the visible religious organiza­
tion over which Peter himself presided. The people who accepted the
Christian teaching of Peter acted to save themselves from the
society of Satan by incorporating themselves into the company of
Christ.
Throughout this inspired teaching we find the salvation which
God has decreed to give to men represented as a passage from one
empire to another, from the company of Satan to the kingdom of
Christ. We could not understand the process of salvation at all if we
were to forget the fact that sin or aversion from God necessarily
carries with it a real subjection to the devil, and that grace or the
sharing of the divine life necessarily involves affiliation with the
company of Jesus Christ. A man is either a friend or an enemy of
his God. He is either possessed of the life of grace or turned away
from his ultimate and supernatural end. And he can be neither a
saint nor a sinner alone. He stands either with the Church militant,
the army of the living God, or with the cohorts of Satan.

» Gal. 1:4.

20 Heb. 2: 14-15.

21 Acts 2:4041.

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Thus the kingdom of God on earth is presented in divine revela­
tion as something inherently and necessarily requisite for the process
of salvation. Just as opposition to God in original or mortal sin
necessarily and intrinsically involves participation in the kingdom
of Satan, conversion to God in the life of grace involves an entrance
into the company of Christ, the ecclesia sanctorum. The concept of
a man who would live the life of grace or salvation outside of
Christ’s kingdom is, according to God’s own revealed teaching,
something like the idea of a square circle, a mere combination of
utterly incompatible elements.
Thus we see that the ultimate and all-important link in the chain
of proof that the visible Catholic Church is necessary for salvation
with the necessity of means is the basic Christian truth that this
visible Catholic Church is absolutely identified with the kingdom
of God, the Mystical Body of Christ, on this earth. It is precisely
because and only because the visible religious society over which the
Roman Pontiff presides as Christ’s Vicar is God’s kingdom and
city and household in this world that this visible organization is
proposed to us in the divinely revealed message as really necessary
for the life of grace on earth and for the final flowering of that life
in heaven. As the kingdom of God on earth, the Catholic Church
is the company into which a man is brought by the process of salva­
tion itself.
And, because it is the kingdom of God on earth, the Catholic
Church is the organization against which the cohorts of Satan direct
their attack. The army of the living God, the company that struggles
against the enejnies of Christ on earth, is not some amorphous group
of persons who have what the world calls “faith,” but the visible
Catholic Church. When, by God’s mercy, a man is changed from a
sinner into a possessor of the life of grace, he is thereby transferred
from the empire of Satan into the brotherhood of Christ. He comes
within the Catholic Church either as a member or as one who wills
to become a member. If he has not at least this latter sort of associa­
tion with the company of Christ, he cannot have the life of grace
which men hold only through contact with the Saviour.
Hence the force of the theological proof that the Church is
truly necesssary for salvation will inevitably be destroyed in any
exposition which plays down or confuses the teaching that the
visible Catholic Church is actually the reality designated in the

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Scriptures as the kingdom or the city or the household of God. The
central point of the doctrine of the English-speaking Modernist
was obviously a denial of the necessity of the Church. Hence
we are not at all astonished to find a typical Modernist like Von
Huegel distinguishing the Church from the kingdom.22 It is unfor­
tunate, however, to see a recent publication otherwise quite accurate
bring forward the assertion that “the Church is not the City of
God.”23
Fortunately we have a passage from one of the encyclical letters
of Pope Leo which presents this basic teaching clearly and
accurately.

The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator
and the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly
contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are con­
trary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth,
namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from
their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of neces­
sity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and
with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose posses­
sion and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their
leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and
eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God,
and many aims also against God.
This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described
after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving
for contrary objects... ,24
A recognition of the existence of these two kingdoms, and a real­
ization of their position with reference to the process of eternal life
and salvation, together with an awareness of the fact that the
visible Catholic Church is truly the kingdom and the city of God

22 Cf. Von Huegel, Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religio*
(London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1921), I, 127.
23Cf. Dom Aelred Graham, The Christ of Catholicism (London: Long­
mans, Green, and Co, 1947), p. 306.
24 The encyclical Humanum genus, issued April 20,1834. The translation
is that of The Great Encyclicals of Pope Leo ΧΠΙ (New York: Benzinger
Brothers, 1903), p. 83.

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on this earth : these are the elements which can give complete force
and meaning to the theological proof of the axiom “extra ecclesiam
nulla salus.”
Joseph Clifford Fenton
The Catholic University of America,
Washington D. C.

Fifty Years Ago
The leading article in The American Ecclesiastical Review for May,
1898, is an accout of St John’s Seminary, Boston from the pen of Fr.
John A. Butler. The first building, he tells us, was opened in 1884, and to
this was added a special house of Philosophy in 1892. Fr. Butler gives
a detailed description of the curriculum and of the daily spiritual exer­
cises of the seminarians. The library, he states, contains fifteen thousand
volumes. [The present library at St John’s, vastly increased over that of
a half-century ago, is one of the outstanding ecclesiastical libraries in
America].... The first instalment of My New Curate, the most popular
clerical novel of Canon Sheehan, appears in this issue. Evidently the
author preferred to remain anonymous, for the story is described as
“gathered from stray leaves of an old diary by an Irish parish priest’’
[It is gratifying to note that it was The American Ecclesiastical Review,
through its first editor, Fr. H. Heuser, that introduced the gifted parish
priest of Doneraile to millions of enthusiastic readers in the United
States]. .. . Fr. E. Taunton, beginning a series of articles on liturgy
under the general title “Horae Liturgicae,” emphasizes the importance
of the study of liturgy in the seminary, and gives a brief description of
the origin of the Roman rite and missal.... Abbé Hogan, continuing his
series of “Clerical Studies,” writes on the devotional use of the Bible by
seminarians and priests.__ In the Analecta we find the solution of a case
presented to the Holy See. A young priest doubted the validity of his
ordination, on the ground that he may not have had the intention of
receiving Holy Orders because of his hesitancy as to his worthiness to
enter the sacerdotal state. The Congregation of the Inquisition replied
on Jan. 26, 1898, that he should regard himself as validly ordained....
The answer to a question states that a marriage entered into by a man
under compulsion from a civil judge, as preferable to the infliction of
a jail sentence because of the man’s illicit relation with the girl, is to
be considered validL [The contrary seems the more commonly accepted
opinion at the present day.]
F. J. C.

issssÿÿiSÊiff xx