SH

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
AND SALVATION
In the Light of Recent Pronouncements

by the Holy See

BY

MONSIGNOR JOSEPH CLIFFORD FENTON
Member of the Pontifical

Roman Theological Academy

Counselor of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities

Professor of Fundamental Dogmatic Theology, Catholic University of America

Editor of The .-1 merican Ecclesiastical Review

THE NEWMAN P R ES S
Westminster, Maryland

1958

Nihil obstat:
Edward A. Cerny, S. S., D.E).
Censor librorum

Imprimatur:
►{« Francis P. Keough, D. D.
Archbishop of Baltimore

May 12, 1958

1 he nihil obstat and the imprimatur aie
oihcial declarations that a book or pamphlet
is free ol doctrinal and moral error. No
implication is contained therein that those
who have granted (he nihil obstat and the
imprimatur agree with the opinions expressed.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-11732
Copyright 1958, rv Tur xi,wman pRKSS

Printed in
by

the

United States of America

J. H. Furst Co., Baltimore, Maryland

Mater mea,
Fiducia mea!

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE

Introduction............................................................................... ίχ

Part One: The Dogma

Salvation tn Official Pro­
Church.........

1

J. The Fourth Oecumenical Council of the Lateran

6

of

nouncements of the

II. The Bull thiam sanctam............................................... 13

III. The Decree lor the facobit.es......................................... 31
IV. The Allocution Singulari quadam
V.

VI.
VII.

42

....

The Encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore

.

57

.

.

76

The Holy Office Letter Suprema haec sacra .

.

100

The Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi

VIII. The Encyclical Humani generis.......................119
Part Two:

I.

II.

III.

The Theological and Historical Back­
ground of the Dogma................... 131

The Concept of Salvation.................................... 133

Salvation and the Basic Concept of the Church

Some Sources of Misunderstanding .

Index.................................

.

.

.

145
165

189

vii

■I

i

INTRODUCTION

In his encyclical Humani generis Pope Pius XII referred to
a statement by his great predecessor, Pope Pius IX, to the
effect that the noblest function of sacred theology is that of
showing how the doctrine defined by the Church is found in
the sources of revelation—that is, in Sacred Scripture and in
divine apostolic tradition—in the very sense in which the
Church has proposed it. This book is the result of a laborious
and humble effort to do this with reference to what the
ecclesiastical teaching authority has taught and defined about
the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal
salvation.
Few dogmas of the Catholic faith have been commented
upon and interpreted in twentieth-century theological and
religious literature as frequently and extensively as that which
teaches us that there is no salvation outside the true Church
of Jesus Christ. Hence any new book on this subject ought
at least to try to offer some theological advantage on this
subject not already available in currently accessible Catholic
literature. The author of this present work sincerely believes
that its publication is justified for these three reasons:
(1) This book quotes, and quotes at length, pertinent state­
ments and definitions by the Holy See and by the Church’s
Oecumenical Councils on the necessity of the Church for the
attainment of eternal salvation. It analyzes these pronounce ­
ments and brings out explicitly the Catholic teachings referred
to and implied in them. Then it examines the dogma, as it
has been stated and explained by the Church’s magisterium,
in the light of what the sources of revelation have to say about
the nature of the Church and about the processes of salvation
and sanctification. Thus it is able to show that what the
Church itself has always taught and defined on this subject
is precisely what the divine message, contained in Scripture
and tradition, has to say about salvation and about God’s
supernatural kingdom.
Any person who is at all familiar with what the great mass
ix

I ntroduction

of religious and theological writings of our times have had to
say about this dogma is quite well aware of the fact that, in
an overwhelming majority of cases, these writings have been
mainly, almost exclusively, concerned with proving and ex­
plaining how this dogma docs not mean that only members ol
the Catholic Church can be saved. This, of course, is perfectly
true. The ecclesiastical magisterium/in teaching and guarding
this dogma, insists that there is no salvation outside of the
Catholic Church and at the same time likewise insists that
people who die without ever becoming members ol the
Catholic Church can obtain the Beatific Vision. · '
But if we, lor all practical purposes, limit our explanation
of the dogma to an assurance that it does not mean that every
man who dies a non-member of the Catholic Church is not
necessarily lost forever—as so many modern writings on this
subject seem to do—we tend to lose sight of the central
mysteries of God’s merciful dispensation in the supernatural
order. For, let us not forget it, the revealed truths about the
necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of eternal
salvation belong to the order of the great supernatural mys­
teries. They belong with God’s revealed doctrine about grace,
about the process of salvation, the work of the Redemption,
and the Blessed Trinity. In showing how the teachings of
the ecclesiastical magisterium are contained in the sources of
revelation in the very sense in which they have been stated
and defined by the Church itself, we can see this dogma of
the Church precisely as the accurate and authoritative expres­
sion of a revealed mystery.

(2) During the pontificate of the present Holy Father three
authoritative documents issued by the Holy See have instructed
the members of the Church about the meaning of the dogma
that there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. Two
of these are encyclical letters, the Mystici Corporis Christi,
issued June 29, 1943, and the Humani generis, dated August
12, 1950. The third is the Holy Office letter Suprema haec
sacra, addressed by order of the Holy Father on August 8,
1949, to the Most Reverend Archbishop of Boston. The doc-

Introduction

xi

trinal section ol this last document is devoted exclusively to
an explanation of this dogma. It i-> the most completely de­
tailed statement of this teaching evci set forth in an authorita­
tive document of the Chinch's nmgislerium.
There would obviously seem to be, not only room for, but
an actual need of, a book that would present and analyze
the teachings on this subject brought out in these three recent
documents from the Holy See. And. in the lack of any other
work in English devoted exclusively to the explanation of this
portion of Catholic doctrine and written since the appearance
of these three documents, the picsent book is humbly offered
in the hope that it may satisfy that need.
(a) In the Humani generis toe prc.-.cm Holy Father sternly
rebuked some contemporary Catholic writers because, as he
said, “ they reduce to an empty formula the necessity of
belonging to the true Church in order to attain to eternal
salvation.” Actually this particular part of Catholic doctrine
is unique in that an inaccurate interpretation or presentation
of it by a Catholic writer does actually constitute, in most
cases, the reduction of this teaching to an empty formula.

Furthermore the vagaries of some writers, particularly in
the field of popular religious literature, on the subject, are
in some way explicable in terms of the peculiar history of the
tractatus de ecclesia within the body of scholastic theology.
A sketch of this history is available in the present volume,
since I believe that the man who knows something about the
basis of some of the more colorful misinterpretations of the
dogma will be in a better position to appreciate and to defend
the genuine teaching of the Church in this field.
This introduction would not be complete without an expres­
sion of sincere gratitude to the Very Reverend Dr. Francis J.
Connell, C. S.S. R., for these last fourteen years my brilliant
and faithful associate in the work of The American Ecclesi­
astical Review. He has been kind enough to read and to
correct the manuscript of this book with the same charitable
care he has given to the reading and the correction of all I
have written for publication since our association began.

UaUHMUUUMU·

^·ΜΟΒΟΚηΐ3^@······ηΜΙ··Ι

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
AND SALVATION

PART I
THE DOGMA OF SALVATION IN OFFICIAL
PRONOUNCEMENTS OF THE CHURCH

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

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

(1) A profession of the Catholic faith issued by the Fourth
Lateran Council, the twelfth in the series of Oecumenical
Councils, in 1215, during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III.
(2) The Bull Unam sanctam, published by Pope Boniface
VIII, on November 18, 1302.
(3) The decree for the Jacobites, the Bull Cantate Domino,
published by Pope Eugenius IV on February 4, 1442, and
included in the Acta of the Council of Florence, the seven­
teenth among the Oecumenical Councils.

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements
(4) The allocution Singulari quadam, delivered on Decem­
ber 9, 1854, the day aftei' the solemn definition of Our Lady’s
Immaculate Conception, by Pope Pius IX, to the Cardinals,
Archbishops, and Bishops gathered in Rome lor that definition.
(5) The encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, addressed
by Pope Pius IX to the Bishops of Italy on August 10, 1863.
(6) The encyclical letter Mystici Corporis Christi, pub­
lished on June 29, 1943, by Pope Pius XII.
(7) 'The letter Suprema haec sacra, sent by the Holy Office,
at the command of Pope Pius XII, to His Excellency the Most
Reverend Archbishop of Boston, on August 8, 1919.
(8) The encyclical letter Humani generis, issued by Pope
Pius XII on August 12, 1950.
Each of the eight chapters that go to make up the first part
of this book will consider the teachings of one of these docu­
ments on the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attain­
ment of eternal salvation. The documents will be studied in
chronological order.
As authoritative statements of the teaching Church, all of
these pronouncements of the Holy See and of Oecumenical
Councils must be accepted with true internal consent by all
Catholics. What they teach on the subject of this dogma is
what all Catholics are bound in conscience to hold. It is
definitely not enough for Catholics to receive these declarations
with what has been called “ respectful silence.” It is not suffi­
cient that they merely refrain from overt statements rejecting
what has been taught in these authoritative documents of the
ecclesia docens. Every Catholic is strictly bound in conscience
to make what the Church has taught in this way his own view,
his own conviction, on this subject. And, as a result, it is
objectively wrong for any Catholic to hold an explanation of
the Church’s necessity for salvation which is in any way in­
compatible with what the Church has taught authoritatively
about this dogma.
The first three of the eight documents studied in this book
limit themselves, mainly, to the assertion as a dogma of the

'ί·;··<ίι:·ΐ4ί .Wït ?ΤΑ. ·\ν 'ttix.W/.i «V ·

The Dogma ο] Salvation in Official Pronouncements

'■**· '3-V·'-.—>

3

faith of the teaching that no man can be saved outside the
Catholic Church. A dogma is a truth which the Church finds
in Scripture or in divine apostolic tradition and which, either
in solemn judgment or in its ordinary and universal teaching
activity, it. presents to its people as a doctrine revealed by God
and as something which all are obligated to accept with the
assent of divine and Catholic faith. Since the teaching that
there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church is a dogma,
men are obligated in conscience to believe it as certainly true
on the authority of God Himself, who has revealed it. Ob­
jectively the refusal to believe this teaching with an act of
divine faith constitutes heresy. The public denial by a Catho­
lic of this or any other dogma of the Church is something that
carries with it a loss of membership in the true Church.
The first three of these pronouncements are contained in
documents of the Church’s solemn teaching activity. The other
five belong to the ordinary magisterium of the Holy See. Four
of these, the teachings contained in the allocution Singulari
quadam and in the encyclical letters Quanto conficiamur
moerore, Mystici Corporis Christi, and Humani generis, were
issued by the Sovereign Pontiff himself. The other statement
treated in this book, that of the Holy Office letter Suprema
haec sacra, is an act of a Roman Congregation. Thus, accord­
ing to the rule set forth in canon 7 of the Codex iuris canonici,
it must likewise be considered and described as an act of the
Holy See.
All of these statements of the Church’s ordinary magisterium
are authoritative. Pope Pius XII spoke of the Holy Father’s
own ordinary teaching power in the encyclical Humani generis,
in a passage which has special reference to the teaching set
forth in encyclical letters.
Nor must one think that the truths proposed in encyclical letters
do not demand assent by themselves (assensum per se non postu­
lare) , since in writing such letters the Popes do not exercise the
supreme power of their teaching authority. For these matters are
taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say:
" He who heareth you, heareth me
and generally what is ex­
pounded and inculcated in encyclical letters already appertains to

“■· *

BlUIUMBUJUt

4

OLUmaMæHSS

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Catholic doctrine for other reasons. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in
their Acta take the trouble to issue a decision on a point hitherto
controverted, it is obvious that this point, according to the mind and
will of the same Pontiffs, can no longer be considered a question
open to discussion among theologians.1

The following passage, taken from the letter Tuas libenter,
written by Pope Pius IX on December 21, 1863, to the Arch­
bishop of Munich, gives a clear view of the doctrinal authority
of the Holy See’s statements, including pronouncements issued
by the Congregations of the Roman Curia.
Even in the matter of that subjection which must be given in the
act of divine faith, it should still not be restricted to those things
that have been defined in the obvious decrees of the Oecumenical
Councils or of the Roman Pontiffs or of this See, but must .also be
extended to that which is taught as divinely revealed by the ordinary
magisterium of the entire Church spread throughout the world and
which, as a result, is presented as belonging to the faith according to
the common and constant agreement of the Catholic theologians.
But, on the matter of that subjection to which all Catholics who
are engaged in the work of the speculative sciences are obliged in
conscience, so that, by their writings, they may bring new advantages
to the Church, the members of this assembly [a convention of
German theologians] must take cognizance of the fact that it is not
enough for them to receive and to venerate the above-mentioned
dogmas of the Church, but that it is also necessary that they subject
themselves to the doctrinal decisions of the Pontifical Congregations
and to those points of doctrine that arc considered by the common
and constant agreement of Catholics as theological truths and con­
clusions which are so certain that opinions opposed to these points
of doctrine still merit some other theological censure, even though
they may not be designated as heretical.12

The directions given almost a hundred years ago by Pope
Pius IX are just as valid and necessary now as they were when
the Tuas libenter was first written. It is and it always will be
1 The Latin text of Humani tremeris is carried in The American Ecclesi­
astical Review, CXXIII, 5 (Nov., 1950), 383-98. The paragraph here
quoted is n. 20. p. 389. Subsequent references to The American Ecclesi­
astical Review will use the abbreviation AER.
2 Denzingcr, Enchiridion symbolorum, 30th edition (Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1954), nn. 1683 1'. Further references to the Enchiridion
sxmboloruni in this volume will use the abbreviation Denz.

The Dogma of Salvation in- Official Pronouncements

5

the duty and the privilege oE the Catholic to accept and to
enjoy the body of truth given to the faithful in the official
declarations ol the ecclesiastical magisterium.3 And, from a
study of' the eight documents cited in the first part of this book,
we can see exactly what the Catholic magisterium has taught
about the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal
salvation.

’ For a more extensive treatment of this subject c£. Fenton, “ The
Humani generis and the Holy Father's Ordinary Magisterium,” in AER,
CXXV, 1 (July, 1951), 53-62.

I
1ΉΕ FOURTH OECUMENICAL COUNCIL
OF THE LATERAN
In the [’irmiter, the first chapter ol the doctrinal declarations
of the Fourth Lateral) Council, we find the following declara­
tion; “ There is, then, one universal Church ol the laithlui
(una . . . fidelium universalis ecclesia) , outside ol which no
one at all is saved (extra ιμιαιη nullus omnino salvatur) .' 1
This formula bears a singular resemblance to one contained
in the profession of faith prescribed by Pope Innocent III in
1208 for the Waldensians who wished to return to the Catholic
Church: “ We believe in our hearts and we profess orally that
there is one Church, not that of the heretics, but the Holy
Roman Catholic and Apostolic [Church], outside of which
we believe that no one will be saved.” 2
Each of these documents presents three distinct statements
as truths actually revealed by God, and consequently as doc­
trines which men are obliged to accept with the assent of
divine faith itself. By immediate and necessary implication,
they condemn as heretical the teachings contradictory to these
three dogmas of the Catholic faith. They assert that:
(1) It is a divinely revealed truth that there is only one
true ecclesia or Church of God.
(2) It is a divinely revealed truth that this one true ecclesia
is the Roman Catholic Chinch, the social unit properly termed
“ the universal Church of the faithful.”
(3) No one at all, according to God’s own .revelation, can
be saved if, at the moment of his death, he is “ outside ” this
society.

As a result, according to the teaching of these documents,
it would be heretical to imagine that there is more than one
2 Denz., 423.

1 Denz., 430.

6

The Tourth Oecumenical Council oj the Lateran

Ί

social unit in this world that can lie designated as God s ti tie
ecclesia, that the Roman Catholic Church is not this true
ecclesia, or that any person could attain to salvation outside
of the Roman Catholic Church.
In a study like ours, the special value ol these two documents
is to be found in the fact that they place the dogma of the
Church’s necessity lor the attainment of salvation against its
proper background, and that they, particularly the statement
of the Lateran Council, bring out clearl) the real and com­
plete necessity ol the Church according to the actual designs of
God’s providence.
These two declarations of the teaching Church during the
pontificate of Pope Innocent III set the dogma ol the Church’s
necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation in its only
proper perspective precisely because they state this teaching
against the background of the divinely revealed truths that
there is only one true supernatural kingdom of God (or
ecclesici) in the world, and that this ecclesia is the Roman
Catholic Church. The true supernatural kingdom of God on
earth, God’s ecclesia, is something definable and understand­
able in terms of its necessity for the attainment of the Beatific
Vision. If we are to understand the terminology of the teach­
ing set forth by the Fourth Council of the Lateran, we must
realize that the men who drew up this profession of faith and
all the men of the thirteenth century, both Catholics and
heretics, were well aware of the fact that “ the social unit
outside of which no one at all is saved ” and “ the true Church
or kingdom of God ” are objectively identical. The heretics
denied that the social unit over which the Bishop of Rome
presides as visible head is actually the true ecclesia of God
described in the Scriptures. But they certainly would not and
did not question the fact that, wherever it was to be found, this
true ecclesia, is the company outside of which no one at all
may attain the possession of the Beatific Vision.
For all of these men, Catholics and heretics alike, the genuine
Church of God was the company of His chosen people, the
people of His covenant. It was the company of those who

8

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

professed their acceptance of the divine and supernatural law
nv which God dirccis men to the attainment ol' die one ulti­
mate and eternal happiness available to lhem, the happiness
which is to be obtained only in Lite possession ol the Beatific
Vision. The true Church was the beneficiary ol God’s promises.
It was the repository ol His supernatural revelation. It dwelt
in lids world as in a place of pilgrimage, awaiting the glory
ol lite fatherland of heaven.
They knew that the Church triumphant in heaven was to
he the continuation and the flowering of tiie Church militant
now existing on this earth, and that the people of the Church
triumphant were, in point of fact, the people who had passed
from this life “ within ” the Church militant and living the
life of sanctifying- grace. Thus they saw that the Church
militant was actually something understandable in terms of
necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation.
Che profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council and
the formula which the returning VValdensians were obliged
to accept both insisted upon the unity and the unicity of the
Church outside of which no one can be saved. Both asserted
that this ecclesia, definable and understandable as the social
unit outside of which no one can attain eternal salvation, is the
religious society over which the Bishop of Rome presides. 'The
profession of faith for the returning VValdensians states that
this ecclesia of God is not the Church of the heretics, but
that it is “ the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic ” Church.
The Firmiter teaches exactly the same thing when it asserts
that this one ecclesia outside of which no one at all is saved
is the “one universal Church of the faithful.”
I he term fidelis had and still has a definite technical mean­
ing in the language of Christianity. The fideles, or the faithful,
are not merely the individuals who have made an act of
divine faith in accepting the teachings of God’s public and
Christian revelation. They are actually those who have made
the baptismal profession of faith, and who have not cut them­
selves off from the unity of the Church by public apostasy
or heresy or schism and have not been cast out of the Church

The Fourth Oecumenical Council of the Lateran

9

by tne process oi excommunica lion, in other words, according
to the present terminology ol sacred theology, the fidelis is
simply the Catholic, the member ol the Catholic Church. Thus
the Church ol' the faithful, the universalis ecclesia fidelium,
is nothing but the visible Catholic Church itself. And the
formula of the Fourth Council of the Lateran tells us that
this ecclesia fidelium is the one supernatural kingdom of God
on earth, the company outside of which no one at all can
attain eternal salvation.
Actually, in the traditional language of the Church, the
term christianus itself had a wider application than the word
fidelis. A catechumen might be designated as a christianus,
but never as a fidelisd A man gained the dignity and the
position of a fidelis through the reception of the sacrament of
baptism. This sacrament is precisely the sacrament of the
faith. By the force of the character it imparts, it incorporates
the person who receives it into that community which is the
Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. The effect of that incorporation
is broken only by public heresy or apostasy, by schism, or by
the full measure of excommunication. The man in whom the
incorporating work of the baptismal character remains un­
broken is the fidelis, the member of the Catholic Church. The
social unit composed of these fideles is, according to the teach­
ing of the Fourth Lateran Council, the true Church, outside
which no one at all is saved.
Now, the Council teaches that a man must be in some way
“ within ” the Church of the faithful in order to be saved.
It does not, however, in any way teach or even imply that
no one other than one of the fideles can actually attain to the
Beatific Vision. And, for that matter, no other authoritative
declaration of the Church issues such a teaching or supports
any such implication. It is not, and it has never been, the
teaching of the Catholic Church that only actual members of
the Church can attain eternal salvation. According to the
teaching of the Church’s own magisterium, salvation can be
• Cf. Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien (Paris, 1898), p. 281; and
Fenton, “Faith and the Church,’’ in A ER, CXX, 1 (Jan., 1949), 60.

10

'Dic Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

attained and, as a matter of fact, has been attained by persons
who, at the moment of their death, were not members of this
Church. The Church has thus never confused the notion of
being “ outside the Church " with that of being a non-member
of tiiis society.
d ims the Fathers of the Fourth Lateran Council and all
the other churchmen who have drawn up authoritative state­
ments of the Church’s teaching on the necessity of the Church
lor the attainment of eternal salvation were well aware of
what St. Augustine had taught about men who suffered
martyrdom for the sake of Christ before having had the oppor­
tunity to receive the sacrament of baptism. In his De civitate
Dei, St. Augustine taught that “ whosoever dies for Christ, not
having received the laver of regeneration, has this avail him
for the forgiveness of sins as much as if these sins had been
forgiven in the sacred font of baptism.” 4 Since the forgiveness
of mortal or original sin is accomplished only in the infusion
of the life of sanctifying grace, the person whose sins are
forgiven is in the state of grace. If such a person dies in the
state of grace, he will inevitably attain to the Beatific Vision.
He will be saved, as having died “ within ” and not “ outside ”
the true Church.
Furthermore, they knew that there is no such thing as real
membership in the Church militant of the New Testament,
the true and only ecclesia fidelium, apart from the reception
of the sacrament of baptism. Thus, when the Fathers of the
Fourth Oecumenical Council of the Lateran, and the other
authoritative teachers of the Catholic Church, followed St.
Augustine in holding that a man could be saved if he dies
as a martyr for Our Lord while still unbaptized, they were
clearly showing that, in their declarations that no one can
be saved outside the Church, they did not mean that only
members of the Church may obtain the Beatific Vision. The
un baptized martyr for Our Lord passed from this life “ within ”
the ecclesia fidelium, despite the fact that he died without
having attained the status of fidelis.
ll)e civitate Dei, XIII, 7. MPL, XLI, 381.

The Fourth Oecumenical Council of the Lateran

1 I

Again, the Fathers of the Fourth Oecumenical Council ol
the Lateran were wrell aware of the tact, that an unbaptized
man could be saved even if he did not die a martyr’s death.
All of them accepted as Catholic doctrine the teaching St.
Ambrose had set forth in his sermon De obitu Valentiniani:
But I hear that you are sorrowing because he [the Emperor Valentinian II] did not receive the riles of baptism, t ell me, what else is
there in us but will, but petition? Now, quite recently it was his
intention to be baptized before coming into Italy. He let it be
known that he wanted to be baptized by me very shortly, and it
was for that reason, above all others, that he decided to have me sent
for. Does he not, then, have the grace lie desired? Does he not have
what he prayed for? Surely, because he prayed for it, he has received
it. Hence it is that “ the sold of the just man will be at rest, what­
ever kind of death may overtake him.” 5

St. Ambrose was speaking of an instance in which a man
who had been a catechumen had died before he had an oppor­
tunity to receive the sacrament of baptism. Fie had passed
from this life, then, as a non-member of the ecclesia fidelium.
At the moment of his death he was not one of the fideles.
Yet, according to St. Ambrose, this man had died a good death.
He had prayed for the grace of baptism, and God had given
him this answer to his prayer.6 He had passed from this life
“ within ” rather than “ outside ” the Church of the faithful.
He had been able to attain eternal salvation.
Such was the doctrinal background against which the Fathers
of the Fourth Lateran Council issued their teaching on the
necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of the
Beatific Vision. They believed that non-members of the Catho­
lic Church could achieve salvation. Thus, when they taught
that no one at all could be saved “ outside ” the one Church
of the faithful, they obviously did not mean to say that being
outside of the Church was equivalent to being a non-member
of this social unit.
On the other hand, they just as obviously did not mean
8 De obitu Valentiniani, 51. MPL, XVI, 1374.
8 Cf. Fenton, “ The Necessity of the Church and the Efficacv of Prayer ”
in AER, CXXXII, 5 (May, 1955) . 336-49.

12

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

that being a member of the Church, or even desiring to enter
the Church, constituted any absolute guarantee of salvation.
It is unfortunately possible to have a man die as a member
of the true Church, and die in the state oi mortal sin. It
is likewise possible to have a man actually desire to enter the
Church, and die before he has the opportunity to be baptized,
and to have that man lose his soul through some other offense
against God. In other words, it is possible for a man to lose
his soul if he dies “ within ” the Church. The Fourth General
Council of the Lateral! brought out the fact that it is absolutely
impossible to attain to eternal salvation if a man passes from
this life “ outside ” the true Church.
Thus, according to the infallibly true teaching of this section
of the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, we may draw
the following conclusions:
(1) At the moment of death a man must be in some way
“ within ” the Catholic Church (either as a member or as one
who desires and prays to enter it) if he is to attain to eternal
salvation.
(2) There is absolutely no exception to this rule. Other­
wise the statement that “ no one at all (nullus omnino) ” is
saved outside of the one universal Church of the faithful
would not be true. And that statement is true. It is an
infallible dogmatic pronouncement of an Oecumenical Council
of the Catholic Church.
(3) Any attempt to explain the Church’s necessity for
salvation by claiming that it is only the “ ordinary ” means,
or by imagining that it is requisite only for those who are
aware of its dignity and position, is completely false and
unacceptable.

II
THE BULL UNAM SANCTAM
The second of eight documents of the ecclesiastical magis­
terium with which we are concerned in this section is the
famous Bull Unam sanctam, issued by Pope Boniface VIII
on November 18, 1302. The opening and the closing passages
of this pontifical pronouncement contain highly important
statements of the dogma.
The opening section of the Unam sanctam states the dogma
itself and gives insights into it not available in any previous
declaration of the teaching Church.
We are bound by the obligation of faith to believe and to hold
the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church, and we firmly believe
and sincerely profess this [Church] outside of which there is neither
salvation nor the remission of sins (extra quam nec salus est, nec
remissio peccatorum) . Thus, the spouse in the Canticle proclaims:
“ One is my dove: my perfect one is but one. She is the only one
of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her.” This signifies
(repraesentat) the one Mystical Body, of which Christ is the Head,
and God [is the Head] of Christ. In this [dove and perfect one]
there is “ one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Certainly there was
one ark of Noe at the time of the deluge, and it prefigured the
one Church. The ark, which was finished in one cubit, has one ruler
and commander, namely Noe. We read that all things that subsisted
on the earth and which were outside of the ark were destroyed. And
we venerate this [Church] as the only one, since the Lord says in
the Prophet: “ Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword: my only
one from the hand of the dog.” The Lord prayed for the Soul—
that is, for Himself the Head—and at the same time for the body.
He called the only Church a body because of the unity of faith,
the unity of the sacraments, and the unity of charity of the Church,
the Spouse. This [Church] is the Lord’s seamless robe which was
not cut, but for which lots were cast. Therefore there is one body,
one Head, of the only Church, not two heads like a monster; Christ
and Peter, the Vicar of Christ, and Peter’ssuccessor, since the Lord
said to Peter himself; ‘‘Feed my sheep.” He says “my” [sheep]
universally, and not “ these ”
or “ those ”in particular, and thus
it is understood that He entrusted all [His sheep] to him. If, there-

13

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements
The first section of the Unam .sanctam contains the state-

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saving a man, in transferring him from a bad condition, one
in which the continuation of life is impossible, to a situation
of security and enjoyment. In this way a man is saved if he

1 Denz., 468.

The Bull " Unam sanctam.

15

is taken off a sinking ship and brought to another vessel in
seaworthy condition, and thence to his home ashore. Con­
sidered objectively, salvation is the benefit received by the
man who is saved.
In the vocabulary of the faith and ol sacred theology, the
process of salvation takes place when a man is removed from
the condition of spiritual death, or ol original or mortal sin,
and transferred to the condition in which he enjoys the super­
natural friendship of Cod and the possession of the life of
supernatural grace. This process is brought to its final termi­
nation when, in the possession of Beatific Vision, the man
saved attains the ultimate and unending perfection of the life
of grace, and is forever exempt Iront the danger of losing it.
Thus, absolutely and ultimately, salvation in the theological
order is to be found in the attainment of the Beatific Vision.
The word is employed in this sense in the statement that there
is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. But, for every
individual who comes into this world in the state of original
sin, the forgiveness of original or mortal sin is an integral
and absolutely necessary part of the process of salvation. The
most important lesson taught in the Unam sanctam is the
truth that this remission of sin. original or mortal, cannot be
obtained outside the one supernatural kingdom of God here
on earth, the society which we know as the Catholic Church.
In order to understand this aspect of the mystery of the
Church, we must take cognizance of the fact, presented to us
in Catholic doctrine, that the Beatific Vision is a vital act,
the ultimate and perfective expression of a genuinely super­
natural life. Furthermore, we must also realize that in reality,
by God’s own institution, there is no situation available to
men other than the sinful aversion from God or the possession
of the supernatural life of sanctifying grace.
The Supernatural Order

The salvation to which the Catholic Church refers when it
teaches the dogma of its own necessity is inherently and essen­
tially a supernatural thing. The Beatific Vision, in the acquisi­

16

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

tion of which the process of salvation is completed, is the direct
and clear intellectual apprehension of God in the Trinity of
His Persons. As such, it is an act absolutely beyond the natural
power or competence or exigencies of any creature, actual or
possible. It is the kind of operation which may be called
natural only to God Himself.
An act is said to be natural to some being when it lies witliin
the area of his natural competence. In terms of understanding
or intelligence (and it is within the framework of under­
standing that the ultimate distinction between the natural
and the intrinsically supernatural must be discerned) , an act
is natural when it is the apprehension of some reality within
the sphere of the proper object of that creature’s intelligence.
ft is not too difficult to see this in terms of an example. The
proper object of the human intelligence, precisely as such, is
to be found in the essences or natures of material things. Man
is definable as a rational animal. His natural activity is on
the plane of his own being. He is naturally constituted so
as to be able to understand the realities which he perceives
through the activity of his sense faculties. What he is naturally
able to understand is basically and primarily the world of
being of which he is made aware by that sense activity which
is natural to him.
His intellectual activity is truly a knowledge of being. He
is able to know, through his understanding of the sensible
realities that lie within the sphere of being that constitutes
the proper object of his human intelligence, that these realities
could not be as they are and act as they do unless they were
being kept in existence and in operation by an absolutely
First Cause. By the employment of the processes of removal
and excellence, he is able to understand what this First Cause
is not, and how it can be accurately, even though inadequately,
designated by human concepts and words. Ultimately, working
along the lines of this natural human intellectual activity,
man can arrive at the stage of natural intellectual perfection
in which he becomes aware, precisely in and through his
realization and recognition of the essences of material things,

The ΒτιΤΙ “ Unam sanctam ”

17

of the beauty and order of the universe, with its dazzling multi­
tude of creatures depending upon God and working for His
glory.
There can be, and there truly are, intellectual creatures com­
pletely superior to man. Yet, in every case, these creatures
must inevitably and necessarily have their natural intellectual
activity on the plane of their own being. Every creature, as
a creature, is a being in which existence is something really
distinct from essence. There is and there can be no creature
which exists necessarily. All have received, and continue to
receive, whatever being they possess from God Himself.
Hence the proper formal object of the intelligence of any
creature, actual or possible, is necessarily something on the
created level. From the examination of the reality within the
compass of that proper formal object, any intellectual creature
is able to arrive at a knowledge of God insofar as He is
knowable as the First Cause of creatures. The clarity and pro­
fundity of this knowledge will be more perfect in proportion
as the created intellect itself is more perfect. Thus the natural
knowledge of God by a created pure spirit would be immensely
better than any natural knowledge of Him available to man,
a rational animal. But this natural knowledge of God by a
created pure spirit would, in the last analysis, remain within
the range of understanding of God known through an examina­
tion of the effects He has produced in the created universe.
This would mean an intellectual knowledge of God in the
unity of His Nature, but not of the Blessed Trinity.
On the other hand, there is a type of knowledge of God
which is natural only to God Himself. In the infinitely perfect
act of understanding which is in no way really distinct from
Himself, the Triune God sees Himself perfectly in the Trinity
of His Persons, really distinct from one another, but subsisting
in one and the same divine nature with which each of the
three Persons is identified.
The basic truth about God’s dealings with His intellectual
creatures is to be found in the fact that it has pleased His
goodness and wisdom to endow these intellectual creatures

18

77?, e Dogma, of Salva lion, in Official Pronouncements

with the kind of knowledge of Him which He possesses Him­
self. Thus, lor the created pure spirits (the angels) . and lor
the entire human race, God has established an end or a final
perfection completely distinct from and superior io the final
end to which these intellectual creatures would naturally have
been ordered. By the force of His decree the only ultimate
and eternal perfection and beatitude available to these intel­
lectual creatures is this intrinsically supernatural good, the
knowledge and the possession of Himself in the Trinity of
the Divine Persons in the clarity of the Beatific Vision.
This immediate intellectual cognizance of God in the
Trinity of His Persons is, by its very essence, something above
and beyond the natural needs and deserts of intellet tual
creatures. Furthermore, it is a vital act, accompanied by and
belonging with a complexus of other acts which, taken to­
gether, constitute a true supernatural life. T he love of friend­
ship for God, as understood in the Trinity of His Persons,
is one of those acts.
Now, the second truth about the supernatural order is the
fact that God, in His wisdom and goodness, has willed to give
the Beatific Vision to His intellectual creatures as something
which they have earned or merited. Quite obviously this
benefit is not to be earned through the performance of any
activity on a merely natural plane. The only kind of activity
which can truly merit the Beatific Vision is activity within the
supernatural order itself, the working of the essentially super­
natural life. Hence, for every intellectual creature called to
the possession and enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, there is
a period in which this life of the Beatific λ/ision is meant to
be lived in a preparatory or militant stage. For the children
of Adam, this period is to be found in the life in this world.
Hence God wills that men should live and grow in the life
of the Beatific Vision in this world so as to be able to merit
the eternal possession and enjoyment of the Triune God in
the world to come. In this period of trial and preparation
it is quite obvious that the Beatific Vision itself is not available.
The thing being merited is not being enjoyed while it is

The Bull “ Unam sanciam "

19

being merited. Consequently, during the period of this life,
the supernatural awareness of God which guides and enlightens
the supernatural life is that of divine faith. This consists in
the certain acceptance of God’s own message about Himself
and about the eternal and salvinc decrees of His providence
in our regard. It is essentially supernatural, in that it tells
us of God in the Trinity of His Persons. Faith is intrinsically
a preparation and a substitute for the Beatific Ahsion itself,
since it conveys information about that very Reality which
we hope eventually to understand and to see in the glory of
the Beatific Vision. At the same time it is completely distinct
from and superior to any merely natural knowledge about
God.
The love of charity which will accompany the Beatific
Vision in the saints for all eternity also is meant to accompany
the act and the virtue of divine faith in this world. And,
where this charity is present, the supernatural life itself exists
and operates. Where it is not present, there is no supernatural
life, although faith and hope may still exist.
The immediate supernatural principles of the supernatural
life in this world are the various infused theological and moral
virtues and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. The ultimate
intrinsic and created supernatural principle of this life is the
quality which we call sanctifying grace. This quality acts as
the ultimate intrinsic created principle of the supernatural
life in this world and in the next.
Now the process of salvation consists primarily in the
bestowal of this life of sanctifying grace upon a person who
has hitherto not possessed it. Ultimately it consists in the
granting of the Beatific Vision to this individual. For, accord­
ing to God’s own institution, as He has made this known to
us in the message He has revealed to us in [esus Christ His
Son, the life of sanctifying grace in heaven, the life of the
Beatific Vision itself, can be enjoyed only as the continuation
and the fruition of the life of grace which has begun to operate
in this world, and which is existent at the very moment when
the individual passes from this life to the next. The only

20

; i

τ!
V

The Dogma oj Salvation in Official Pronouncements

men who will see God in heaven are those who have passed
from this lile in the state ol grace.
Thus there are two factors to be considered in the bestowal
of the Beatific Vision. The first is the giving ol the life of
grace to the person in this world. The second is the actual
attainment of the clear understanding and possession of the
Triune God in heaven. It is the teaching of the Unam sanctam
that both of these factors or benefits are available only within
the Gatholic Church.
The Terminus

a quo in the

Process of Salvation

The gift which the documents of the Church designate as
“ salvation ” is the Beatific Vision, the ultimate flowering of
the supernatural life of sanctifying grace which must begin
to exist in this world. A man is said to be saved, ultimately,
when he receives this supernatural benefit of the Beatific
Vision. The term “ salvation,” however, involves more than
this.
The key fact which must be taken into consideration in any
theological explanation of salvation is the truth that actually
the bestowal of the life of sanctifying grace is inseparable
from the remission of original or mortal sin in the world in
which we live. There have been cases in which this was not
so. Our Lord, in His human nature, possessed in a completely
perfect manner all the gifts of sanctifying grace and, both by
reason of the divinity of His Person and by reason of the fact
that He was not descended from Adam by a process of carnal
generation, He was never in any way stained with the guilt of
sin. His Blessed Mother was immaculately conceived. By the
pre-applied merits of His Passion and death, she was pre­
served free from any taint of sin from the very moment she
began to exist. In her case, also, the granting of the gift of
sanctifying grace was not accompanied by any remission of
sin. With her, the beginning of existence coincided with the
beginning of the supernatural life of sanctifying grace. Like­
wise, Adam and Eve, before the Fall, were constituted in grace
from the first moment of their existence. With them, however,

The Bull “ Unam sanciam "

21

the second granting of die life of grace was brought about in
and through the remission of sin.
In every one of their descendants this same thing has occurred,
except for the cases of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother.
Mary excepted, every person born into the family of Adam
through the process of carnal generation has come into this
world in the state of original sin. Both this original sin and
the mortal sins men commit during the course of their lives
are incompatible with the life of grace. And, by the institution
of God Himself, the stain of sin can be removed only by the
granting of the life of grace.
The state of sin, original or mortal, is a state of aversion
from or enmity with God. The removal of that state is
accomplished when, and only tvhen, the person who has
hitherto been in the state of sin is constituted in the condition
of friendship with God and is properly ordered to Him. And
there is no situation other than that of sanctifying grace itself
in which a man can be well ordered toward God.
To be well ordered toward God, or to be in a state of
friendship with Him, a man must be working toward the
goal which God Himself has set for him. And, according to
God’s own revealed message, the one goal or end in the attain­
ment of which man may find his ultimate and eternal beati­
tude is that of the Beatific Vision. There is no other ultimate
end available to man. If he fails to attain this objective then,
whatever he may seem to have accomplished during the course
of his earthly life, he will have been forever a failure. There
is no state of neutrality toward God, and there is no possible
state of merely natural friendship with Him available to the
children of Adam.
In other words, all and only the persons who are not in the
state of grace are in the state of original or mortal sin. All
and only the persons who are not in the state of original sin
or mortal sin or both possess the life of sanctifying grace.
Hence, according to God’s own institution, the process by
which a man who has hitherto not been in the state of grace
receives this supernatural life from God is necessarily the

22

The Dogma oj Salvation in Official Pronouncements

process by which his original or mortal sin is forgiven. The
terminus a quo of the transfer by which a man is brought into
the state of supernatural grace is necessarily, for the children
of Adam, the state of original or mortal sin.
Our Lord’s Function
Granting

in the

of the

Remission of Sin and
Life of Grace

the

It is a basic and central part of God’s revealed message
that the remission of sin, the process in which the supernatural
life of sanctifying grace is infused into a soul which has
hitherto been deprived of it, is possible only through and in
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Ghrist. It is in Our Lord, accord­
ing to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, (hat “ we have
redemption through his blood, the remission of sins, according
to the riches of his grace.” 2 And St. Peter, in his first Epistle,
speaks of “ the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his
eternal glory in Christ Jesus.” 3 In fact one may say that the
central message of the New Testament is the fact that salva­
tion and the remission of sins are possible only in and through
Our Lord.
By His suffering and death, He redeemed us and freed us
from the bonds of our iniquities. The actual graces or divine
aids by which a man is enabled to move towards the love of
charity for God and the hatred of sin which come together at
the moment of justification have been merited for us by Our
Lord. So too are graces by which a man is effectively and
freely moved to justification and to the increase in the life 1
of grace acquired, along with the remission of sin, in the
process of justification.
Moreover, justification, the actual transfer of a man from
the state of original or mortal sin into the state of sanctifying
grace, is possible only in Our Lord. Here the dogma of the
Catholic Church’s necessity for the attainment of eternal salva­
tion and for the remission of sin manifests itself as the clear
and accurate statement of the meaning actually conveyed in
the scriptural expression “ in Christ Jesus.” Neither justifica2 Eph., 1:7.

al Pet., 5: 10.

The Bull “ Unam sanctam

23

don nor glorification—that is, neither the remission of our
sins nor the attainment of' the Beatific Vision—is possible
except “ in Christ Jesus.” And the Church, in the divinely
inspired epistles of St. Paul, is represented precisely though
metaphorically as “ the body of Christ.” To be “ in Christ
Jesus,” then, is to be “ within ” the Mystical Body of Christ,
Our Lord’s one and only true Church or kingdom. And, just
as justification and glorification are absolutely impossible other
than “ in Christ Jesus,” they are likewise absolutely impossible
“ outside ” His Mystical Body, which is the Church.
It is highly important for us to realize that, in asserting the
dogma of its own necessity for salvation and for the living of
the life of sanctifying grace, the Catholic Church is simply
stating in a non-figurative fashion the very truth which Our
Lord Himself expounded through His use of the metaphor of
the vine and the branches. Our Lord taught:
I am the true vine: and my Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he will take away: and
every one that beareth fruit, he will purge it, that it may bring forth
more fruit.
Now you are clean, by reason of the word which I have spoken
to you.
Abide in me: and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide
in me.
I am the vine: you the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in
him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do
nothing.
If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch
and shall wither: and they shall gather him up and cast him into
the fire: and he burneth.
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask
whatever you will: and it shall be done unto you.
In this is my Father glorified: that you bring forth very much fruit
and become my disciples.4

Our Lord Himself explained the reality of this “ abiding ”
in Him which was requisite for the life of grace and of salva­
tion in the Eucharistic Discourse itself.
‘ John, 15: 1-8.

24

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say unto you: except
you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall
not have life in you.
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting
life: and I will raise him up in the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh arid drinketh my blood abideth in me:
and I in him.
As the living Father hath sent me and 1 live by the lather: so
he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not. as your
fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that eateth this bread
shall live for ever.5

Thus, according to this teaching by Our Lord, the beginning,
the continuation, the development, and the eternal possession
of the supernatural life, the life on the level of God rather
than the mere natural life of the creature, is completely
dependent upon abiding in Him. And, as He has clearly
explained, the individual in whom Our Lord abides, and who
dwells or abides in Our Lord, is the one who partakes of the
Eucharistic banquet of Our Lord’s Body and Blood. Quite
obviously Our Lord is speaking in terms of a worthy reception
of the Eucharist.
Now, by the divine constitution of the Church militant
of the New Testament, this social unit is the one social unit
within which men may partake worthily of the Eucharistic
banquet. Our Lord’s own ecclesia is the one and only company
within which the Eucharist itself was instituted and for which
it was intended. The Eucharistic sacrifice is offered, and the
Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is received rightly and
properly only within this community. Conversely, any man
who fruitfully and worthily partakes of this Eucharistic feast
is within the true Church, at least by intention.
Our Lord’s statement that “he that eateth my flesh and
drinketh my blood abideth in me: and I in him” is definitely
not restricted to the physical reception of the Sacrament of
the Holy Eucharist. A spiritual reception of the Eucharist,
s John, 6: 54-59.

The Hull “ Unam sanciam
which consists in a desire (even au implicit desire) to partake
of the Sacrament and to profit from that reception is sufficient
for this union with Our Lord in the case of a person for whom
the actual reception or physical reception of the Sacrament is,
for one reason or another, really impossible.
Thus, as Our Lord explains the matter, salvation and the
supernatural life of sanctifying grace arc possible lor the mem­
ber of the Church who is within this society as one of its
integral parts, and who is vitally joined to Our Lord by the
worthy reception of the Sacrament of His love. It is also
possible for the Catholic who is unable physically to receive
the Sacrament, but who, with a desire ol Lite Sacrament and
of its effects and with the intention of charity animating that
desire, is integrated into the Church, the household of the
living God, within which and for which that sacrifice is offered
and that sacrament is confected. It is also possible lor the
non-member of the Church who, unable to attain membership
in Christ’s Mystical Body and enlightened by true and super­
natural divine faith, loves God with the affection of true
charity and, in that love, forms at least an implicit desire of
the sacrament and of its salvific effects. In this last case the
man who possesses this desire, presenting if to God in the form
of prayer, will receive the guerdon he seeks, union with Our
Lord in His company, which is the Church. The man is
brought into the Church (though obviously not constituted
as a member of the Church) and into spiritual and salvific
reception of Our Lord’s Body and Blood, through the force
of his prayer and desire that are animated and motivated by
divine charity.
This is the meaning of the teaching about the Church’s
necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation and for the
remission of sins which has been brought out so powerfully
and profoundly in the Unam sanctam. In this great document
Pope Boniface VIII brings out his teaching principally by the
use of two of the metaphorical scriptural names or designations
of the Church. He employs the name and the notion of the
Church as “ Spouse of Christ ” to show that those who are

26

The Dogma of Salvation tn Official Pronouncements

within the Church are within the reality which may be said to
constitute one body with Him. And he employs the term
“ Mystical Body ” to designate the Church as the social unit
within which alone there is intimate and saivific contact with
Our Divine Redeemer. And thus, in his enunciation and
explanation of the dogma, he brings out, in the technically
expressive terminology of sacred theology, the very lesson which
Our Lord brought out so forcefully in the figurative language
He used in teaching His disciples.

The Dogma

and the

Error

of

Quesnel

When the Unam sanclam teaches us that there can be no
remission of sins outside the Catholic Church, it is telling us,
actually, that it is impossible to obtain the life of sanctifying
grace or to live that life outside this supernatural kingdom
of God. It is bringing out the divinely revealed truth that,
by God’s own institution, the life of sanctifying grace is to
be possessed and derived from Our Lord by those who are
united with Him, abiding in Him, in His Mystical Body,
which is the Catholic Church.
We must be especially clear, both in our concepts and in
our terminology, on this point. What the Unam sanctam cer­
tainly implies, in declaring the necessity of the Church for
the remission of sins, is the truth that the life of sanctifying
grace and the supernatural habitus of sanctifying grace can
be obtained and possessed only within the Church. In the light
of Catholic doctrine, however, it is both certain and obvious
that actual graces are really offered to and received by men
who are definitely “ outside the Church,” in the sense in which
this expression is employed in the ecclesiastical documents
which state the dogma of the Church’s necessity for the attain­
ment of eternal salvation. As a matter of fact the proposition
that “ no grace is granted outside the Church (extra ecclesiam
nulla conceditur gratia) ” is one of the theses condemned
explicitly by Pope Clement XI in his dogmatic constitution

The Bull “ Unam sanctam ”

27

Unigenitus, issued September 8, 1713, and directed against the
teachings of Pasquier Quesnel.6
It is certain with the certitude of divine faith itself that
actual graces are really necessary to prepare men for and to
move them to the very acts by which they come to be “ within
the Church.” Thus, in the light of Catholic teaching, it is
obvious that these graces are offered and granted to men who
are really outside the Church, lacking both real membership in
the supernatural kingdom of God and any real desire of
membership.
Except in the case of a true moral miracle, such as that
which occurred in the instantaneous conversion of St. Paul,
the process of justification (which can terminate only within
the true Church) is preceded by a series of acts which, together,
constitute the preparation for justification. In a famous
chapter of its decree on justification the Council of Trent
has listed and briefly explained some of these acts, as they
occur in the case of one who has hitherto lacked the true faith.
Under this heading it speaks of acts of faith, of salutary fear,
of hope, of initial love of God, and of pre-baptismal penance.
The process of preparation for justification, according to this
chapter, ends with the intention to receive baptism, to begin
a new life, and to observe God’s commandments.7
Now an unbaptized person who has not the Christian faith
is in no sense within the Catholic Church. He does not
begin to be within it, either as a member or as one who
sincerely desires to become a member, even when he makes
his initial act of faith. Yet, according to the clear and in­
fallibly true teaching of the Catholic Church, divine grace
is absolutely requisite, not only for the eliciting of the act
of faith itself, but even for what the Second Council of Orange
calls the “ affectus credulitatis,” 8 the disposition or the willing­
ness to believe. This actual grace is definitely given to men
who are outside the Church. And thus the assertion that no
grace is granted outside the Church is completely incompatible
with Catholic teaching, even though it is Catholic doctrine
•Denz., 1379.

7 Cf. Denz., 798.

8 Cf. Denz., 178.

28

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

that the life of .supernatural grace itself is not to be obtained
or possessed outside the Church.
The Church's Unity

and

Unicity

The basic teaching of this opening section of the Unam
sanctam, is the truth that the supernatural life of sanctifying
grace can neither begin nor continue apart from and outside
Our Lord’s Mystical Body. Thus it constitutes a powerful
and supremely accurate commentary on those passages of
Sacred Scripture which show us that the supernatural life
of grace cannot exist other than in and through Our Lord,
and thus in His company, the society which was and is so
intimately joined to Our Saviour that persecution of it was
described by Him as persecution of Himself.
The presentation of this truth is made especially forceful
in this document by its insistence that this community, outside
which there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins,
is genuinely one and unique. Pope Boniface VIH appeals to
scriptural images, like that of the ark of Noe and the seamless
robe of Christ. He adduces the teaching in the Canticle of
Canticles that the beloved, the figure of the Church, is truly
and only one. He appeals to the fact that in the Church there
is “ one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and to the bonds of
unity existing within the Church. Finally, he points to the
unity of the Church’s leadership, exercised by the Bishop of
Rome by the authority and in the name of one spiritual and
supreme Head, Jesus Christ.
In thus insisting on the unity of the company outside which
there is no salvation, the Unam sanctam brings out the
supremely practical implication of the dogma. The Church
within which men must enter and dwell if they are to attain
the remission of their sins and the possession and final flowering
of the supernatural life is definitely one community, undivided
in itself, and quite distinct from every other social unit in
existence. This one company is the ecclesia which all must
seek to enter, and within which they must remain if they are
to be pleasing to God in this world and in the next. The

The Bull “ Unam sauciam "

29

dogma of the Church's necessity lor the· attainment of eternal
salvation, as seen in this light, is certainly not an affair of
mere theory or speculation, but a truth which men must accept
as revealed by God Himself, and which they must use as a
guiding principle of their own lives.
The Church's Visibility

The intensely practical presentation of the dogma in the
Unam sanclam is increased by this document's insistence on
the visibility of the one society within which alone men may
find salvation and the forgiveness of their sins. The true
Church which is necessary lor the attainment of salvation is
the one society over which Peter and his successors rule by
Our Lord’s own commission. Our Lord confided all of His
sheep, ail of the people whom the Father had given to Him
to be brought to eternal life, to the care of Peter. Those indi­
viduals who describe themselves as not confided to St. Peter
and his successors, and thus are not owing obedience to them,
characterize themselves as not being among the sheep of
Christ. They show themselves to be outside the company
within which alone there is salvific contact with Our Lord.
This strong and realistic teaching of the Unam sanctam is
most perfectly manifested in the definition in which this docu­
ment ends.
Hence We declare, state, define, and assert that for every human
creature submission to the Roman Pontiff (subesse Romano Pontifici)
is absolutely necessary for salvation (omnino de necessitate salutis) .°

During our own times, prior to the issuance of the encyclical
Mystici Corporis Christi, there was a manifest tendency on
the part of some Catholic writers to teach the existence of a
so-called “ invisible Church,” in some way distinct from the
organization over which the Roman Pontiff presides, and to
ascribe to this imaginary entity the necessity for salvation.
The closing sentence of the Unam sanctam had long ago
rendered this position absolute untenable from a theological
9 Denz., 469.

30

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

point of view. As this document showed most clearly, the
Church outside which there is neither salvation nor the remis­
sion of sins is, in fact, the society over -which the Roman
Pontilf presides as the Vicar of Christ anil as the successor
of St. Peter. It is the society designated by the Bellarminian
definition of the true Church, as the assembly of men united
in the profession of the same Christian faith and by the
communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of the
legitimate pastors, and especially of the Roman Pontiff, the
one Vicar of Christ on earth.10
These points are brought out with particular clarity in the
Unam sanctam:

(1) The Church is necessary, not only for the attainment
of salvation itself, but for the forgiveness of sins, which is
inseparable from the granting of the supernatural life of
sanctifying grace.
(2) The Church is necessary for the attainment of salvation
and of the life of grace precisely because it is the Body and
the Spouse of Jesus Christ.
(3) Attainment of salvation in the Church involves union
with the Bishop of Rome.
(4) The dogma of the Church’s necessity for the attainment
of eternal salvation cannot be explained accurately in terms
of any “ invisible Church.”

10 Cf. De ecclesia militante, c. 2.

Ill
THE DECREE FOR THE JACOBITES

The seventeenth in the series of Oecumenical Councils was
that of' Florence. It was a gathering called to end some long­
standing separations of Oriental dissident groups from the true
Church. One of its acts was the famed decree for the Jacobites,
included in the dogmatic Btdl Cantale Domino, issued by
Pope Eugenius IV on February 4, 1142. The following para­
graph is found in this decree.
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, but Jews, heretics, and schismatics, can become partakers
of eternal life; but that they are going into the everlasting fire
which is prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they become
associated with it (nisi . . . eidem fuerint aggregati) before they
die. And [it firmly believes, professes, and teaches] that the unity
of the ecclesiastical body is of such value that the Church’s sacra­
ments are profitable unto salvation, and that fastings, almsgivings,
and the other duties of piety and exercises of the Christian militancy,
bring forth eternal rewards only for those who remain within it
[the unity of the ecclesiastical body]: and that, however great his
almsgiving may be, and even though he might shed his blood for
the name of Christ, no one can be saved unless he remains within
the embrace and the unity of the Catholic Church.1

Actually this declaration of the Cantate Domino simply
makes more explicit the lessons brought out in the Fourth
Lateran Council and in the Bull Vnam sanctam. First of
all, it mentions and classifies those who are outside of the
true Church. These include the pagans, who do not accept
any part of divine public revelation; the Jews, who accept
the Old Testament as God’s message; the heretics, who accept
certain parts of the teaching contained in the New Testament;
and finally the schismatics, who have not rejected any portion
' Denz., 714.

31

32

'Che Dogma oj Salvation in Ofjicial Pronouncements

ol the dnmel) revealed message, but who simply have cut
themselves oil Ironi communion with the true Church, it
insists dial, none ol these people tan altam to eternal lile
unless the)· enter the true Church belote they pass from this
world. In issuing this teaching, the Canlale Domino simply
repeated, with a little more explicitness about the individuals
who are “ outside ” the Church, what previous documents had
already taught about the necessity of the Catholic Church lor
the attainment of eternal salvation.
1 his is plain in both the first and the second parts ol the
Leaching on this subject set lord) in the Canlale Domino, i'he
first part assen ts that, the various classes ol individuals " out­
side ” the Catholic Church not only cannot become partakers
of eternal life, but also tliai. “ they are going into the ever­
lasting fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels"
unless they become united to the Church before they pass
from this world. In this assertion, which, incidentally, has
been designated as “ rigorous ” by opponents of the Church
and by some badly instructed Catholics, Pope Eugenius IV
merely took cognizance of the reality of Our Lord’s work of
redemption.
Now, the alternative to being saved is being lost. The person
who is saved is, in the ultimate and perlect sense, the one
who finally attains to the Beatific Vision through the salvific
power of Our Lord’s sacrificial death. The person wfio is not
saved is inevitably one who is debarred lor all eternity from
the possession of the Beatific Vision, in which alone the ulti­
mate and eternal end of man is to be found. The individual
who attains the one and only ultimate end available to man
will have been a shining success loi· all eternity, whatever
sufferings and humiliations he may have been called upon to
undergo during the period of his preparation and trial in this
wmrld. On the other hand, the person who does not attain
to that end will have been a failure for all eternity, despite
any success and pleasure he may have had during the course
of his earthly life.
Furthermore, no one is excluded from the everlasting pos­

The Decree for the Jacobites

bb

session of the Beatific Vision except for reasons of sin. In
the case of an infant who has died without receiving the sacra­
ment of baptism, that sin is not personal, but is original sin,
the aversion from God which is consequent upon the offense
committed by Adam himself. Obviously, according to the
teaching of the Catholic Church, an infant who dies in that
state will not be punished by the all-just and all-merciful God
for some sin which he did not personally commit. But, for
such an infant, the Beatific Vision is a good to which the
infant is not entitled and which he will not receive.
The adult who dies in the state of mortal sin, whether his
original sin has been remitted in the sacrament of baptism or
not, will not only be excluded from the possession of the
Beatific Vision, but will also be punished lor his unrepented
offenses against God. And, since there is no forgiveness of sin
apart from the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Jesus
Christ, there is no salvation for the individual who passes from
this life “ outside ” the Catholic Church. The person who
dies with unremitted mortal sins against God will not only
be excluded from the Beatific Vision (thus suffering the
penalty of loss) , but will also receive the punishment due to
the sin for which he has not repented (the penalty of sense) .
Our Lord is our Divine Savioui' precisely because, through
His sacrificial death on Calvary, He has earned for us the salva­
tion from our sins, both original and actual. Now, the salva­
tion which He merited for us was precisely a rescue from our
sins and from the effects consequent upon them. Those effects
are principally the loss of God’s friendship; subjection to
Satan, the prince of this world; the eternal loss of the Beatific
Vision; and the punishments of hell. Our Lord did not suffer
the tortures and the ignominy of the most horrible of deaths
to win any unimportant favor for us.
The key truth in all of this portion of sacred theology is
the fact that the Catholic Church is actually the Mystical
Body of Jesus Christ. In order to be saved from the condition
in which we are born into the world, and the condition in
which we place ourselves by our own mortal sins, we must

34

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

be in salvific contact with our Divine Redeemer. And the
one and only social unit within which this salvific contact
can be made is the institution which St. Paul designated as
the Body of Christ, the society we know as the Catholic
Church.
The people who do not come into salvific contact with Our
Lord do not avail themselves of the salvation which is in Him
alone. As a result they are not saved, and they remain in the
condition in which they have come into the world, or in the
condition in which they have placed themselves through their
own personal and mortal sins. If they die in this condition,
they inevitably receive the effects which follow upon their
condition. They are excluded from the Beatific Vision and,
if they pass from this life guilty of mortal sin for which they
have not been repentant, they suffer the pain of hell forever.
This is the section of Catholic doctrine which is most
sharply opposed to the spirit of the times in which we live.
The enunciation of this truth seems always to be designated
as “ rigorous ” or as something worse by those who are ani­
mated by the spirit of the world, whether they are openly
enemies of the Church or not.
Yet, if we examine the mentality of this sort of opposition,
we find that it is directed ultimately, not against the teachings
about the competence and the necessity of the Catholic Church,
but actually against the redemptive work of Jesus Christ Our
Lord. What is obviously back of objection to this portion
of Catholic teaching is the conviction, or at least the claim,
that eternal happiness is in some way the native right of all
human beings without exception, or at least something within
the field of competence of these same human beings.
A man who feels in this way is inevitably inclined to look
upon the effects of Our Lord’s redemptive sacrifice as in
reality either non-existent or quite unimportant. If the best
man can obtain is something to which he is entitled by the very
fact of being a man, or something which he is competent to
obtain through the exercise of his own natural powers, then
of course it is hardly more than a mere verbalism to speak of

'Che Decree jor ike Jacobites

35

a redemption. And if God is going to give everlasting life
to any man, without regard for any contact with Our Lord,
then the most Our Lord could have done has been to obtain
some extra and accidental advantages in the supernatural
order for those who conic and stay in contact with Him.
Such, however, has not been the case, and any system of
thought which bases itself on such false assumptions is com­
pletely and fatally unrealistic. As a matter of fact, all man­
kind, all the progeny of Adam, absolutely needed the forgive­
ness of sin and the liberation which actually came only through
the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ Our Lord. If man’s
sins had remained unlorgiven by God, then man wOuld have
been justly and necessarily shut away from the Beatific Vision
forever. If man’s personal mortal sins had not been forgiven,
man would have been justly and necessarily subject to ever­
lasting punishment for those sins.
In reality the only motive force for the forgiveness of man’s
sins is to be found in the redemption by Jesus Christ. And
the only possible way for a man to have his own sins remitted
is to come into contact with Our Lord and with His salvific
power in the one and only social unit which has been divinely
constituted as His Mystical Body. This means being within
His Church as a member or at least by a sincere, even though
perhaps only an implicit, desire or intention. The man who
is not thus in contact with Our Lord cannot have the remis­
sion of sin. And he cannot have the effects that follow upon
that remission of sin.
Once again, if we are to look upon this section of Catholic
teaching accurately and objectively, we must take the trouble
to realize that Our Lord did not die the terrible death of the
Cross for the attainment of any paltry or merely accidental
objective. He died to save men from sin and from the penal­
ties of sin. He died to save men from servitude to Satan,
the leader of all who are turned against God, and to save them
from everlasting exclusion from the Beatific Vision. He died
to save them from the everlasting penalties of hell. No one
can have this gift of salvation apart from Him.

36

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Moreover, we must not lose sight of the fact that all men
stand in need of redemption. There is absolutely no one who
can come to the love and friendship of God by his own
unaided natural powers. All men need the remission of sin,
which is to be found only in the redemptive sacrifice of Our
Lord. The infusion or granting of the supernatural life of
grace is the positive aspect of the remission of original or
mortal sin, and this life of grace is a sharing of the divine
life, a sharing which is not to be obtained apart from the
Incarnate Word of God. Since the sin of Adam there never
has been and there never will be the remission of sin or the
granting of the life of sanctifying grace to any human being
apart from the force of Our Lord’s redemptive sacrifice.
It is a further fact that, in the designs of God’s providence,
men come into salvific contact with Our Lord in His kingdom
or His Mystical Body. Such, as a matter of fact, is the basic
concept of God’s kingdom even here on earth, for it is inher­
ently the community of God’s chosen people. The kingdom
of God on earth is the social unit or the company of those
who are “ saved ” in the sense that they are removed from the
dominion of the prince of this world. It is the society within
which Our Lord dwells and over which He presides as the
true and invisible Head. And, in God’s own dispensation, this
society, in the period of the New Testament, is the Catholic
Church.
Some of those who have written with what seems to be
the avowed intention of weakening or obscuring this section
of Catholic doctrine have admitted (as anyone who claims to
be a Catholic must admit) that there is no salvation apart
from Our Lord’s redemption, but have likewise taught that
we do not know the direction of those graces which God
gives, through Our Lord, to those who are outside the Catholic
Church. This assertion is definitely untrue.
All of the supernatural aids granted by God to any man
tend to lead him to the eternal possession of the Beatific
Vision. They likewise direct him toward those realities which,
either by their very nature or by God’s own institution, are

The Decree for lhe Jacobites

37

requisite for the attainment of the Beatific Vision. One ol
those realities is the visible Catholic Church, (he religions
society over which the Bishop of Rome presides as lhe Vicar
of Christ on earth. The graces which God grants to any man
outside the Church will inevitably guide him in the direction
of the Church.
If a man continues faithful to the graces given him by God
he will certainly attain to eternal salvation. And he will just
as certainly obtain that salvation “within” the true Church
of Jesus Christ. God’s grace will lead a man in the direction
of justification, according to the pattern set forth in the teach­
ing of the Council of Trent. It will direct him to believe
God’s revealed message with a certain assent based on the
authority of God Himself revealing. It will lead him in the
direction of salutary fear and of hope and of initial love of
God and of penance. Ultimately it will lead him to a desire
of baptism, even though, in some cases, that desire may be
. only implicit in character. And baptism is of itself the gateway
to the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, within which the
life of grace and salvation are to be found. In the case of a
man who is already baptized, the preparation for justification
includes an intention (at least implicit) of remaining within
the kingdom of God to which baptism itself is the gateway.
It is both idle and misleading to characterize the teaching of
the Cantate Domino as in any way “ rigorous ” or exigent.
This doctrine, which is standard Catholic teaching, is only
the expression of what God has taught about the place of
His Son’s Mystical Body in the economy of man’s salvation.
Neither the Catholic Church itself nor the teachers of the
Church have made the Church something requisite for the
attainment of the Beatific Vision. When the Church makes
the soft of statement that is found in the Cantate Domino,
it is acting merely as the teacher of what God Himself has
revealed. As the Mystical Body of Christ, the society within
which Our Lord Himself is the supreme Teacher, the Church
could not do otherwise.
Disagreeable as the task may seem to some individuals, the

38

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Catholic Church has to lace the facts. Basic among those
facts is the truth that, apart from the redemption which is in
Jesus Christ, all men would inevitably have been excluded
for all eternity from the possession of the Beatific Vision, in
which alone the ultimate and eternal end and happiness ol
man may be attained. Another fact is that the punishment
for unforgiven mortal sin (sin of which the guilty party has
not repented) is the everlasting penalty of hell, a penalty
which includes both the poena damni and poena sensus. Still
another fact is that the forgiveness of sin and the infusion
of the life of grace is available by the potver of Christ only
“ within ” His kingdom, His Mystical Body, which, in this
period of the New Testament, is the visible Catholic Church.
Such, in the final analysis, is this teaching of the first section
of our citation from the Cantale Domino.
The second sentence in the portion of the document trans­
lated at the beginning of this chapter brings out the fact that
acts which would otherwise be most conducive to salvation
are deprived of their effect if they are performed “ outside ”
the bond of unity of the Catholic Church. It teaches that even
the reception of the sacraments cannot be “ profitable unto
salvation,” that is, cannot produce their effects in the life of
divine grace for those who are outside of the unity of the
ecclesiastical body. Furthermore it asserts that no work which
of its very nature ought to be salutary can be profitable in
the line of salvation unless these works are performed ‘‘with­
in ” the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Now, the sacraments produce grace of themselves, ex opere
operato, as the technical language of sacred theology says.
They bring about this effect except where there is some
disposition on the part of the recipient which is incompatible
with the reception of the life of sanctifying grace. According
to the terminology of the Cantate Domino, such an obstacle
exists in a person who is “ outside ” the unity of the ecclesiasti­
cal body, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.
Once again, at this point it is absolutely imperative to
remember that being “ within ” the Church is not exactly

The Decree for the Jacobites

39

the same thing as being a member of this social unit. A man
is a member of the Church when he is baptized, and when he
has neither publicly renounced his baptismal profession ol the
true faith nor withdrawn from the fellowship of tiie Church,
and when he has not been expelled from the company of the
disciples by having received the fullness of excommunication.
But a man is “ within ” the Church to the extent that he can
be saved “ within ” it when he is a member or even when he
sincerely, albeit perhaps only implicitly, desires to enter it.
The condition requisite for profiting from the reception of the
sacraments or from the performance of acts which should be
salutary is being “ within ” the Church.
Now, while it is possible to have a desire to be within the
Church, and, indeed even to be a member of the Church,
without having the love of charity for God, it is quite impos­
sible to have charity without being within the true Church, at
least by an implicit desire to dwell in it. The love of charity
is, by its very nature, a sovereign affection. It is definable
in terms of intention rather than of mere velleity; and it
necessarily embodies an intention, rather than a mere velleity,
to do what Our Lord actually wills we should do. And Our
Lord wills that all men should enter and remain within the
one society of His disciples, His Kingdom and His Mystical
Body in this world.
An intention, incidentally, is an act of the will which is
expressed by the statement that I am actually setting out to
do a certain thing; a velleity, on the other hand, is an act of
the will expressed in the declaration that I would like to do
a thing. If I really intend to do a certain thing—to take a
definite trip, for example—that intention necessarily affects
all the rest of my plans and my conduct at the time. The
man who really intends to take a plane to New York certainly
will not make any plans or enter into any agreements incom­
patible with the taking of the trip he has set out to make.
The mere velleity, on the other hand, has no such effectiveness.
If I say I would like to take a trip to New York, this statement
and the act of the will of which it is the expression have no

40

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

influence whatsoever on the rest of my pians, l ire vdlciiy is
a mere complacency in an idea, it involves no actual prepara­
tion to accomplish its objective.
The love of charity is essentially something in the line ol
intention rather than of mere velleity. The man who loves
God with the true affection of charity actually intends, insofar
as it is possible for him to do so, to do the will of God. It is
definitely the will of God that all men should enter and live
within the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. It is impossible
for a man who really loves God with the affection ol divine
charity not to be within the Church as a member or at least
to desire with a sincere and effective, even though perhaps
only an implicit, intention to enter this company.
Hence, if a man is not “ within ” the Church at least by
a sincere desire or affection, he has not the genuine love ol
charity for God. In such a case there is some intention which
runs counter to God’s will acting as the guiding and the
motivating force of his life. If that intention persists, it
remains incompatible with the love of charity and with the
life of sanctifying grace, which is inseparable from the love
of charity. The man with such an intention is not in a position
to profit from the sacraments or from a work which, of its very
nature, ought to be salutary. The life of sanctifying grace
is impossible for a man who possesses an intention incom­
patible with the intention of charity itself. The man who is
outside the Church, in the sense that he does not even have
an implicit desire to enter the kingdom of God on earth,
obviously acts as moved by such an intention.
Thus the Cantate Domino brings out very clearly the follow­
ing facts which were previously set forth in a more implicit
manner in previous declarations of the Church.
(1) All of those outside the Church, even the individuals
who have committed no sin against the faith itself, are in a
position in which they cannot be saved unless they in some
way enter or join the Church before they die.
(2) The alternative to eternal and supernatural salvation
is deprivation of the Beatific Vision. In the case of those who

The Decree for I he Jacobites

-11

are guilty of mortal sin which remains unrepented, this in­
cludes both the penalty of loss and the penalty of sense in
hell.
(3) The spiritual condition of one who is not “ within ”
the Church at least by an act of implicit desire is incompatible
with the reception of the life of sanctifying grace.
Furthermore, a study of the Cantate Domino should make
it apparent that the dogma of the Church’s necessity for the
attainment of eternal salvation is not directed “ against ” any
individuals or any societies. This dogma is only a statement
by the Church of the truth which God has revealed and which
He has confided to the Church. /According to God's own
message, men in this world stand in need of genuine salvation,
and, in His goodness and mercy, God has made His super­
natural kingdom on earth the company in which alone this
salvation is to be achieved.
It is well to remember that the teaching of the Cantate
Domino is not that men must actually become members of the
Church in order to attain to eternal salvation. The document
insists that pagans, Jews, heretics, and schismatics will not be
saved unless, before the end of their lives they are joined
(aggregati) to the one true Church. It is Catholic doctrine
now, and it was Catholic doctrine when the Cantate Domino
was written, that a man who is in the Church in the sense
that he sincerely, even though only implicitly, desires to live
within it, is in a position to be saved if he should die before
he is able to attain membership in the Church.

IV
THE ALLOCUTION SINGULARI QUADAM
Two declarations of Pope Pius IX on the subject of the
Catholic Church’s necessity for the attainment of eternal salva­
tion are of primary importance in the study of this section
of sacred theology. The first is found in his allocution
Singulari quadam, delivered on December 9, 1851, the day
after the solemn definition of the dogma of Our Lady’s
Immaculate Conception, to the Cardinals, Archbishops, and
Bishops who had gathered in Rome to be witnesses of that
definition. The second is contained in Iris encyclical Quanto
conficiamur moerore, addressed to the Bishops of Italy on
August 10, 1863.
Both of these statements are tremendously profound and
rich in theological implication. Moreover they are much more
difficult to explain than any other pronouncements of the
teaching Church on this subject. As a matter of fact, they have
all too frequently been misinterpreted by Catholic writers
who have examined them superficially or who have, in some
instances, even accepted translations which were something
less than fully adequate. In both of these documents it is
imperative to consider the context in which Pope Pius IX
placed his statement and explanation of the dogma.
The pertinent section of the Singulari quadam includes the
following paragraphs:
Not without sorrow have we seen that another error, and one not
less ruinous [than the error of crass rationalism dealt with in the
previous section of the allocution], has taken possession of certain
portions of the Catholic world, and has entered into the souls of
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 accustomed 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 argu-

42

The Allocution “ Singulari quadam "

43

ments (vanissimisque adductis rationibus'), they await 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 arc " a great deep,” ami which human
thought can never pentrate. In accordance with Our apostolic duty,
We wish to stir up your episcopal solicitude and vigilance to drive
out of men’s minds, to the extent to which you are able to use all
your energies, that opinion, equally impious and deadly, that the
way of eternal salvation can be found in any religion (quavis in
religione reperiri posse aeternae satu iis viam). With all the skill
and learning at your command, you should prove to the people
entrusted to your care that this dogma of the Catholic faith is in
no way opposed to the divine mercy and justice.
Certainly we must hold it as of faith that no one can be saved
outside the apostolic Roman Churth, that this is the only Aik of
salvation, and that the one who does not enter it 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 indicate the extent of such
[invincible] 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 connection
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, from Catholic doctrine, that there
is one God, one faith, one baptism. It is wrong to push our inquiries
further than this.
For the rest, as the cause of charity demands, let us pour forth
continual prayers to God that all nations everywhere may be con­
verted 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 deeply implanted in the minds of the
faithful so that they may not be corrupted by the false doctrines that
tend to encourage the religious indifference (doctrinis eo spectanti­
bus, ut religionis foveant indifferentiam) which we see being spread
abroad and strengthened to the ruination of souls.1
Deni., 1646-48

44

The Allocution “Singulari quadam’’

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

The teaching of the Singulari quadam is of special im­
portance since this allocution was the first “ modern " state­
ment by the Roman Pontiff on the dogma that there is no
salvation outside the Catholic Church. The intellectual back­
ground against which Pope Pius IX taught over one hundred
years ago is much the same, fundamentally, as that which
exists in our own time. Hence it is imperative, lor a proper
understanding of this portion of Catholic teaching, to analyze
this statement so as to see exactly what is brought out in this
allocution.
The basic thesis of the Singulari quadam is the assertion
that the teaching “ no one can be saved outside the apostolic
Roman Church ” is a dogma of the faith. It is something to
which the assent of faith itself must be given. As such, it
is of course completely infallible. It is something which can
never be corrected or modified. It must be received as an
absolutely true proposition.
It is interesting, incidentally, to note that Pope Pius IX
was faced with a situation quite similar to that which Pope
Pius XII described when he wrote his encyclical Humani
generis, in August, 1950. The attack on the dogma of the
Church’s necessity for salvation a hundred years ago was not
conducted by men who presumed to deny or to suppress the
statement that there is no salvation outside the Church. Their
tactic was much more subtle and dangerous: they tried to
empty this statement of all real meaning. They tried to make
Catholics believe that there was some hope of salvation for
people who had never entered the Church in any way. The
Singulari quadam characterizes this contention as a ruinous
error.
Pope Pius XII dealt with a similar situation when he con­
demned the efforts of those teachers who were trying to reduce
the teaching that the Church is necessary for the attainment
of eternal salvation “ to an empty formula.” 2 Pius IX worked
in this direction when he condemned the teaching that there
is some hope for the salvation of men who have in no way
entered the true Church of Jesus Christ.
* In the encyclical Humani generis.

Ï
j
i

•
■

.

45

Those who taught inaccurately about the necessity of the
Church for salvation a century ago used still another tactic.
They tried to make it appear that there was something unjust
about this basic Catholic teaching. They claimed, directly
or by implication, that there was some contradiction between
this dogma and the assertions of the faith which teach us that
God is all-just and all-merciful. The allocution Singulari.
quadam deals with this maneuver also. Pope Pius IX made
it perfectly clear that it is the duty of the hierarchy to prove
to the people entrusted to their care that there is no opposition
whatsoever between the teaching on the necessity of the
Church for the attainment of eternal salvation and the dogmas
of the divine justice and mercy. He presented this teaching,
then, as an integral part of true Catholic doctrine.
As a part of their tactic the opponents of the true Catholic
teaching tried to make it appear that a genuine acceptance
-of the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Church
implied the teaching that God would punish men for being
invincibly ignorant of the true Church. Pope Pius IX set
out to meet this contention also in the Singulari quadam.
He stated simply that it is certain Catholic truth that God will
blame no man for invincible ignorance of the Catholic Church,
any more than He will blame anyone for invincible ignorance
of anything else.
Incidentally, on this point, there have been Catholic writers
who have been led astray by an incomplete translation of this
portion of the Singulari quadam. The allocution says that
people who are invincibly ignorant of the true religion “ will
never be charged with any guilt on this account before the
eyes of the Lord.” The Latin text reads “. . . qui verae
religionis ignorantiam laborent, si ea sit invincibilis, nulla
ipsos obstringi huiusce rei culpa ante oculos Domini.’’ Some
persons have attempted a translation of this passage which
takes no account of the words “ huiusce rei.” Such translations
tend to present invincible ignorance of the true religion as
a sort of sacrament, since they make it appear that the
Sovereign Pontiff taught that persons invincibly ignorant of

46

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

the true religion are simply not blameworthy in the eyes of
the Lord.
The fact of the matter is (and this is the gist of the teaching
of Pope Pius IX here and in the encyclical Quanto conficiamur
moerore') that non-appurtenance to the Catholic Church is
by no means the on!y reason why men are deprived of the
Beatific Vision. Ultimately, the only factor that will exclude
a man from the eternal and supernatural enjoyment of God
in heaven is sin, either original or mortal. An infant who
dies without having been baptized will not have the Beatific
Vision because original sin has rendered him incapable of it.
Any man who dies after having attained the use of reason
and who is eternally excluded from the Beatific Vision is
being punished for actual mortal sin which he has committed.
Such a man may be further prevented from enjoying the
Beatific Vision because of the original sin w'hich has not been
deleted by baptism.
If we are to understand this teaching, we must not allow
ourselves to fail to realize that there is absolutely no middle
ground between the state of supernatural sanctifying grace
and the state of sin or aversion from God. Any man who
loves God with a love of friendship or benevolence, sincerely
desiring and intending to do His will and preferring to suffer
anything rather than to offend Him has divine supernatural
charity and is in the state of grace. If he dies in that state,
he will inevitably attain to the Beatific Vision. And, inci­
dentally, if he has the love of charity for God, he is “ within ”
the true Church of Jesus Christ, at least by sincere (although
perhaps merely implicit) intention and desire.
If, on the other hand, a man has not a love of charity for
God, he is in the state of sin. If an adult for whom Our Lord
died on the Cross has not this love of charity for God, it can
only be because he has chosen some object of affection incom­
patible with the love of charity. If he passes from this life
in that condition, voluntarily averted from God, he will not
gain the glory of heaven. This is true whether the man dies
as a member or as a non-member of the true Catholic Church.

The Allocution “Singulari quadam''

47

Thus it is perfectly possible for a man to die “ outside ” the
true Church and to be excluded from the Beatific Vision
forever without having his ignorance of the true Church or
of the true religion counted as a moral fault. That is precisely
what Pope Pius IX said in the Singulari quadam. He said it,
as the context shows, as part of his explanation of the fact
that the Catholic dogma of the Church’s necessity for the
attainment of eternal salvation in no way involves a contra­
diction of the doctrines about God’s sovereign mercy and
justice.
In this section of' the Singulari quadam Pope Pius IX goes
on to urge the Bishops of the Catholic Church to use all of
their energies to drive from the minds of men the deadly
error that the way of salvation can be found in any religion.
To a certain extent this is a mere restatement of the erroneous
opinion according to which we may well hope lor the salvation
of men who have never entered in any way into the Catholic
Church, the first misinterpretation of Catholic teaching re­
proved in this section of the allocution. Yet, in another way,
the error that the way of salvation can be found in any
religion has its own peculiar and individual malignity. It
is based on the false implication that the false religions, those
pther than the Catholic, are in some measure a partial ap­
proach to the fullness of truth which is to be found in Catholi­
cism. According to this doctrinal aberration, the Catholic
religion would be distinct from others, not as the true is dis­
tinguished from the false, but only as the plenitude is distinct
from incomplete participations of itself. It is this notion, the
idea that all other religions contain enough of the essence
of that completeness, of truth which is to be found in Catholi­
cism, to make them vehicles of eternal salvation, which is
thus reproved in the Singulari quadam.
One of the most interesting factors in this section of the
allocution is the fact that Pope Pius IX forbids his people
to inquire into the presence or the lack or the extent of
invincible ignorance in individual cases. He actually goes
so far as to insist that it is wrong to go beyond the teaching

48

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

that there is one God, one faith, and one baptism. In issuing
this order and in making the assertion, Pope Pius IX was
actually taking cognizance of one of the basic conditions ol
the Christian doctrinal ministry.
The primary and central object ol the Church’s doctrinal
ministry is to be found in the body of truth revealed by God
through Our Lord Jesus Christ, and delivered to the Church
by His Apostles as doctrine to be accepted with the assent of
divine faith. The secondary object of that ministry embraces
all and only those truths which the Church must be able to
teach inerrantly in order to teach its primary object adequately
as a living and infallible teaching body. The decision as to
just what would constitute invincible, as distinct from vincible
or culpable, ignorance of the Catholic Church in any indi­
vidual case does not fall within the confines of either object.
And, as a matter of fact, this decision is something which
man in this life is quite incapable of forming rightly.
It is definitely the business of the teacher of Catholic truth
to bring out the fact that God is all-merciful and all-just in
Himself and in His dealings with all His creatures. Every
man who comes into this world is the recipient of God’s
justice and of His mercy. In the light of the Beatific Vision
we shall see how God’s mercy and His justice have been
exercised in the case of each individual who is saved, and of
each individual who is lost, or deprived of the supernatural
enjoyment of God, forever. It is wrong to seek to find out how
this is so in this life, since the evidence we would need for
such an inquiry is definitely not available to us, and, in striving
to bring statements about an unknowable subject into the
fabric of Catholic teaching, we would only succeed in con­
fusing and adulterating the body of truth which God has
deigned to give to His Church.
In the Singulari quadam Pope Pius IX reminded the mem­
bers of the apostolic hierarchy that, on this subject, it should
be their concern to limit their teaching and to limit the
inquiries of the Christians subject to their care to the body of
revealed truths themselves. They are to see to it that their

The Allocution " Singulari quadam

49

people know that, according to the teaching of God Himself,
there is but one Lord in whom and by whom and through
whom salvation is achieved. They are to instruct their people
so that the flock may be aware of the fact that there is only
one faith, only one body of revealed truth which constitutes
God’s public and supernatural message for the salvation ol
men. And they are to preach anti teach in such a way that
their people will realize that there is only one baptism, only
one sacrament of regeneration which is the entrance into the
one true Church, the supernatural kingdom of God, the
Mystical Body of Christ, in which alone there is salvific contact
with the Triune God. 'This is part of the divine message
which they are commissioned and commanded to teach. The
invincibility of the ignorance of some individual who is not
a member of the Church is definitely not contained in the
divine message which has been confided to the apostolic
collegium.
The Singulari quadam contains still another immediately
important contribution to Catholic teaching about the possi­
bility of salvation within the Church on the part of individuals
who die before they can actually attain membership in this
society. It is contained in these twro sentences:
For the rest, as the cause of charity demands, let us pour forth
continual prayers to God that all nations everywhere may be con­
verted 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.

These two sentences contain what might be called the chart
or the plan of the apostolic work for the salvation of men.
Pope Pius IX called upon his brother Bishops of the Catholic
Church to unite in praying “ that all nations everywhere may
be converted to Christ ” and in employing their energies and
talents to the utmost “ to bring about the common salvation
of men.” Thus the Sovereign Pontiff reminded his hearers
and the entire Church of God that, in the plan of Our Lord’s
own teaching, salvation is described as coming to men through

50

'ihe Dogma of Salvation- in Official Pronouncements

the efforts of His followers, and particularly through the labors
of His apostolic college. Such, of course, is the significance
of Our Lord’s final instruction to His apostles before His
ascension into heaven, as recorded in the Gospel according to
St. Mark.
And he said to them: Go ye into (he whole world and preach the
gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that
bclieveth not shall be condemned.3

Behind the errors which Pope Pius IX was fighting in his
allocution was the vague notion that salvation was in some
way independent of the efforts of the Catholic Church and
of its hierarchy. The religious indifference which was spread­
ing throughout the world a century ago and which was directly
or indirectly affecting some of the Catholic people themselves
tried to make it appear that in some way or another salvation
was due to men by the very fact that they were human beings,
descendants of Adam and Eve. To counter the vicious in­
fluence of this indifference, Pope Pius IX recalled to the
minds of the Bishops of the Church the fact that salvation
was something meant to come to men through the power of
these Bishops’ own work and prayers. In that way it was com­
pletely in line with the teaching of St. Paul in his Epistle to
the Romans:
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
Or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And
how shall they hear without a preacher?
And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written:
How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace,
of them that bring glad tidings of good things? 4

The people who are sent to preach the gospel of salvation
are precisely the members of the teaching Church, the Bishops
of the Catholic Church, the apostolic college instituted and
commissioned by Our Lord Himself. These men, together
•Mark, 16: 15 f.

* Rom., 10: 18-15.

The Allocution “Singulari- quadam”

51

with die people they call upon to help them in their work,
are the ones through Avhoni the message of salvation and the
possiblity of salvation must come, according to the divine
teaching itself, to the children of men.
The exhortation in the Singulari quadam recalls the re­
sponse of St. Paul to his responsibility in the way of bringing
salvation to those for whom Our Lord died. The Apostle of
the Gentiles was willing to do and to sufler so much because
he realized that he was acting as God's instrument in bringing
salvation to men. He saw himself as in some way the cause
of the salvation of men who benehtted from his apostolic
labors. He took cognizance of the fact that he was working
to gain for Christ and to save those for whom he worked.
He brings this out in a magnificent passage in the First Epistle
to the Corinthians.
For whereas I was free as to all, I made myself the servant of
all, that I might gain the more.
And I became to the Jews a Jew, that I might gain the Jews.
To them that are under the law, as if 1 were under the law (where­
as myself was not under the law), that I might gain them that
were under the law. To them that were without the law, as if I
were without the law (whereas I was not without the law of God,
but as in the law of Christ) , that I might gain them that were
without the law.
To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became
all things to all men, that I might save all.
And I do all things for the gospel’s sake, that I may be made
partaker thereof.5

Perhaps the most eloquent statement of the fact that salva­
tion comes from Our Lord’s message is to be found in St.
Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. It is in preaching this message,
and in praying that men may accept it with the assent of
divine faith and live in conformity to its teachings, that the
Bishops of the Catholic Church are, according to the teaching
of the Singulari quadam, to work for the common salvation
of men. St. Paul wrote:
SZ Cor., 9: 19-23.

52

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouiu ements

To the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise,
I am a debtor.
So (as much as is in me) I am ready to preach lhe gospel to you
also that are at Rome.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power of God
unto salvation to every one that believelh: to the Jew first and to
the Greek.
For the justice of God is revealed therein, from laith unto faith,
as it is written: The just man liveth by faith.0

The act of divine faith is entirely requisite in order that a
man may be converted to Our Lord, in whom alone salvation
is to be found. It was of “ Our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth ”
that St. Peter said: “ Neither is there salvation in any other.
For there is no other name under heaven given to men,
whereby we must be saved.” 7
Pope Pius IX put forward this prayer and work incumbent
upon the Bishops of the Catholic Church as something which
was to be done out of charity. It is, indeed, essentially the
work of this virtue. Charity is the supernatural love of friend­
ship for God, a love which necessarily carries with it the love
of our neighbor based upon this affection for God. The Jove
of friendship for God necessarily involves a sincere will to do
His will. Now, it is the will of God that all men be saved.
In the First Epistle to Timothy we read of God our Saviour
that He “ will have all men to be saved and to come to the
knowledge of the truth.” 8
Objectively, then, a person is doing the work of charity
when he works and prays to bring his fellow men to accept
divine public revelation, to enter and to remain in the true
supernatural kingdom of God on earth, and to prepare for
the possession and enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The
obligation to do this work is all the more incumbent upon
the men whom Our Lord has made responsible for the spiritual
well-being of their fellows, the members of the apostolic
college. The Bishops of the Catholic Church, under the leader­
ship of the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, consti­
tute this apostolic college. Justice as well as charity demands
9 Rom., 1: 14-17.

T Acts, 4: 12.

»1 Tim., 2: 4.

The Allocution “ Singulari quadam ”

53

that these men work and pray for the accomplishment of this
end as powerfully as they can. 'This is the obligation ol which
Pope Pius IX spoke in the Singulari quadam.
Essential to this task is an effort to bring men to enter and
to remain within the true Church. The Holy Father had
already recalled the lad that it is a dogma ol divine faith that
no one will attain salvation outside the Catholic Church. It
would be worse than idle to imagine that one could work lor
the salvation of men without trying to influence them to enter
and to stay within the Mytical Body of Jesus Christ.
Thus, in the Imai paragraph of the section of the Singulari
qxiadam that deals with the necessity of the Catholic Church,
the Holy Father recalls the intimate connection between this
dogma and the missionary nature of the Church itself. The
Catholic Church, by reason of that charity which forms the
crowning part of what the old theologians designated as the
inward or spiritual bond of unity within it, has no choice but
to work with all the force at its command to influence men
to come and to dwell within it. so that within it they may
attain the eternal joys of the Beatific Vision. The Holy Church
works necessarily and always for the glory of God, to be
achieved in the salvation of those sotds for whom Our Lord
died on the Cross. By God’s institution, and definitely not by
reason of any move on the part of the Church as such, eternal
salvation is available only to those who die in some manner
“ within ” the Catholic Church. Hence, in working to achieve
its ultimate objective, the Church necessarily and always seeks
the means requisite for the attainment of that objective.
Within this same paragraph is one of the most profound
observations on the subject of the Church’s necessity for salva­
tion to be found in any pontifical document. After insisting
on the duty of the Bishops of the Catholic Church to do all
in their power to bring about the common salvation of men,
the Sovereign Pontiff reminded his hearers that “ the hand of
the Lord is not shortened, and the gifts of heavenly grace will
never be wanting to those who sincerely wish and pray to be
comforted in this light.” Thus he taught that the work of

54

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

salvation and the work of conversion to the Catholic Church
are definitely labors of divine grace. The apostolic worker
l:or Our Lord need not fancy that the effects of this work will
depend ultimately merely, or even principally, upon his own
powers and initiative.
Those who are summoned into that Church within which
alone salvation is to be found are called, first of all, by divine
grace itself. If they correspond with that grace, and sincerely
will (even though only implicitly) entrance into the Church,
and if they express that will or intention in the infallibly
effective act of Christian prayer, God will grant them both
entrance into the Church and the salvation which they desire.
It must be understood that the influence of the actual grace
which God in His mercy bestows upon men is always in the
direction of the attainment of the Beatific Vision. The man
who has not the virtue of divine faith and who is in the state
of sin is led by the force of grace to make an act of faith,
to fear God, to hope for Him as his own good to be enjoyed
forever, to begin to love Him, and thus to turn against sin
by that penance which comes before baptism, to resolve to
amend his life, and to be baptized, and thus to enter the true
Church. Once a man is within the Church and in the state
of sanctifying grace, the force of divine grace urges him on to
an ever-increasing perfection, which involves an ever-increasing
intensity of charity. If a man continues to correspond with
these graces, he will ultimately attain to his eternal salvation.
Should he sin after the reception of baptism, the direction
of the force of grace is toward the reception of absolution
in the sacrament of penance, and, of course to the contrition,
confession, and satisfaction which belong to the sacrament.
In every case the impulse of actual grace leads a man to
salvation and to the means requisite for the attainment of
salvation which the man upon whom the grace is working
has not as yet employed or possessed. For a man who is
entirely and essentially “outside” the Church, the force of
divine grace will influence him toward entrance into this
society.

The Allocution “Singulari quadam’1

55

Correspondence to divine grace, which has brought a man
to believe in God and to hope in Him, will lead him to pray
to God for the gift of salvation and for the means necessary to
salvation which the man does not yet enjoy. Now, prayer
which is offered lor one's own salvation and for the gifts which
are requisite for the attainment of that salvation is infallibly
efficacious when it is sincere, pious, and persevering. Thus,
even when a man dies before he is actually able to become a
member of the Church through the reception of baptism or
through canonical reconciliation with the Church, his sincere,
persevering, and pious prayer lor salvation and for entrance
into this society wall be answered by God. Contrary to the
insinuations and the statements of the indifferentists against
which the Singulari quadam was directed, God is not being
outdone in generosity by any of His creatures. Those who
correspond with the graces He offers them will receive the
answer to their prayers.
This, then, is the teaching which Pope Pius IX insisted
that the Bishops of the Catholic Church should give to their
people, in order to keep out of the minds of those people the
false doctrines which could ruin their spiritual lives.
The Singulari quadam brings out the following teachings
much more clearly and explicitly than previous ecclesiastical
declarations on the necessity of the Church for salavation
had done.
(.1) It is a ruinous error to imagine that one can have
grounds of hope that people now dead, and who had not
entered into the Church in any way during the course of
their lives, are saved.
(2) The dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catho­
lic Church is in no way opposed to the truth that God is all­
merciful and all-just.
(3) The doctrine that no one is saved outside the Catholic
Church is a truth revealed by God through Jesus Christ, and
a truth which all men must believe with the assent of divine
faith. It is a Catholic dogma.

56

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

(4) Invincible ignorance, of the true Church or ol. anything
else, is not considered by God as a sin. The dogma that there
is no salvation outside the Catholic Church in no way implies
that invincible ignorance is sinful.
(5) It is an impious and deadly error to hold that salvation
may be attained in any religion.
(6) It is not within the field cither of our competence or
of our rights to search out the way in which God’s mercy and
His justice operate in any given case of a person ignorant of
the true Church or of the true religion. We shall see how
these divine tittributes have operated in the light of the
Beatific Vision itself.
(7) It is the business of the Church to work and to pray
that all men will attain salvation in the Church.
(8) God is never outdone in generosity. The person who
tries to come to Him will never be forsaken. As a matter
of fact, the movement toward God, like all good things,
originates from God Himself.

V
THE ENCYCLICAL QUANTO CONFICIAMUR
MOERORE
The teaching of this encyclical is parallel with that of the
allocution Singulari quadam. In both of these documents
Pope Pius IX insisted upon the fact that it is a dogma of the
faith that no man can be saved outside the Catholic Church.
Indeed, the language of the encyclical on this point is even
more forceful and explicit than that of the allocution. Like­
wise in both oi these documents there is a very clear implica­
tion of the truth that a man can be “ within ” the true Church
in such a way as to be saved without being a member of this
society and, indeed, without having a explicit knowledge of it
at all. Moreover both the Quanto conficiamur moerore and
the Singulari quadam insist upon the missionary nature of
the Church and bring this truth into play in their explanations
of the dogma. The encyclical, however, brings out some
aspects of the teaching not touched upon directly in the allo­
cution which was delivered almost nine years previously. The
following two paragraphs of the Quanto conficiamur moerore
have to do with the dogma of the Church’s necessity for
salvation.
And here, Our Beloved Sons and Venerable Brethren, We must
mention and reprove a most serious error into which some Catholics
have fallen, imagining that men living in errors and 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.
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 who, being ready to obey God, live an honest and
upright life, can, through the working of the divine light and grace,
attain eternal life, since God, who clearly sees, inspects, and knows
the minds, the intentions, the thoughts, and the habits of all, will,
by reason of His goodness and kindness, never allow anyone who

57

58

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

has not the guilt of wilful sin to be punished by eternal sufferings.
But it is a perfectly well known Catholic dogma that no one can be
saved outside the Catholic Church, and that those who are con­
tumacious against the authority of that same Church, and who are
pertinaciously separated from the unity of that Church and from
Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, to whom the custody of the
vineyard has been entrusted by the Saviour, cannot obtain eternal
salvation.
God forbid, however, that the children of the Catholic Church
should in any way ever 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 strive always to take care of these people
when they [those outside the Church] are poor or sick or afflicted
by any other ills. Primarily, let them strive to take these people
out of the darkness of error in which they unfortunately live, and
bring them back to the Catholic truth and to the loving Mother
Church that never ceases to hold out its maternal hands affectionately
to them, and to call them back to its embrace so that, established
and strengthened in faith, hope, and charity, and bringing forth
fruit in every good work, they may attain eternal salvation.1

There are three most important lessons contained in this
section of the Quanto conficiamur moerore, the Holy Father’s
insistence upon the real necessity of the Church for salvation,
his implied indication of a distinction between the necessity
of means and the necessity of precept, and his teaching about
the possibility of salvation for a man who is invincibly ignorant
of the true religion but who faithfully observes the natura!
law. All of these lessons must be studied carefully by a man
who seeks to know the genuine doctrine of the Catholic Church
on the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal
salvation. The teaching of the Quanto conficiamur moerore
has a special importance because this encyclical has been mis­
interpreted more than once by men who offered inadequate or
inaccurate explanations of the dogma that there is no salvation
outside the Church.
First of all it must be noted that the statement of the dogma
that there is no salvation outside the Church is mode forceful
and explicit in this encyclical than in any other document,
'Denz., 1677 f.*

w •as*

The Encyclical " Quanto conficiamur moerore ”

59

except perhaps the Cantate Domino itself. Pope Pius IX
condemned as a most serious error (gravissimum errorem) the
notion that “ men living in errors and apart Iront the true
faith and from the Catholic unity can attain to eternal life."
He denounced this false teaching as something most completely
opposed to Catholic doctrine.
Furthermore he brought out with special clarity the practi­
cal import of this teaching. He reminded the Bishops of Italy,
and through them the entire Christian world, that the mem­
bers of the Catholic Church have definite obligations of
charity toward non-Catholics. Not only are Catholics for­
bidden to be enemies of those outside the fold, but they are
also bound to exercise the corporal anti spiritual works of
mercy for the benefit of non-Catholics. Pope Pius IX stressed
the importance of the corporal works of mercy. He asserted
that Catholics are obligated to be zealous in taking care of
non-members of the Church “ when they are poor or sick
or afflicted with any other ills.” But he also insisted upon
the fact that their most important duty in the line of charity
was an effort to free these people from their errors and to
lead them back to the true Church so that therein “ they
may attain eternal salvation.”
In other words, according to the Quanto conficiamur
moerore, the Catholics are obliged in conscience to be realistic
in their prayers and works of charity for the benefit of their
non-Catholic associates. Pope Pius IX did not want his people
to forget that charity for one’s neighbor is essentially a part
of charity toward God. It is not a work of merely secularistic
humanitarianism. The love for one’s neighbor which is truly
a part of divine charity is essentially a desire to give this
neighbor, insofar as it lies within our power, what he needs
or will find helpful for the attainment of the Beatific Vision.
The basic desire of charity for one’s neighbor is the will of
intention that this neighbor should have the life of sanctifying
grace, and, if he already possesses this supernatural life, that
he should grow and persevere in it. It is thus in line with
the motive of the Incarnation, the motive that guided Our

60

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Lord Himself. He expressed that motive when He declared;
“I am come that they may have life and have it more
abundantly.” 2
Hence, when true Catholic charity takes care of a man who
is sick or afflicted in any other way, it does not look upon
this man as one whose destiny is limited to this world and
to this life. On the contrary, it takes explicit cognizance that
the person it works to benefit is one for whom Our Lord died
on the Cross, one whom God wills to have with Him forever
in the glory of the Beatific Vision. In the encyclical Quanto
conficiamur moerore, Pope Pius IX reminded the Catholics
of the entire world that this explicit cognizance should be
eminently practical. The work of Catholic charity is definitely
not complete unless every effort has been expended ter free
men from the errors that keep them from the eternal possession
of God which is their only ultimate end. And, since, by
God’s own institution, the true Church of Jesus Christ is
really requisite for the attainment of man’s eternal and super­
natural salvation, the work of Catholic charity is lamentably
incomplete unless every reasonable effort has been made to
persuade non-Catholics to enter this society.
The Quanto conficiamur moerore is supremely realistic in
that it recognizes religious error as an evil, and as a definite
and serious misfortune for the people who are affected by it.
Its objectivity and plain speaking must have been as startling
to the moderns of nearly a century ago as it is to some of
the men of our own day. Some of the men of the nineteenth
century and of the twentieth have been prone to lose sight
of the fact that actually a man’s life is vitiated by a mistake
about his eternal destiny or about the means God has estab­
lished for the attainment of that destiny. Thus there could
be nothing more catastrophic in human life than the accept­
ance of the errors of atheism or agnosticism, or errors about
Our Divine Redeemer, His Church, His religion, and His
sacraments. It is strange that some individuals who would
be first to acknowledge the calamitous nature of an error in
» John, 10: 10,

The Encyclical '‘Quanto conficiamur moerore”

61

aviation engineering, which would result in the loss of a
plane, are not willing to acknowledge the inherent evil ol
error about Christ and His Church, which would result in
man’s eternal failure.
Pope Pius IX incorporated into this section ol the encyclical
Quanto conficiamur moerore a fundamental teaching about
the missionary nature or activity of the Catholic Church.
Besides bringing out (he fact that the Church expects its own
children to perform their obligation of charity to those outside
the fold by striving to bring these people into the Mystical
Body of Jesus Christ, the encyclical explains that the Church
invites non-Catholics to enter it “so that, established and
strengthened in faith, hope, and charity, and bringing forth
fruit in every good work, they may attain eternal salvation.”
The ultimate and fundamental reason why the Catholic
Church has always sought and must always seek converts is
that these converts may attain the Beatific Vision. The Church
is essentially and necessarily a missionary society only because
God Himself has established this society as a means necessary
lor the attainment of eternal salvation.
Furthermore, the Quanto conficiamur moerore is realistic
enough to take cognizance of the fact that faith itself comes
from and through the Church. We must not lose sight of
the fact that the formula for the administration of baptism,
in the Rituale Romanum, contains this dialog:
“ What do you ask of the Church of God? ”
“ Faith.”
“ What does faith offer you? ”
“ Everlasting life.”

Divine faith is definitely something which men are expected
to seek and to find in the true Church of Jesus Christ. Essen­
tially the true Church is and has been since the time of our
first parents the congregation of the faithful, the congregatio
fidelium. A man reasonably and prudently asks the Church
for faith since the Church is the society authorized and em­
powered by Our Lord Himself to teach His message, the
doctrine we accept with the assent of Christian faith. And

(>2

'Che Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

inc Chui ch is far more than niciely the society an dim-izccl b·
Oui Lord to teach m His name. It is actually i lls Mystical
Bod)', the congregation within which Ik acts as the Sovereign
Teacher, in such a way that the members of the hierarchy, the
ecclesia docens, are His instruments or ambassadors in the
presentation of His Father’s message.
'Thus the teaching- of the Quanto conjiciamur moerore is
quite accurate in describing the Church as the social unit
within which people are established ami strengthened in the
faith itself. The Epistle to the Hebrews describes Our Lord
as “ the author and finisher of faith.’' 3 The Catholic Church
is His Mystical Body. In seeking faith from the Church, we
seek it from Him.
Faith, hope and charity, together with all the other qua lilies
that enable us to live the supernatural life, come to us from
Our Lord. He is actually the Head of Elis Mystical Body,
and invites those who do not as yet belong to it to join it
so that they may be established and strengthened in these
virtues by Our Lord, the Head of the Church. There is no
other source from which these benefits can come.
Furthermore, faith, hope, charity, and the rest actually
constitute what the older theologians used to call the spiritual
or inner bond of unity within the Catholic Church. If a man
actually believes in God by holding as certain, on the authority
of God revealing, the content of that message Our Lord
preached and continues to preach in the midst of the society
of His disciples, and if, in the light of that faith, and moved
by God’s grace, a man hopes for God as his own eternal Good
and loves Him with the supernatural friendship of charity, he
is by that very fact joined to Our Lord and to His disciples
within the supernatural kingdom of God.
There have, unfortunately, been some rather serious misin­
terpretations of the second and third lessons contained in that
portion of the encyclical Quanto conjiciamur moerore that
deals with the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attain­
ment of eternal salvation. The second lesson is to be found
*Heb., 12: 12.

The Encyclical " Quanto conjiciamur moerore "

(i 3

in the teaching of Pope Pius IX on the distinction between
the Church’s necessity of means and its necessity of precept.
This lesson is brought out in a rather long and complicated
sentence in the text, ’lite encyclical tells ns that “ it is a
perfectly well known Catholic dogma that no one can be
saved outside the Catholic Church, and that those who are
contumacious against the authority of that same Church, and
who are contumaciously separated from the unity of that
Church and from Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, to
whom the custody of the vineyard has been entrusted by the
Saviour, cannot obtain eternal salvation.”
Some careless writers and teachers have tried to make people
imagine that the second portion of this sentence is an expres­
sion of the entire meaning conveyed in the first section oi
that same sentence. Writers of this sort incidentally, have
even misinterpreted the Holy Office letter of 1919, the Suprema
haec sacra, where the terminology is even clearer than that
employed in the Quanto conficiamur moerore. In both in­
stances there has been an attempt to give the impression
that these authoritative documents were representing the
Catholic Church as necessary for the attainment of eternal
salvation by the necessity of precept only. In both instances
the attempts were manifestly wrong. Here, however, we shall
consider only the text of the encyclical written by Pope Pius
IX. We shall study the Suprema haec sacra in a later chapter.
The immediate text in the Quanto conficiamur moerore
indicates quite clearly that the Sovereign Pontiff was dealing
with two distinct kinds of necessity. The context proves this
point beyond any possibility of doubt. The sentence quoted
two paragraphs above tells us of the well known dogma that
no one can be saved outside the Church and states that people
contumaciously separated from the Church and its visible head
cannot be saved. The text itself thus indicates quite obviously
that the Church is, according to its own doctrine, necessary
in two distinct ways. First of all, it is represented as something
necessary for all men. No one will attain to eternal salvation
unless he is in some way “ within ” this society at the moment

(j-1

The Dogma of Salvation in Ofiuial Ihonounccments

of his death. Again, it is shown as necessary in still another
manner. People who obstinately si ay separated from it and
from its visible head, the Roman Pontiff, cannot obtain eternal
salvation.
Now it is immediately evident that the first statement would
not be true at ail if the Catholic Church were necessary lot
salvation merely with the necessity of precept. A thing is said
to be necessary for salvation with the necessity of precept when
God has issued a command which cannot be disobeyed except
at the cost of the loss of friendship with Him. A tiling which
is merely the object of God’s command and no more would
be something necessary with the necessity of precept alone.
The only persons who cotdd be excluded from salvation on
this count would be the men and women who knowingly am!
deliberately disobeyed the command given by God. Persons
invincibly ignorant of that command would not be and could
not be deprived of eternal salvation because they had not
obeyed the command.
Thus, if the Church were necessary for salvation merely
with the necessity of precept, or, to put the same thing in
another way, if the Church were necessary for the attainment
of eternal salvation only in the sense that individuals con­
tumaciously separated from it could not be saved, it would
definitely not be true to say that no man could be saved out­
side the Catholic Church. Yet this is precisely tvhat the
encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, together with many
other authoritative documents of the ecclesia docens, does
assert. The language of the encyclical is most explicit:
“ neminem scilicet extra catholicam Ecclesiam posse salvari.”
The only possible way a man could logically hold that the
statement “ no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church ”
means nothing more than “ people who are contumaciously
separated from the Church cannot be saved,” is to postulate
that the only people outside of the Church are those obstin­
ately and wilfully separated from it. Such a teaching would,
of course, constitute a denial of any invincible ignorance of
the Church on the part of non-Catholics. An interpretation

The Encyclical " Quanto conjiciamur moerore”

65

of this sort would run counter to the very context of the
document it set out to explain. Yet this fanciful teaching is
necessarily and clearly implied in any attempt to persuade
people that the Catholic dogma of the Church’s necessity lor
salvation means only that persons who willully remain separ­
ated from the Church and Irom the Roman Pontiif cannot
obtain eternal salvation.
The context of the (Jjianto conjiciam ur moerore makes it
even more evident that wc cannot explain the dogma of the
Church’s necessity lor salvation as meaning merely that the
Church is necessary with the necessity of precept. The primary
point brought out in this section ol the Quanto conficiamur
moerore is the vigorous repudiation by Pope Pius IX of the
erroneous teaching “ that men living in errors and apart from
the true faith and from the Catholic unity can attain to
eternal life.” Here the Sovereign Pontiif referred to all the
people of this class. He did not restrict his statement to those
who are wilfully or contumaciously dwelling and remaining
apart from the Church and its teaching. It is only by doing
manifest violence to the text of his encyclical that his state­
ment could be interpreted as applying only to those who are
wilfully separated from the faith and from Catholic unity.
By clear implication, though obviously not with the explicit­
ness of the Suprema haec sacra, the encyclical Quanto con­
ficiamur moerore brings out the fact that the dogma of the
Catholic Church’s necessity for the attainment of eternal sal­
vation means that the Church is necessary in two ways. First,
it is necessary with the necessity of precept since God Himself
has commanded all men to dwell within this society. Then,
it is also necessary with the necessity of means since it has
been constituted by God Himself as a factor apart from which
men will not and cannot obtain the Beatific Vision.
The third and most difficult lesson of the encyclical Quanto
conficiamur moerore on the subject of the Church’s necessity
for salvation is to be found in its teaching on the possibility
of salvation for persons invincibly ignorant of the true religion.
What the encyclical has to say on this point is contained in a
single long and highly complicated sentence;

66

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

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 who, being- ready to obey God, live an honest and
upright life, can, through the working of the divine light and grace,
attain eternal life, since God, who clearly sees, inspects and knows
the minds, the intentions, the thoughts and the habits of all, will,
by reason of His supreme goodness and kindness, never allow anyone
who has not the guilt of wilful sin to be punished by eternal
sufferings.

This sentence is tremendously rich in theological implica­
tion. It can never be adequately understood other than against
the background and in the context of the Catholic theology
of grace and of sin. Unfortunately this sentence has sometimes
been explained in an inadequate manner.
In order to have an adequate and accurate analysis of this
teaching we must see clearly, first of all, what precise class
of people Pope Pius IX refers to in this sentence. They are
people who are described as carefully or diligently (sedulo)
obeying the natural law. They are prepared to obey God.
They lead an honest and upright life. And they are invincibly
ignorant of the true Catholic religion.
Now it is perfectly obvious that this description does not
apply to all the individuals who are invincibly ignorant of
the Catholic Church and of the Catholic faith. Invincible
ignorance is by no means a sacrament, communicating good­
ness of life to those who are afflicted with it. The fact that
a man is invincibly ignorant of the true religion does not in
any way guarantee that he will observe the natural law zeal­
ously, that he will be ready to obey God, or that he will
actually lead an upright life.
The invincibly ignorant people described by Pope Pius IX
in the encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, however, have
attained their spiritual position by co-operating with divine
grace. It must be clearly understood, of course, that people in
the state of sin, people who are not co-operating with God’s
grace, can perform works that are good. The Quanto con­
ficiamur moerore, however, speaks of persons who are carefully

The Encyclical " Quatito conficiamur moerore ”

67

or zealously observing the natural law and who are leading
honest and upright lives. Such individuals are not turned
away from God by sin.
Actually the persons of the kind described here in the
Quanto conficiamur moerore are most probably in the state ol
sanctifying grace, and hence they are individuals who have
true faith, hope, and charity. It is, of course, a dogma of
the Church that not all the works or acts of people in the
state of sin are actually sins against God. Apart from any
supernatural aid of divine grace a sinner is capable of per­
forming some naturally good works and of avoiding individual
mortal and venial sins. But in order to avoid mortal sin for a
long time a man needs the aid of supernatural divine grace.4
In order to observe all the precepts of the natural law over
any considerable period of time, men must most probably be
strengthened by sanctifying grace itself. They certainly could
not do this without some supernatural help of divine grace.
This is precisely the condition described in the encyclical
of Pope Pius IX. The pertinent passage of the Quanto con­
ficiamur moerore refers only to those persons invincibly ignor­
ant of the true Catholic religion who, at the same time, are
diligently observing the natural law, are prepared to obey
God, and are leading honest and upright lives. Such indi­
viduals are obviously not merely avoiding some mortal sins
and doing some good deeds. Rather they are continuing over
‘ Cf. The Salmanticenscs, Cursus theologicus (Paris and Brussels, 1878) ,
IX, tract. XIV, disp. 2, dub. 5, 223 ff.; Billuart, Cursus theologiae (Paris,
1904), III, Tractatus de gratia, diss. Ill, art. 5, 6, 343 ff. Billuart teaches
that “ fallen man cannot obey the entire natural law quoad substantiam
without gratia sanans ” (344), and that. “ fallen man in the state of
mortal sin cannot, without a special and superadded grace of God, avoid
for a long time (diu) all mortal sins against the natural law and over­
come all temptations [against the natural law] ” (348) .
The Thomistic theologians point to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas
in his Summa theologica, la-IIae, q. 109, a. 4 and 8. They appeal especially
to one statement of the magisterium, that of the sixteenth Council of
Carthage, can. 3: “ Likewise it has pleased [the Council] that whoever
shall have said that the grace of God by which a man is justified through
Jesus Christ Our Lord is good only for the remission of sins that have
already been committed, but not as a help to prevent sins being com­
mitted, should be anathema ” (Denz., 103) .

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

a long period of time to obey the precepts of die natural law
and to avoid serious offense against God. Otherwise it would
not be correct to say that they were leading honest and upright
lives.
But whether, as seems most probable, the individuals re­
ferred to in this section of the encyclical are in the state ol
grace, or they are being moved by actual grace in the direction
of justification, it is important to note that the (hianto con­
ficiamur moerore teaches that they “ can, through the working
of the divine light and grace, attain eternal life.” Obviously
there is no hint here that these people are in a position to
attain eternal life or salvalion other than ” within ’’ the
Catholic Church. There is, however, a definite implication
that they can be saved even though they remain invincibly
ignorant of the true religion.
The “ divine light ” to which the encyclical refers is, ol
course, the illumination of true supernatural faith. No one
is going to attain the Beatific Vision unless he has passed from
this life with faith, accepting as true, on the authority of God
Himself, the supernatural teaching that God has revealed.
The “ grace ” spoken of in the document is ultimately
sanctifying or justifying grace, the quality by which men are
rendered connaturally able to act on the divine level, and to
live as adopted sons of God and as brothers of Jesus Christ.
The man who possesses this quality has always, along with
it, the full panoply of the supernatural or infused virtues and
the gifts of the Holy Ghost. The supreme virtue in all of
this supernatural organism is that of charity. No one is going
to attain to the Beatific Vision unless he leaves this life in
possession of sanctifying grace, charity, and the virtues of
which charity is at once the crown and the bond of perfection.
Actual graces tend to move a sinner toward the possession
of sanctifying grace in the Church.
Now, that faith which is absolutely requisite for the attain­
ment of eternal life is definitely not a mere willingness to
believe. It is the actual acceptance, as perfectly true, of the
supernatural message which God has revealed. Specifically,

The Encyclical " Quanto i on/iciam ur moerore "

69

it is the acceptance ol the message which Goh has revealed
through Our Lord Jesus Christ, the teaching which theology
designates as divine public revelation.
'lhe divine public revelation is composed ol a certain num­
ber ol truths or statements. It is quite manifest that genuine
and supernatural divine faith can exist and does exist in indi­
viduals who have no clear and distinct awareness ol some ol
these truths, but who simply accept them as they are contained
or implied in other doctrines. But, in order that faith may
exist, there certainly must be some minimum of teachings
which are grasped distinctly by the believer and within which
the rest of the revealed message is implied or implicit. Catholic
theology holds that it is possible to have genuine divine faith
when two, or, according to some writers, four, ol these revealed
truths are believed distinctly or explicitly. There can be real
divine faith when a man believes explicitly, on lhe authority
of God revealing, the existence of God as the Head of the
supernatural order, the fact that God rewards good and
punishes evil, and the doctrines of the Blessed Trinity and
of the Incarnation.
It is definitely not a teaching of the Catholic theologians
that there can be no true act of divine and supernatural faith
apart from an explicit awareness and acceptance of the Catho­
lic religion as the true religion ami of the Catholic Church
as the true kingdom of God. On the contrary, it is the common
teaching of the theologians that true supernatural faith can
exist even where there is only an implicit belief in the Catholic
Church and in the Catholic religion. This, in the last analysis,
is the fact brought out in the Quanto conficiamur moerore,
when that document tells us that a person invincibly ignorant
of the true religion can attain eternal life through the workings
of the divine light and of grace.
Any act of genuine supernatural divine faith, however
comparatively poor it may be in explicit content, can be the
intellectual basis for an act of divine charity. True super­
natural charity is an act of the love of benevolence and friend­
ship for God known supernaturally, in the light of the Beatific

7Ü

'The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Vision in the next world, or in the light ol divine faith in
this liie. Any man who believes in God with true supernatural
divine faith can, with the help of God’s grace, love Him as He
is known in this way. And this supernatural love for God, if
it is a love of benevolence and friendship, is the act of divine
charity.
Sanctifying grace always accompanies the love of charitp
The man who dies in the state of sanctifying grace will
inevitably attain to the Beatific Vision. Hence, since it is
possible for a man to have genuine supernatural faith and
charity and the life of sanctifying grace, without having a
distinct and explicit knowledge of the true Ghurch and ol
the true religion, it is possible for this man to be saved with
only an implicit knowledge and desire of the Ghurch.
The Quanto conficiamur moerore explained that God will
“ never allow anyone who has not the guilt of wilful sin to
be punished by eternal sufferings (minime patiatur, quempiam
aeternis puniri suppliciis, qui voluntariae culpae reatum non
habeat)
In this way the Sovereign Pontiff once again focussed
attention on the fact that there is no such thing as neutrality
toward God, the Head of the supernatural order. Every
individual in the world is either in the state of grace, the
condition of supernatural friendship with God, or in the state
of sin, the state of aversion from Him. Infants who die un­
baptized pass from this life in the state of sin, but they have
no personal or actual offenses against God. They are not
being punished, properly speaking, when they are not admitted
to the Beatific Vision. They are simply being deprived of
something which does not belong to them, something which
their first earthly father, Adam, abdicated for them or re­
nounced for them when he committed his sin of disobedience
against God.
On the othei' hand, those who live to attain the use of
reason are likewise either in the state of grace or in the state
of sin. In the case of these individuals, however, it is the
teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and of his commentators that,
if they do not possess the life of sanctifying grace, they are

The Encyclical " Quanto cun/iciainti) moerore

71

in the state of mortal sin.
find this teaching, which must
be understood if we arc going to have any really theological
grasp of the dogma of the Catholic Church's necessity for the
attainment of eternal salvation, in the article of the Sumina
theologica in which St. Thomas considers and answers the
question about the possibility of a man s being in a condition
in which he would be in the state of original sin and guilty
of venial, but not mortal, sin. The translation of the body of
the article runs as follows:
I answer saying that it is impossible tiiat venial sin should be in
anyone together with original sin but without mortal sin. The
reason is that, before anyone arrives at the age of discretion, the
defect of age that prevents the use of reason excuses him from
mortal sin. Hence, for a much greater reason, it excuses him from
venial sin if he should perform some act which would be ex genere
suo a venial sin. But when he shall have begun to have the use of
reason, he is not entirely excused from the guilt of venial and
mortal sin. But the first thing which then occurs to a man to think
of is to consider about himself. And if he should order himself
to the proper end, through grace he obtains the remission of original
sin. But if, on the other hand, he does not set himself toward the
proper end, according to the capacity for discretion he has at that,
age, he will sin mortally, not doing what he is able to do (non
faciens quod in se est). And from that time on, venial sin wall not
be in him without mortal sin until after the whole has been forgiven
in him by grace.5

In answer to the third objection raised against his conclusion
St. Thomas brings out the ultimate foundation of this teach­
ing. “ The first thing,” he tells us, “ that occurs to a man
having discretion [the use of reason] is to think of that to
which he may order other things as to an end. But the end
is prior in the order of intention. Consequently, it is at this
time that a man is bound by that affirmative divine precept
which the Lord expressed in the words: ‘Turn ye to me, and
I will turn to you.’ ” 6
Back of this teaching of the Summa theologica is the realistic
and dynamic appreciation of the order of salvation which,
5 la-IIae. q. 89, a. 6.
e Ibid., ad 3. The scriptural citation is from Zac., 1: 3.

Tl

The Dogma oj Salvation in Ojjicial Jhonoinicemeiits

unfortunately, has been somewhat obscured lor some indi­
vidual teachers by a detective type ot casuistry. I he icacning
or St. Thomas Aquinas takes cognizance 01 the iact that the
adult human being in the state ot grace is not merely one
endowed by God with a certain supernatural quality, but is
actually a person who, by the force ol that quality and the
various supernatural and actual graces he has received Irom
God, is really working lor the attainment oi God s super­
natural glory. The person who has the use ol reason and who
is in possession ol the state of grace is one who lives a lile
motivated by the act of supernatural charity.
On the other hand, the individual whose lile is motivated
by a purpose other than that of divine charity is working lor
some purpose other than the one God wills to have. This
man is working against God’s orders. He is badly disposed
toward God. He is in a condition of aversion from God,
his only final and supernatural End. He is in the condition or
state of mortal sin.
Hence, any man who has the use of reason and who dies in
a state of aversion from God is turned away from God through
his own fault. If he does not attain the Beatific Vision, it
is because of a free choice he has made to work for some
ultimate purpose distinct from and opposed to the one which
God Himself has set for him. He is in a position in which
he is justly subject to punishment by God Himself.
So it is that the Quanto conficiamur moerore teaches us
that God punishes with everlasting torments only those men
who have passed from this life in a state of aversion from
Him which they have freely chosen by a sinful act.
On the other hand, the decision to work lor the end of
divine and supernatural charity is an act of love for the Triune
God. As such it is the terminus of the process of conversion.
It is the act which necessarily carries with it hatred and
detestation of sin which offends God, and thus the act in
which sin itself is remitted.
In its insistence upon the dogma of the Church’s necessitv
for salvation, the Quanto conficiamur moerore points clearly

The Encyclical " Quanto conficiamur moerore ”

73

to the truth that, in every person who is effectively moved by
God’s grace to make this act ol supernatural charity, this
decision must, by God’s own institution, involve at least a
sincere and genuine desire to enter His Church. In the ac tual
designs of the Triune God, the desire to love Him and to
please Him as He is known supernatural!)' in the light of true
divine faith is such that it must include the intention, either
explicit or implicit, ot entering and remaining within His
supernatural kingdom. Where the intention ol charity does
not exist in a man who lias the use ol reason, that man is in
a condition of voluntary aversion from the living God. And
where there is not at least an intention of entering inter and
remaining within God’s true supernatural kingdom, there can
be no true charity.
On this point the teachers of sacred theology frequently
encounter reactions and criticisms stemming, in the last analy­
sis, from an anthropomorphic concept of God. Some people
profess to see in this portion ol Catholic doctrine factors in
some way opposed to the truths of the divine justice and mercy.
The context of the Singulari quadam and the Quanto con­
ficiamur moerore make it quite clear that such attitudes existed
in the days of Pope Pius IX.
People who adopt such attitudes corne to imagine that,
according to this section of Catholic doctrine, God is repre­
sented as being in a way less generous than His creatures.
They claim to believe that, in making the Church necessary,
both with the necessity of precept and the necessity of means,
for the attainment of man’s eternal salvation, God has placed
some men in an impossible situation. They claim that the
Catholic teaching on this point represents the man who has
never heard the Gospel preached as utterly incapable of
making the decision to love God with the love of charity, and
that thus it depicts such an individual as shut off from eternal
salvation through no fault of his own.
Basically, such attitudes are founded on anthropomorphism,
the intellectual fault according to which God is represented in
rhe guise of man. The people who adopt these attitudes forget
that the movement toward conversion and salvation must

74

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

begin with God Himself rather than with His creatures. God
is the Ipsum intelligere subsistens, the ultimate Source of all
being and activity in the natural and the supernatural orders.
If a man moves toward conversion and salvation, it is because
God has moved him, and moved him with infallible efficacy
to make a genuinely free decision. If God moves one of His
creatures toward the eternal possession of Himself in the
Beatific Vision, this act of God’s will not and cannot be
frustrated.
Or, to consider the same truth from another angle, the man
who freely chooses to love Crod with the affection of charity,
to serve God and to work to please Him in all things, makes
this decision precisely because he is being moved to it by
God’s grace. God is the First Cause and the First Mover
in this free decision just as He is with reference to every other
act in all the created universe. The omnipotent, all-just, and
all-merciful God will not and cannot allow a person who freely
desires to love Him with the supernatural love of charity to
lack what he needs for the accomplishment of this desire
precisely because the desire itself is the work of His grace.
Hence there could not possibly be a situation in which a
man would really love God and order his life to God’s service
and, at the same time, he debarred from the benefit of salva­
tion by a lack of factors God has established as necessary for
the attainment of eternal salvation. Such a situation would
be nothing more or less than a frustration of God’s own
activity. God owes it to Himself to see to it that the grace
He gives is not useless and impotent.
Man can freely choose to make the love of the Triune God
the ultimate motivating force of his own life. If he makes
such a choice, he makes it freely by the power of divine grace.
On the other hand, he can also freely decide to set up some
end other than God as the final objective of his activities, or
even an end in defiance of God. It is only when he dies thus
freely turned away from God that he will deserve to be, and
will be, punished with everlasting sufferings.
Finally, if we are to grasp this portion of Catholic doctrine,
we must realize what we may call the order or the procedure

The Encyclical “ Quanto conjiciamur moerore”

75

of sacred theology. We do not and we must, not give full rem
to our imaginations and try to conjure up situations in which
we come to fancy that God has been less than just or merciful
to some individual men or classes of men in establishing the
Catholic Church as a necessary means lor the attainment of
eternal salvation. Rather we must fix our attention on the
paramount truth that, the One who has thus instituted the
Church as the social unit outside which no one can be saved
is not only just and merciful, but is subsistent Justice and
Mercy.
Thus the teaching of the Quanto conjiciamur moerore can
be summed up in the following statements:
(1) It is a very serious error to hold that men who live
apart from the true faith and Catholic unity can attain eternal
life if they die in this condition.
(2) The person who is invincibly ignorant of the true re­
ligion, and who sedulously obeys the natural law, lives an
honest and upright life, and is prepared to obey God, can
be saved through the workings of divine light and grace.
(3) Such a person has already chosen God as his ultimate
End. He has done this in an act of charity. He is in the state
of grace, and not in the state of original or mortal sin. In
this act of charity there is involved an implicit desire of
entering and remaining within God’s true supernatural king­
dom. Such a person has had his sins remitted “ within ” the
true Church of Jesus Christ.
(4) The Church is requisite for the attainment of eternal
salvation with both the necessity of means (no one at all can
be saved unless he dies either as a member of the Church or
with a genuine and sincere desire—either explicit or implicit—
of entering the Church and remaining within it) , and with
the necessity of precept (contumacious refusal to enter the
Church or to remain within it is mortally sinful) .
(5) It is the duty of Catholics to help the needy outside the
fold, and it is primarily their duty to bring these people to
the acceptance of God’s revealed truth insofar as they are
able to do so.

VI
T HE ENCYCLICAL MYSTICI CORPORIS CHRISTI
Certainly one of the most important statements of the
ecclesiastical magis Levium to have appeared during the course
of the twentieth century is the encyclical letter Mystici Corporis
Christi, issued by Pope Pius XII on June 29, 1913. In many
ways this document has given prodigious help to that portion
of sacred theology which studies the necessity of the Catholic
Church for the attainment of eternal salvation.
T hree sections of the encyclical arc particularly pertinent to
our thesis. The first of these deals directly with the nature of
membership in the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of
Jesus Christ.
Only those who have been baptized, who profess the true faith,
who have not miserably separated themselves from the fabric of the
Body and who have not, by reason of very serious crimes, been
expelled by legitimate authority, are actually to be counted as mem­
bers of the Church. The Apostle says: “ For in one Spirit were
we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether
bond or free.” Therefore, just as, in the true assembly of Christ’s
faithful, there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one
baptism, so there can be only one faith. Consequently, the one who
would refuse to hear the Church is, by the Lord’s command, to be
considered as the heathen and the publican. Hence those who are
in various ways separated [from the Church] in faith or rule cannot
be living in one Body of this kind and cannot be living by its
divine Spirit.1

In this passage the Roman Pontiff has set forth the condi­
tions or factors which, taken together, constitute a man as a
member of the true Church of Jesus Christ. They are:

(1) The possession of the baptismal character.
(2) The profession of the true faith.
(3) The profession of willingness to be subject to the
' Denz., 2286; AAS, XXXV, 202 f.

76

The Encyclical "Mystici Corporis Christi”

ii

legitimate authorities within the Church, and thus to be asso­
ciated with the society ol Our Lord’s disciples.
(4) The fact of not having been excommunica ted, in the
full meaning of the term.

This was in substance the Leaching on membership in the
true Church of Jesus Christ which was given in the writings
of Dominic Bânez.- it was developed and popularized by
St. Robert Beilarmine in his book De ecclesia militante.:'1·
Many of the very prominent and able ecclesiologists who were
contemporaries of Baimez and of St. Robert disagreed with
them rather sharply on this issue. Over the course of the
years, however, the teaching now set lorth in the Alystici
Corporis Christi came to attain the status of commonly ac­
cepted doctrine among the scholastic ecclesiologists. The state­
ment of this teaching in the encyclical of Pope Pius XI1
constituted its official acceptance and promulgation by the
Church’s magisterium as Catholic doctrine.
Thus it is the teaching of the Catholic Church itself that
all of the four factors just mentioned, and only these four
factors, are required to constitute a man as a member of
the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. Since the concept of mem­
bership in the true Church is intimately and essentially con­
nected with the thesis that there is no salvation outside the
Catholic Church, it is quite obvious that this statement in the
Mystici Corporis Christi gives us tremendously valuable aid
for the explanation of this section of sacred theology.
According to the meaning the term bears today, a member
of the true Church of God is one of the men or women who
compose the society which is today, has been since the time
of Our Lord’s death, and will be until the end of time, the
true and only supernatural kingdom of God in this world.
The central and basic truth of ecclesiology is the fact that, in
2 Cf. Bânez, Scholastica Commentaria in Secundam Secundae Angelici
Doctoris D. Thomae (Venice, 1588) , col. 153, 262.
sThc second chapter of St. Robert’s De ecclesia militante contains his
teaching bn membership in the trnc Church, embodied and crystallized
in his classical definition of the Church. The following eight chapters
are devoted to the explanation and the defense of this teaching.

78

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

the dispensation of the New Testament, the social unit within
which men may attain salvific contact with God in Jesus
Christ, the group of men in this world designated in the
Scripture as God's kingdom and as the Body of Christ, is the
organized religious society in communion with and subject
to the direction of lhe Bishop of Rome. Any organized or
real society and social unit which can be called a society in
the strict sense of the term, is composed of individual human
beings who manifest their willingness to work together for
the attainment of the purpose the society was instituted to
achieve, and to work for it under the direction of those en­
dowed with legitimate authority within this society. These
individual human beings are designated as members of' the
society. And, according to the present usage of the term, the
individual human beings who together go to make up the
religious society over which the Roman Pontiff rules as Our
Lord's Vicar on earth are called the members of the true
Church or of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ on earth.
Incidentally, it is helpful here to specify that this holds true
according to the meaning which has been attached to the
term “ membrum ecclesiae ” since the latter part of the six­
teenth century, and thus, according to the meaning which
the expression “ member of the Church ” bears today. In
earlier treatises on the Church, as, for instance in Cardinal
John de Turrecremata’s classical Summa, de ecclesia, a mem­
brum ecclesiae is a Catholic in the state of sanctifying grace.4
The term employed by such earlier theologians to designate
what we call today a member of the Church was “ pars
ecclesiae.”
The reason for this discrepancy in wording is to be found
in the fact that the earlier writers on the Church preferred
to employ the term “ member ” in line with the Scriptural
metaphor of “ the Body of Christ ” as a name of the Catholic
Church. In this context the term “ body ” (the Greek " σό>μα ”
‘ Cf. Turrecremata, Summa de ecclesia (Venice, 1561), c. 57, p. 69c In
this passage Turrecremata appeals to and cites the teaching of St. Thomas
in the Summa theologica, Illa, q. 8, a. 3, although his teaching is rather
a modification than a mere repetition of that of St. Thomas.

The Encyclical “ Mystici Corporis Christi ”

79

and the Latin “ corpus ”) was obviously understood as re­
ferring primarily to a living physical body, a body of a living
man. In what is still its primary meaning as indicated by some
dictionaries of the English language, and in what originally
appears to have been its only proper significance, the term
“ membrum ” had an anatomical connotation and served to
indicate a living part of a physical body.
In their explanations of the fact that the Church can be
described accurately under the metaphor of Christ’s Body,
the older authors of treatises de ecclesia were faced with the
question as to how people who are spiritually dead can be
within the living· Body which is the Church. They tended to
answer by distinguishing between Catholics in the state of
grace, who are in the Church as living parts of a living Body,
and those in the state of mortal sin, who are actually parts
of the Church and contained within it, but who do not share
in the supernatural life of this community. The first group,
the Catholics in the state of grace, could be designated meta­
phorically as " members ” of the Church. The second group
were parts of this society, but, according to their metaphorical
use of the term, could not be called members at all.
Later, however, “ member ” in common parlance came to
mean in a proper, and not merely in a metaphorical way,
one of the individuals composing a society. In accordance
with this tendency, and particularly through the influence of
prominent theologians like St. Robert Bellarmine and Francis
Sylvius, the Catholic schools came to abandon the practice
of restricting the meaning of the term “ membrum ecclesiae ”
to Catholics in the state of grace and to use it to signify also
what had previously been designated as “ pars ecclesiae.” 5
This change, originally made to avoid any ambiguity or con­
fusion that might have followed from the earlier use of the
term, was accepted everywhere. So it is that the “ members of
the Church,” spoken of in the encyclical Mystici Corporis
Christi, are all of the individual human beings who together
s Cf. Fenton, “Membership in the Church,” in AER, CXH, 4 (April,
J 945) , 294.

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

constitute the organized society which is, in fact, the true and
only supernatural kingdom of God on earth in the dispensa­
tion of the New Testament. When, in this book, the term
"member of the Church” is employed, it is always and every­
where used with this meaning.
Now from the very beginning of the Church, Catholic
controversy against the spokesmen for the various heresies
that have arisen has centered around tire closely connected
notions of membership in the Church and the Church's neces­
sity for salvation. As long as they made any pretense at all
of being followers of Our Lord, the defenders of the heresies
(and particularly the early Protestant leaders) never ventured
to question the fact that there exists in this world a social
unit of some kind w ithin which alone men may achieve salvific
association with Our Lord. They, like the Catholics them­
selves, wrere completely certain and insistent that there is a
true Church and that outside of that true Church there is no
salvation. On this point there was one, and only one, basicissue in dispute between the Catholics and the heretics, the
question as to exactly what the status of this supernatural
kingdom of God is in this world.
The Catholic answer to that question was the assertion of
the divinely revealed truth that, in the status of the NewTestament dispensation, the organized religious society over
which the Bishop of Rome presides is the supernatural king­
dom of God on earth. It insisted upon the fact that the social
unit headed by the Roman Pontiff is the very same reality
which is designated as the supernatural kingdom of God
or the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ in this world.
On the other hand, the various types of heretics all con­
tended in one way or another that the social unit known as
the true ecclesia or the true supernatural kingdom of God on
earth was not an organized society at all, but the sum-total of
all the good people, or all the predestined people, or all the
people of good will in the world.
The heretical thesis had all the specious and disarming
simplicity which characterizes so many errors. For one thing,

The Encyclical "Mystici Corporis Clnisti

it did away with any difficulty about the difference between
being a member of the Church and being “ within
the
Church in such a way as to be able to attain salvation in it.
If the New Testament kingdom of God on earth rs depicted
as an unorganized group, and as a social unit to which one
belongs only by reason of the possession ol spiritual gilts
undetectable with certainty by other men, then a man would
belong to it or be within it only through his possession of
those gifts. Thus, to belong to the group and to be living
the life of grace would be one and the same thing. If a
person dies in the state of grace, he will attain the Beatific
Vision. He will be saved for all eternity. Thus the heretical
position was basically and deceptively simple. According to
that teaching, persons who die in the state of grace die as
belonging to the supernatural kingdom of God on earth in
the only way anyone can possibly belong to it.
The only trouble with the heretical position was that it
was completely at variance with what Our Lord had taught
about His kingdom on earth. According to the contention of
the heretics, Our Lord would have been mistaken, for instance,
in His description of the purification of His kingdom which
is to be effected at the time of the general judgment. As they
described God’s kingdom, it never could have been purified
in any way. The only people who composed it, even in this
world, were people in the state of grace, people loving God
with the supernatural affection of divine charity.
The Catholic truth on this point is comparatively compli­
cated. On the one hand, there is the fact that the New Testa­
ment kingdom of God on earth actually is the organized society
called the Catholic Church, the religious organization within
which the Bishop of Rome is the supreme visible leader. On
the other hand, it is no less a fact that a man can die as
one of the individuals who compose the Catholic Church and
can still be lost for all eternity and that a non-member of the
Church can die as being “ within ” the Church in such a way
as to attain to the Beatific Vision.
In order to explain this set of divinely revealed truths about

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

the Church militant of the New Testament, the theologians
of the Catholic Church have traditionally employed a distinc­
tion between two different sets of factors which bind us to
Our Lord in His Mystical Body. This distinction was first
brought out in the anti-Donatist writings of St. Augustine.
It was elaborated by the first group of counter-Reformation
theologians, particularly by the Louvain waiters, James Lato­
mus and John Driedo. St. Robert Bellarmine summarized
and popularized it in his masterpiece, the book De ecclesia
militante.6 Since the time of St. Robert this distinction has
formed an integral part of traditional or scholastic ecclesiology.
The encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi utilized this distinc­
tion and thus gave it the sanction of the ecclesiastical magis­
terium.
And since, as We have said above, the social Body of Christ,
according to the intention of its Founder, ought to be something
visible, the union (conspiratio) of all its members must likewise be
outwardly manifested by the profession of the same faith, the com­
munion of the same sacraments, the sharing of the same sacrifice, and
finally by the actual observance of the same laws. Moreover, it is
entirely necessary that there should be a supreme head, visible to
all, by whom the mutually helpful labors of all may be effectively
directed to the attainment of the end proposed [for the society].
We call this visible head the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. For,
just as the Divine Redeemer sent the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth,
to take care of the invisible government of the Church, He likewise
commissioned Peter and his successors to conduct the visible govern­
ment of the Church in His Name.
But to these juridical bonds, which are sufficient in their own
line (quae iam ratione sui sufficiunt) , in such a way that they far
surpass the bonds of any other human society, even the highest,
it is necessary' to add another factor of unity by w'hich we are most
intimately joined together among ourselves and with God by reason
of the three virtues, Christian faith, hope, and charity.7

The declaration of Mystici Corporis Christi on the nature
of membership in the true Church of Jesus Christ is, in the
last analysis, a statement of the fact that these outward or
juridical bonds alone suffice to constitute a man as a member
"Cf. De ecclesia militante, c. 2.

7 A AS, XXXV, 227.

The Encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi'’

83

or a part of the organization which is actually the super­
natural kingdom of God according to the dispensation of the
New Testament. Thus in a final and intensely practical way
the encyclical insisted on the truth that the visible society we
know as the Catholic Church actually is the community called
the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, it did this precisely by­
showing that the Mystical Body is a true organized society, a
visible association whose members can be known by externally
recognizable characteristics.
Those who are at all acquainted with the popular literature
of ecclesiology prior to the issuance of the Mystici Corporis
Christi do not need to be told how badly this teaching was
needed. During the early part of our century there had
developed a tendency on the part of some Catholic writers
to attempt an over-simplified explanation of the Church’s
necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation. According
to these men, any person who is saved dies as a member of
the Catholic Church.
They insisted that many of those who are saved pass from
this life as members of non-Catholic religious communities
or without any religious affiliation at all. Yet they contended
that these same individuals were really though invisibly mem­
bers of the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Thus, according to their doctrine, the visible society which
the world knows as the Catholic Church, the religious society
in communion with and subject to the Roman Pontiff, was
not completely and exactly the same thing as the Mystical
Body of Christ, outside which no one can attain eternal salva­
tion. By direct and necessary implication their teaching led
to the inference that the true Mystical Body of Christ was
not an organization or a society at all, since they held that this
social unit could have true and genuine members who were
not in any way recognizable as members or parts of the
community directed by the Bishop of Rome.
The section of Mystici Corporis Christi that deals with the
requisites for membership in the Church ends with the warn­
ing that “ those who are in various ways separated [from the

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Mystical Body of Christ] in faith or rule cannot be living in
this Body and cannot be living by its divine Spirit.”
To live by the divine Spirit of the Mystical Body of Jesus
Christ is to live the life of sanctifying grace. Thus it is the
teaching of this encyclical that people who are separated from
the Church in belief and in rule cannot be living the life of
sanctifying grace and cannot possess the virtue of charity. Of
course this teaching implies that all the people who are living
the life of sanctifying grace and who are motivated by the
love of charity are in some way joined or united to Our
Lord’s true Church in its faith and in its government.
The Church, in its teaching about its own necessary connec­
tion with eternal salvation, has always taken cognizance of
the fact that non-members of the Mystical Body of Christ
can possess the life of sanctifying grace and can elicit the
act of charity. At the same time, however, it has always
insisted upon the fact that no person who is truly separated
from it in faith and in charity can be living the supernatural
life of sanctifying grace. Hence the theologians of the Church
have set out to explain how an individual who is not a member
of the Church could be united with it in such a way as to
possess this life of grace. Since the time of Thomas Stapleton
and St. Robert Bellarmine, scholastic ecclesiology has explained
this salvific union with the Church on the part of a non­
Catholic in terms of a sincere desire or intention on the part
of the non-member of the Church to enter this society and
to remain within it. They showed that a person who seeks
and prays for the favor of incorporation into the true super­
natural kingdom on earth cannot be said to be truly separated
from that society in its faith and in its rule.
The Catholic Church and its theologians had likewise
taught that a sincere desire to enter and to remain within the
Church could be effective for the attainment of eternal salva­
tion even when that desire was merely implicit, that is, not
based on a clear and distinct notion of the Church itself.
Previous statements of the ecclesiastical magisterium, like the
Singulari quadam and the Quanto conficiamur moerore had

The Encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi”

85-Z--

taken cognizance of this teaching, without, however, distinctly
mentioning any implicit desire. The encyclical Mystici Cor­
poris Christi, in referring explicitly to this factor, thus ad­
vanced the study of that portion of sacred theology which
deals with the true Church of Jesus Christ. It made that con­
tribution in a section in which it points to the possibility of
salvation for a person who is joined to the Church only by
an implicit but sincere and genuine desire of entering it, and,
at the same time, indicates the spiritual insecurity that char­
acterizes the position of such an individual.
As you know very well, Venerable Brethren, from the beginning
of Our Pontificate, We have entrusted even those who do not
belong to the visible structure (compagein') of the Catholic. Church
to the heavenly protection and direction, solemnly asserting that,
following the example of the Good Shepherd, We wanted nothing
more than that they should have life and have it more abundantly.
Begging the prayers of the entire Church, We wish to repeat Our
solemn declaration in this encyclical letter in which We have praised
the great and glorious Body of Christ, most affectionately inviting
each and every one of them [those who are not members of the
Church] to co-operate generously and willingly with the inward
impulses of divine grace and to take care to extricate themselves
from that condition in which they cannot be secure about their
own eternal salvation. For even though they may be directed towards
the Redeemer’s Mystical Body by a sort of unconscious desire and
intention (etiamsi inscio quodam desiderio ac voto ad mysticum
Redemptoris Corpus ordinentur) , they still lack so many and such
great heavenly helps and aids that can be enjoyed only in the
Catholic Church.8

The people whom the Holy Father describes as not being
“secure” about the affair of their own eternal salvation are
non-members of the Church who have no clear or explicit
intention of entering this society. This is evident from the
context itself. He is speaking of “ those who do not belong
to the visible structure of the Catholic Church (qui ad adspectahilem non pertinent Catholicae Ecclesiae compagem)
and
of people who may be ordered or directed to the Church by
a kind of unconscious intention and desire. Thus the condi• Ibid., 243.

86

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

tions he sets down are such as to exclude both members oi
the Church and non-Catholics who are clearly aware of the
Church and explicitly desirous of joining it.
At this point, incidentally, it is well to point out the mis­
leading and somewhat inaccurate character of the expression
“ visible body of the Catholic Church,” employed in this place
by many published translations of the encyclical. The Latin
term here rendered as “ body ” is the word “ compages."
Actually this has the sense of a joining together, a structure,
or a composition. Furthermore, in view of the eccentric
terminology which has sometimes been employed in popular
religious works treating of the Church as Our Lord’s Mystical
Body and dealing with the dogma of the Church’s necessity
for the attainment of eternal salvation, it was somewhat un­
fortunate that people should be led to believe that the encycli­
cal itself spoke of a visible body of the Catholic Church. There
was always the danger that people might be misled, through
the influence of unscientific treatises written before the publi­
cation of the Mystici Corporis Christi, to imagine that such
a terminology permitted them to hold that there could be
such a thing as an invisible body of the true Church of Jesus
Christ.
The Holy Father, in the encyclical, brings out the fact that,
from the very beginning of his pontificate, he has been praying
to God for the eternal salvation of non-Catholics, as well as
for the salvation of the members of the true Church. He has
begged God to take care of all of them, and to grant that they
might have life and have it more abundantly. In acting
thus, the Sovereign Pontiff was acting according to the com­
mission he had received from God. He is the Vicar of Christ
on earth. Our Lord, whose Vicar he is, had said, in defining
the basic aim of His own mission: “ I am come that they
may have life, and may have it more abundantly.” 9
Now, the text of the Mystici Corporis Christi makes it
quite clear that the Holy Father knows and teaches that this
supernatural life of sanctifying grace can be possessed only
» John, 10: 10.

The Encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi”

87

by those who are in some way “within” or in vital contact
with the Catholic Church. The non-members of the Church
who have no explicit intention of joining or entering it can
have the life of grace, but only if they are ordered or disposed
toward the Church by a certain unconscious intention or
desire. By the clearest sort of inference, then, the teaching of
the Roman Pontiff thus implies that non-members of the
Catholic Church who have not even an implicit desire or in­
tention to enter the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ are not in
a position in which they can possess the supernatural life of
sanctifying grace. This, of course, is the very teaching brought
out so effectively by Pope Boniface VJII in the Unam sanctam,
when he declared that there is neither salvation nor the remis­
sion of sins outside the Catholic Church.
In the Mystici Corporis Christi Pope Pius XII asserts true
Catholic doctrine by teaching that a non-member of the
Church who is within the Church only in the sense that he
has an unconscious or implicit desire of entering it as a
member can possess the supernatural life of sanctifying grace.
At the same time, however, he brings out a lesson much needed
by some of the writers of our generation when he points out
the fact that people who are within the Church only by an
unconscious desire cannot be secure about the affair of their
eternal salvation precisely because they “ still lack so many
and such great heavenly helps and aids that can be enjoyed
only in the Catholic Church.”
Here the expression “ in the Catholic Church ” obviously
means “ in the membership of the Catholic Church.” Mani­
festly the Holy Father is referring to the incomparable spiritual
advantages which a man may enjoy (“ licet frui,” in the words
of the Latin text of the encyclical) as a member of the Catholic
Church which are not and cannot be available to him if he
is “ within ” the Church only in the sense that he has an
implicit desire to enter it and to remain in it. These ad­
vantages are such as to give the man who possesses them a
kind of relative security about the affair of his eternal salva­
tion. Any person who does not enjoy membership in the true
Church cannot possibly possess such security.

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

The encyclical speaks of non-members of the Church who
have a true and sincere, though merely implicit, desire of
entering it as being in a situation “in which they cannot be
secure about their eternal salvation (in quo de sempiterna
cuiusque salute securi esse non possunt)
Many of the pub­
lished translations of the Mystici Corporis Christi employ the
expression “ in which they cannot be sure of their salvation "
in rendering this clause into English. This terminology is
both inexact and seriously misleading. In our language “ sure ”
is one of the synonyms of the word “ certain.” The Holy
Father quite definitely did not. mean to imply, in denying
that people who are within the Church only by way of an
explicit desire or intention are “ securi ” about their own
salvation, that members of the true Church may be certain
that they are predestined by God to the glory of heaven.
As a matter of fact, the Council of Trent, in its famous
Decree on Justification, has warned us solemnly on this subject.
And no one, as long as he is living in this mortal condition, ought
to be so presumptuous on the subject of the hidden mystery of
divine predestination as to decide with certainty that he is wholly
in the number of the predestined, as if it were true that the man
who has been justified were to be either unable to sin again or,
if he should sin again, ought to promise himself a repentance that
is certain. For, except by way of a special revelation, it cannot be
known whom God has chosen unto Himself.10

Sureness or certainty of eternal salvation is one thing. The
Church, through the Council of Trent, has told us that this
certainty is unavailable other than by way of a special revela­
tion from God Himself. But security in the line of eternal
salvation is something else again. This is a favor which men
may have as members of the Catholic Church, and only in
this way. Such is the teaching of Pope Pius XII in the en­
cyclical Mystici Corporis Christi.
Such security in the line of eternal salvation is, by its very
nature, available only to the man who is in a position to
enj°y and to utilize the various aids to the attainment of
10 Denz., 805.

The Encyclical " Myslici Corporis Christi"

89

eternal life which God offers to men in His supernatural
kingdom or ecclesia. Most of the content of the Myslici Corporus Christi is, as a matter ci fact, devoted to the enumera­
tion and the description of these factors which give security
in the way of salvation to the man who is privileged to be
a member of the true Church ol Jesus Christ. In the light ol
the teaching of this encyclical, the advantages which are avail­
able only to members of the Catholic Church, and which are
such as to afford a man a genuine security in the line of his
own eternal salvation, may be summed up in terms of the
outward bond of unity with Our Lord in His ecclesia. The
factors of this so-called “outward bond’’ are. as a matter ol
fact, the qualities by which alone a man is constituted a
member of the Church.
As we have seen, the Myslici Corporis Christi teaches us
that “ only those who have been baptized, who profess the
true faith, who have not miserably separated themselves from
the fabric of the Body and who have not, by reason of very seri­
ous crimes, been expelled by legitimate ecclesiastical authority,
are actually to be counted as members of the Church.” This
is quite in accord with the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine,
who defines the Church militant of the New Testament as
“ the assembly of men united in the profession of the same
Christian faith and in the communion of the same sacraments,
under the rule of legitimate pastors, and in particular, that
of the one Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff.” 11
According to the teaching of the great Doctor of the Church,
as expressed in the encyclical of Pope Pius XII, the constituents
of this outward bond of unity by which men are made members
of the true Church are: the Catholic profession of faith, the
communion or communication of the ecclesiastical sacraments,
and subjection to the rule of legitimate ecclesiastical pastors,
and ultimately that of the Bishop of Rome. The advantages
by which members of the true Church of Jesus Christ may
be secure about the matter of their salvation are then to be
found under these three headings.
11 St. Robert, loc. cit.

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The Dogma oj Salvation in Ο[/'ιααΙ Dronouncemenls

'Hie first and the most fundamental of these advantages is
that of the Catholic profession of the divine faith. The mem­
ber of the Catholic Churcn is a part of the society within
which the message Our Lord taught and preached as super­
natural divine revelation is guarded and proposed infallibly.
This message is the body of truth which men are meant to
accept with the assent of divine faith. It is the body of divine
public revelation, ft is the teaching which God has given to
man to guide and direct him toward the eternal possession
of the Beatific Vision.
The member of the Catholic Church is in a position to
receive this divine teaching in an adequate and accurate
manner. The Church of which he is a member always has
preached this message infallibly and will continue to preach
and expound it infallibly until the end of time. As a matter
of fact, the Church is the instrument of Christ the Teacher,
who lives and instructs in the Church, which is His Mystical
Body. One of the most beautiful and enlightening passages
of the Mystici Corporis Christi brings out this truth very
clearly. For, after assuring us that “ Christ enlightens His
whole Church, as numberless passages from the Sacred Scrip­
tures and the holy Fathers prove,” the encyclical tells us:
And for us today, who linger on in this earthly exile, He is still
the Author of our faith as, in our heavenly fatherland, He will be
the One who completes it. It is He who imparts the light of faith
to the faithful. It is He who enriches pastors and teachers, and
above all His Vicar on earth, with the supernatural gifts of knowl­
edge, understanding, and wisdom, so that they may loyally preserve
the treasury of the faith, defend it vigorously, and explain and
confirm it with reverence and devotion. Finally it is He who, though
unseen, presides over the Councils of the Church and guides them.12

It may, of course, be objected that the Church does not
state that each and every one of its authoritative doctrinal
pronouncements is presented precisely as an infallible propo­
sition. Catholic theology takes cognizance of the fact that
some of the doctrinal statements of the Church’s ordinary
12 AAS, XXXV, 216.

The Encyclical “ Mystici Corporis Christi"

91

teaching activity are not designated as infallible, although they
certainly demand acceptance by the faithful with a true and
inward act of assent. Does this fact, the existence within the
body of the doctrinal acts of the Catholic Church, of state­
ments which, while fully authoritative, are not covered by
a guarantee of doctrinal infallibility, detract in any way from
the advantage that accrues to the member of the Church
from the point of view of the accuracy of the presentation of
divinely revealed doctrine?
The answer is that it does not. The entire teaching activity
of the universal Church of God on earth is covered by what
the theologians, after Cardinal Franzelin, call the guarantee
of “ infallible security ” as distinct from that of “ infallible
truth.” 13 The primary objective of the Church’s responsibility
and authority in the doctrinal field is the accurate presentation
and effective defense of the teaching which the Apostles
handed over to the Church as divinely revealed. Such is the
meaning conveyed in the Vatican Council’s declaration of the
Church’s function with regard to divine faith.
But since “ without faith it is impossible to please God ” and to
attain to the fellowship of His children, it follows that justification
never comes to any man without it [the faith], nor will anyone
obtain eternal life unless he shall have persevered in it until the
end. But in order that we may satisfy our obligation of embracing
the true faith and persevering in it constantly, God, through His
only-begotten Son, has established the Church, and has equipped
it with manifest signs of the fact that He has instituted it, so that
it may be acknowledged by all as the guardian and the teacher of the
revealed word.14

Thus, according to the Vatican Council itself, one of the
basic reasons for the existence of the true Church of God in
this world is to make it possible for us to accept the divine
faith and to persevere in our belief. The Church works in
two different ways for the accomplishment of this, its doctrinal
mission. First, it issues statements and definitions to which
13 Gf. Franzelin, De divina traditione et Scripttira (Rome, 1875) , pp.
127 ff.
Denz., 1793.

92

'Îhe Dogma of Salvalion in Official Pronouncements

the faithful must assent either by divine and Catholic faith
or by what is sometimes called merely ecclesiastical faith.
Again, it issues doctrinal decisions which are authoritative,
that is, which must be received by lhe faithful with a true
and inward act of religious assent, but which the Church itself
does not propose as infallible. The first class of acts, those
which can be rejected only at the cost of heresy or doctrinal
error, have the infallibility of truth. The second class of state­
ments or decisions, which can be rejected only at the cost of
a sin of rashness against the faith or of doctrinal disobedience
to the Church, have the guarantee of the infallibility of secur­
ity. They are issued by the Church, not primarily as state­
ments of truth to be accepted for its own sake, but rather as
measures of security for the protection and the security ol
the divine faith. Our Lord, the Head of the Mystical Body,
sees to it that these decisions accomplish the objective they
were intended to attain. They really do protect the purity
and the security of the faith itself.
Thus, in the field of the profession of the true Christian
faith, the member of the Catholic Church has the indescrib­
ably important advantage of belonging to a society within
which the revealed message of God is preserved, taught, and
defended in such a way that the purity and the integrity of
the faith is always protected. The person who is not a member
of the true Church, but who is “ within ” it only by the force
of an implicit desire or intention to enter it, has no such
advantage. He has no visible and reliable immediate norm of
belief whatsoever.
If such an individual is a member of a heretical religious
organization, he is actually placed at a tremendous disadvantage along this line. The organization to which he pertains
is one which presents, as the object of its own belief, a body
of teaching quite distinct from that which God has revealed
to mankind through His divine Son. It is of course true that
the doctrinal message of the individual non-Catholic religious
organization contains some statements which actually form a
part of God’s revealed teaching. It is possible for a man to

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The Encyclical ‘ Mystici Corpons C/icisli "

93

make an act of divine faith by die acceptance of such teachings
ascertain on the authority of God who has revealed them. But
the purity and the integrity of his beiiei is always threatened
by the presence in the doctrinal assertions ol the institution
of which he is a member of statements at. variance with the con­
tent of divine public revelation. And, given the fundamental
necessity of the faith for the living ol the supernatural file
and for the attainment of eternal salvation, it is easy to see
that the man who is not a member ol the Catholic Church
is at a tremendous disadvantage when compared with a
Catholic.
What is true with regard to the profession of the Christian
faith is likewise true with reference to the guidance God gives
us through the government of the Catholic Church. The ride
or government of the Catholic Church is, in the last analysis,
a way in which Our Lord Himself guides and directs souls
to the attainment of the Beatific Vision. When the Mystici
Corporis Christi has finished speaking about the invisible direc­
tion or government God gives to men by direct action on the
individual souls, it adds: “ But we must not think that He
rules only in a hidden or extraordinary manner. On the
contrary, our Divine Redeemer also governs His Mystical
Body in a visible and normal way through His Vicar on
earth.” 15
The directions given by Our Lord Himself come not only
through the rule of the Roman Pontiff over the universal
Church militant of the New Testament, but also through the
government of the individual local Churches by the residential
Bishops to whom they have been assigned. The encyclical
states: “ What We have thus far said of the Universal Church
must be understood also of the individual Christian com­
munities, whether Oriental or Latin, which go to make up the
one Catholic Church. For they too are ruled by Jesus Christ
through the voice of their respective Bishops.” 16
The government of the universal Church by the Holy Father
has a kind of practical infallibility attached to it, in the sense
15 A AS, XXXV, 210.

J0 Ibid., 211.

94

The uogiibu oj Salualton in Ojjicud Pronouncements

that it would be quite impossible lor a man to lose Ins soul
through obedience to the legislation ol the universal Church
militant ol the New Testament.'7 As the beneficiary ol this
favor, and as one who is guided and directed by Our Lord
Himself through the government ol the Church, the Catholiclias again a tremendous advantage in the living of the spiritual
life. The religious direction which is visibly offered to a non­
member of the Catholic Church by officials ol the sect to which
he may belong is definitely not in the same class with the
visible rule and government of the true Church of Jesus Christ.
We must also realize that, in having access to the sacramental
life of the Catholic Church, the Catholic enjoys another series
of great advantages in the spiritual life. Most of those who
are not members of' the Church have not the benefit of any
sacrament at all. The minority who are validly baptized do
not usually have access to the Eucharist, or to the sacraments
of penance, confirmation, and extreme unction. And we
must not forget that, even in those dissident communities in
which a valid priesthood has been retained and in which, as
a consequence, the members may receive the Eucharist, they
are approaching the sacrament and the sacrifice under circum­
stances definitely and objectively opposed to the expressed will
of God.
It remains true that by reason of invincible ignorance, some
of the members of these dissident and schismatical communi­
ties may receive the Eucharist and take part in the Euchar­
istic sacrifice fruitfully. Nevertheless the fact remains that
this is possible only in terms of inculpable ignorance. The
Eucharist is the sacrifice and the sacrament of charity. Ob­
jectively it belongs only within the confines of God’s own
supernatural kingdom. It is definitely not at home in any
community distinct from and opposed to God’s one true
ecclesia here on earth. It is easy to see that the person who has
even the valid Eucharist in a religious community apart from
and opposed to the Catholic Church is at a great disadvantage
compared with a member of the true Church.
17 Cf. Billot, De Ecclesia Christi, 5th edition (Rome, 1927), I, 477-82.

The Encyclical ” Mystici Corporis Christi "

95

The great advantages in the possession of members of the
Catholic Church and not available to people who are in the
Church only by the force of an implicit desire or intention
to enter it can thus be summed up under the headings of
the authorized and infallible leaching of divine public revela­
tion, the guidance by Our Lord through the government of
the true Church, and the sacramental and liturgical life within
the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, λ Vi th these go the various
blessings and prayers and indulgences which, together consti­
tute a benefit beyond price for those who seek to serve God
in the true Church of His Divine Son.
The non-member of the Catholic Church is comparatively
insecure with regard to the affair of his salvation precisely
because he lacks these benefits. Even though he should be
in the state of grace and even, though he should implicitly
intend to enter the true Church, he has not the benefit of
a visible and living magisterium which can speak to him
with the voice and by the power of Our Lord Himself. He
is not the beneficiary of a visible rule in which Our Lord
Himself directs and guides His Church. And he cannot live,
until he actually enters the Church as a member, the sacra­
mental life within the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.
The encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi does more than indi­
cate the insecurity of the man who is “ within ” the true
Church only by reason of an implicit desire of entering it as
a member. It also shows that the prayer of the Roman Pontiff
and of the Church itself, expressing God’s own will on this
subject, is that such people actually become members of the
Catholic Church. The encyclical continues:
May they then enter into Catholic unity, and, united with us in
the one association (compagine') of the Body of Jesus Christ,
may they hasten to the one Head in the society of the most glorious
love. With persevering prayer to the Spirit of love and truth, with
open arms We wait for them to corne back, not to a stranger’s house,
but to the house of their own Father.
But while We want this unceasing prayer that all of those who
have wrandered away may enter as soon as possible into one fold
of Christ to rise up to God from the entire Mystical Body, yet We

9fi

'The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

declare that it is absolutely necessary that this be done freely and
without compulsion, since no one may believe unless he wills to
believe. Hence they are most certainly not genuine Catholics
(Christifideles) who, not believing, are forced to enter a Church
building, to approach the altar, and to receive the sacraments, for
the faith “without which it is impossible to please God” is an
entirely free service of intellect and will.18

iMi

This section of the Mystici Corporis Christi brings out the
sometimes forgotten fact that it is always a good and desirable
thing for a man who is “ within ” the Church only by desire
actually to become a member of the Church. Prior to the
issuance of this encyclical there was a tendency on the part
of some Catholic writers in the field of ecclcsiology to speak
as if non-membership in the Church were, under certain
circumstances at least, an acceptable thing for people who
desired membership. This erroneous teaching was generally
set forth by men who were deceived by the false œcumenicism
against which Pope Pius XII protested in the encyclical
Humani generis. Men of this type followed the teachings and
adopted the attitudes of unbelievers who always rejected indi­
vidual conversions to the Church in favor of some illusory
corporate reunion.
In point of fact, however, as the encyclical shows so well,
the status of a person who desires to enter the Church, even
when that desire is merely implicit, is objectively a condition
of strain or tension. The force of divine charity impels a man
to will that he actually become and remain a part or member
of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. As long as he remains
without that membership, his desire is thus frustrated. In
itself, the visible Catholic Church is the kingdom and the city
and the household of God Himself. It is the one proper
place for those who are the adopted children of God through
the life of sanctifying grace. The powder of God’s command
and the force of their own desire push the non-members of
the Catholic Church who enjoy the life of sanctifying grace
toward union with the Catholic Church and with Our Lord
,s AAS, XXXV, 243.

The Encyclical “ Mystici Corporis Christi”

97

by means of the external bonds of unity, the factors which
constitute a man as a member of the true and only kingdom of
God on earth.
By far the greatest contribution made in the Mystici Cor­
poris Christi to the proper understanding of the dogma that
no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church is made
indirectly, in the basic teaching of the encyclical to the effect
that the visible Roman Catholic Church is actually definable
as the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. Prior to the issuance of
the Mystici Corporis Christi, and, unfortunately, even for a
short time after it had appeared, there was a tendency on the
part of some Catholic popular writers on religious subjects to
depict the visible Catholic Church as in some way distinct
from and less than the genuine “ Body of Christ ” spoken
of in the epistles of St. Paul. Some of these writers described
the Mystical Body as a kind of “ invisible Church,” and even
spoke of affection for the visible Church as something which
could detract from and be opposed to love for the true
Mystical Body. There were others who, in various ways,
refused to the visible Catholic Church the prerogatives and
the dignity of the Kingdom of God or the City of God.
In every such case the dogma of the necessity of the true
and visible Church of Jesus Christ for the attainment of eternal
salvation was obviously and necessarily misinterpreted. In the
minds of the men who wrote in this manner, the only social
unit which could be described as genuinely necessary for the
attainment of man’s eternal salvation was represented as some­
thing in some way distinct from the society which men know
as the Catholic Church. As Catholics, these writers, for the
most part, were unwilling to reject the statement that there
is no salvation outside the Church. Yet, in line with their
position about the existence of an “ invisible Church,” they
tended to explain the dogma away and to reduce it to an
empty or vain formula.
The encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi rendered such teach­
ing inexcusable after its appearance when it boldly stated that:
“ If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

Christ—which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman
Church—we shall find no expression more noble, more sublime,
or more divine, than the phrase which calls it ‘ the Mystical
Body of Jesus Christ.’ ” 19
In this statement Pope Pius Xll repudiated the one great
and basic obstacle to a proper acceptance and understanding
of the teaching that there is no salvation to be attained out­
side the visible Catholic Church. The great truth he enuntiated had been contradicted by men who had done, on the
ecclesiological level, something like what the heretics of the
early Church had done with regard to Our Lord Himself.
In those ancient times, the heretics were not at all averse to
admitting the existence of God and even the existence of a
consubstantial Word of God. They refused, however, to see
in a Man who had hung bleeding and dishonored on the
Cross of Calvary the Person who is the true and natural Son
of God.
So it was that in later years there were individuals who
were perfectly willing to admit the existence of a Mystical
Body of Jesus Christ. They were definitely not willing, how­
ever, to admit that the visible Church in which they came
in daily contact, the religious society with bad members inter­
mingled among the good, could actually be this Mystical
Body of the Redeemer. Thus, in the light of this fundamental
misconception, they could never really appreciate the fact
that, in the actual designs of God’s providence, this visible
society is genuinely necessary for the attainment of man’s
eternal salvation.
The following points are brought out in the Mystici
Corporis Christi·.
(1) The conditions for being “ within ” the Church in such
a way as to be able to attain salvation in it are not objectively
and completely identical with the conditions requisite for
membership in this society.
(2) It is possible for a man to attain salvation “ within ”
the Church if he has merely an implicit desire to be in it.
™ Ibid., 199.

Ί he Encyclical ‘'Mystici Corporis Christi”

99

(3) The condition of a man who is “ within ” the Church
merely by desire is strikingly inferior to that of a man who
is actually a member of the true Church.
(4) It is the duty of ah members of tire Church to work and
to pray for the conversion to the Church of all who are not
members.
(5) The visible Roman Catholic Church is identical with
the social unit designated as the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

VII
THE HOLY OFFICE LETTER SUPREMA HAEC SACRA

By far die most complete and explicit authoritative state­
ment of the ecclesiastical magisterium on the subject of the
Church's necessity for salvation is to be found in the letter
sent by the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office
to His Excellency Archbishop Cushing of Boston. The letter
was written as a result of the trouble occasioned by the St.
Benedict Center group in Cambridge. The Suprema haec
sacra was issued on August 8, 1949, but it was not published
in full until the fall of 1952. The encyclical letter Humani
generis was dated August 12, 1950. Thus, while actually com­
posed after the Holy Office letter, it was published two years
before the letter.
The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office asserts, in the
letter, that it “ is convinced that the unfortunate controversy
[which occasioned the action of the Holy Office] arose from
the fact that the axiom ‘ outside the Church there is no salva­
tion ’ was not correctly understood and weighed, and that the
same controversy was rendered more bitter by serious disturb­
ance of discipline arising from the fact that some of the
associates of the institutions mentioned above [St. Benedict
Center and Boston College] refused reverence and obedience
to legitimate authorities.”
The doctrinal portion of the letter follows.
Accordingly the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Cardinals of
this Supreme Congregation, in a plenary session, held on Wednesday,
July 27, 1949, decreed, and the August Pontiff in an audience on
the following Thursday, July 28, 1949, deigned to give his approval,
that the following explanations pertinent to the doctrine, and also
that invitations and exhortations relevant to discipline, be given.
We are bound by divine and Catholic faith to believe all those
things which are contained in the word of God, whether it be
Scripture or Tradition, and are proposed by the Church to be
believed as divinely revealed, not only through solemn judgment

100

The Holy Office Letter " Suprema ha.cc sacra "

101

but also through the ordinary and universal teaching office (magis­
terium) .

Now, among those things which the Church has always preached
and will never cease to preach there is also contained that infallible
statement by which we are taught that there is no salvation outside
the Church.
However, this dogma must be understood in the sense in which
the Church itself understands it. For Our Saviour gave the things
that are contained in the deposit of faith to be explained by the
ecclesiastical magisterium and not by private judgments.
Now, in the first place, the Church teaches us that in this matter
we are dealing with a most strict precept of Jesus Christ. For He
explicitly ordered His apostles to teach all nations to observe all
things whatsoever He Himself had commanded.
Now, not the least important among the commandments of Christ
is that one by which we arc commanded to be incorporated by
baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, and
to remain united to Christ and to His Vicar, through whom He
Himself governs the Church on earth in a visible manner.
Therefore, no one will be saved who, knowing the Church to
have been divinely established by Christ, nevertheless refuses to
submit to the Church or withholds obedience from the Roman
Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth.
The Saviour not only gave the precept that ail nations should
enter the Church, but He also established the Church as a means
of salvation, without which no one may be able to enter the kingdom
of eternal glory.
In His infinite mercy God has willed that the effects, necessary for
one to be saved, of those helps to salvation which are directed towards
man’s final end, not by intrinsic necessity, but only by divine
institution, can also be obtained in certain circumstances when
these helps are used only in intention or desire (ubi voto solummodo
vel desiderio adhibeantur) . This we see clearly stated in the Sacred
Council of Trent, both with reference to the sacrament of regenera­
tion and with reference to the sacrament of penance.
In its own way, the same thing must be said about the Church,
insofar as the Church itself is a general help to salvation. There­
fore, in order that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always
required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a
member, but it is required that at least he be united to it. by
intention and desire.
However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in
catechumens; but, when a person is involved in invincible ignorance,
God accepts also an implicit intention (votum) which is so called

102

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

because it is included in that good disposition of lhe soul whereby
a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.
These things are clearly taught in that dogmatic letter which was
issued by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, on June 29, 1943,
“ On the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.” For in this letter the
Sovereign Pontiff clearly distinguishes between those who are really
(in re) incorporated into the Church as members and those who
are joined to it only in intention (in voto) .
Discussing the members of w'liom the Mystical Body is composed
here on earth, the same August Pontiff says: “ Only those who have
received the laver of regeneration, who profess the true faith, who
have not miserably separated themselves from the fabric of the Body
oi' been expelled by legitimate authority by reason of very serious
offences, are actually to be counted as members of the Church.”
Towards the end of the same encyclical letter, when most affec­
tionately inviting to unity those who do not belong to the body
of the Catholic Church (qui ad Ecclesiae Catholicae compagem non
pertinent), he mentions those who are “ordered to the Redeemer’s
Mystical Body by a sort of unconscious desire and intention,” and
these he by no means excludes from eternal salvation, but, on the
contrary, asserts that they are in a condition in which “ they cannot
be secure about their own eternal salvation,” since “ they still lack
so many and such great heavenly helps to salvation that can be
enjoyed only in the Catholic Church.”
With these wise words he reproves both those who exclude from
eternal salvation all those united to the Church only by implicit
desire and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally
(aequaliter) in every religion.
Nor must we think that any kind of intention of entering the
Church is sufficient in order that one may be saved. It is requisite
that the intention by which one is ordered to the Church should
be informed by perfect charity; and no explicit intention can pro­
duce its effect unless the man have supernatural faith: “ For he
who comes to God must believe that God exists and is a rewarder
of those who seek Him.” The Council of Trent declares: “Faith
is the beginning of man’s salvation, the foundation and root of all
justification, without which it is impossible to please God and attain
to the fellowship of His children.” 1

The rest of the letter contains the directions and exhorta­
tions spoken of in the first paragraph quoted above. They
1 The original Latin text and the official English translation of the
Suprema haec sacra appeared in AER, CXXVII, 4 (Oct., 1952) , 307-15.
The part of the translation quoted above is on pp. 312-14.

The Holy Office Letter " Supicnia haec sacra"

103

have no immediate bearing on the doctrine of the necessity
of the Church lor the attainment of eternal salvation.
This letter, known as tne Suprema haec sucra, from the first
three words ol the Latin text, is ol unique importance lor
the study of this section ol sacred theology. It is an instruction
of the Holy Office, sent out with the approval and at the
bidding of the Sovereign Pontiff himsell. As such, it is an
authoritative, though obviously not an infallible, document.
That is to say, the leachings contained in the Suprema haec
sacra are not to be accepted as infallibly true on the authority
of this particular document. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that much of its teaching—indeed, what we may call the sub­
stance of its teaching—is material which has appeared in
previous documents emanating from the Sovereign Pontiff
himself and from Oecumenical Councils of the Catholic
Church.
The great importance of the Suprema haec sacra is based on
the fact that this letter sets forth in full explicitness some
distinctions and explanations that had been clearly implied
and forcefully taught in previous authoritative documents of
the teaching Church, but which had never before been set
forth in these authoritative pronouncements as explicitly as
in the writings of the traditional Catholic theologians. Among
these teachings are: (.1) the statement that the Catholic
Church is necessary for salvation with the necessity of means
and with the necessity of precept; (2) the fact that when we
describe an individual who is convinced that the Catholic
Church has truly been established by Our Lord, and who
still obdurately refuses to enter the Church, as being in a
condition in which he cannot attain his eternal salvation,
we are speaking of the Church’s necessity of precept rather
than of its necessity of means; (3) the explicit distinction
between an explicit and an implicit will to enter the Church;
(4) the outright assertion that a person who has merely an
implicit will to enter the Church can be saved; and (5) the
fact that no will or desire of entering the Church can be
effective for the attainment of eternal salvation unless it is

10-1

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

enlightened by true supernatural faith and animated by perfect
charity.
Other teachings of the Suprema haec sacra, such as its
insistence upon the fact that the doctrine of no salvation out­
side the true Church is a genuine dogma of the Catholic faith,
had been stated explicitly many times in previous pronounce­
ments of the ecclesiastical magisterium. Each one of the
paragraphs cited above contains invaluable information about
what the Church itself really understands and teaches about
the dogma of its own necessity for the attainment of eternal
salvation. It will be helpful to consider each one of them
individually.
(1) The first paragraph we have cited tells of the authorita­
tive character of the letter itself. The Cardinals of the
Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office decreed that
these explanations be given, and the Holy Father approved
their decision. We are dealing, then, with an authoritative
document. It would be wrong for any teacher of Catholic
doctrine to ignore or to contradict the teachings contained in
this Holy Office letter.
(2) The next paragraph repeats almost verbatim the state­
ment of the Vatican Council in the third chapter of its
dogmatic constitution Dei Filius, to the effect that “ we are
bound by divine and Catholic faith to believe all those things
which are contained in the word of God, whether it be Scrip­
ture or Tradition, and are proposed by the Church to be
believed as divinely revealed, not only through solemn judg­
ment but also through the ordinary and universal teaching
office.” It is interesting to see, however, that where the Dei
Filius uses the expression “ either by solemn judgment or
by the ordinary and universal magisterium,” the Suprema haec
sacra says “ not only by solemn judgment but also by the
ordinary and universal magisterium.” Its use of the “ non
tantum . . . sed etiam,” instead of the “ sive . . . sive,” manifests
its conviction that, in dealing with the explanation of the
doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church,
it is dealing with a matter which had hitherto been set forth
mostly in the ordinary magisterium of the Church.

The Holy Office Leiter “ Suprema haec sacra”

105

(3) The previous paragraph had characterized the teaching
that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church as a
doctrine “ which the Church has always preached and will
never cease to preach ” and as an “ infallible statement.” This
one states clearly that it is a dogma—in other words, one of
the teachings which the Church finds in Scripture or in divine
apostolic tradition, and which, by either solemn judgment or
in its ordinary and universal teaching activity, it presents to
the people as something they must believe as a part of divine
public revelation. The Suprema haec sacra, then, leaves no
room for any opinion that this teaching might be something
merely connected with the deposit of divine revelation. This
truth is a part of the supernatural message communicated by
God through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
The Holy Office letter then proceeds to state explicitly and
emphatically that the dogma means exactly and only what
the Church understands and teaches it to mean. In other
words, the people who write to the effect that the viewpoints
of men have widened in the course of recent history, and that
thus we must seek out some new interpretation of the axiom
that there is no salvation outside the Church are quite mis­
taken in their fundamental approach to the problem. Chang­
ing cultural attitudes have nothing whatsoever to do with the
accurate and acceptable statement of what is meant by the
teaching that there is no salvation outside the Church. Our
Lord has not given this truth to men as something to be
interpreted and explained freely and more or less generously
by private teachers. It is definitely not something to be inter­
preted or explained in such a way as to make the Church
appear more modern or up-to-date. What the people should
be taught about this truth is its real and accurate meaning.
And the only agency empowered and commissioned to per­
form this work of interpretation and teaching is the apostolic
college, the Roman Pontiff and the Catholic Bishops associated
with him to form the doctrinal and jurisdictional hierarchy
of the true Church of the New Testament.
In this matter it will be helpful to refer to the section of

106

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

the allocution Sz diligis, delivered by Pope Pius XII to the
members ol the hierarchy who were gathered in Rome for
the ceremony of the canonization of St. Pius X.
Christ Our Lord entrusted the truth which He had brought from
heaven to the Apostles and, through them, to their successors. He
sent His Apostles, as He had been sent by the Father, to teach all
nations everything they had heard from Him. The Apostles are,
therefore, by divine right the true doctors and teachers of the
Church. Besides the lawful successors of the Apostles—namely, the
Roman Pontiff for the universal Church and the Bishops for the
faithful entrusted to their care—there are no other teachers divinely
constituted in the Church of Christ. But both the Bishops and,
first of all, the Supreme Teacher and Vicar of Christ on earth, may
associate others with themselves in their work of teacher, and use
their advice; they delegate to them the faculty to teach, either by
special grant, or by conferring an office to which the faculty is
attached. Those who are so called teach, not in their own name,
nor by reason of their theological knowledge, but by reason of the
mandate which they have received from the lawful teaching authority.
Their faculty always remains subject to that authority, nor is it ever
exercised in its own right or independently.2

Over the course of the last few years, particularly, there
have been some clever attempts to interpret the dogma of the
Church’s necessity for salvation. The only standard by which
these attempts may properly be evaluated is that of the teach­
ing of the ecclesiastical magisterium itself. It is this teaching
which the Suprema haec sacra now begins to present.
An examination of the text of the Suprema haec sacra will
show us from the very outset that the Holy Office did not
intend to set forth anything like an exhaustive explanation
of the dogma in its letter. Thus, for example, the document
does not go into the nature of the Church or the nature of
salvation itself. All that the Cardinals of the Congregation
wished to do was to present a correct resolution of the par­
ticular point at issue in the controversy which occasioned the
writing of the Suprema haec sacra.
(4) Thus the letter brings out the fact that the Catholic
Church can be said to be necessary for salvation, in one way,
2 A ER, CXXXI, 2 (Aug., 1954), 133 f.

The Holy Ojjice Letter “ Suprema haec sacra "

107

because it is something which Our Lord has commanded, or
given a precept, that all men should enter. It is His explicit
order, given to us through His apostles, that His precepts
should all be observed. Thus a man who teaches that nonmembers of the true Church should be let alone because,
in his opinion, they are already in a position that is satis­
factory with reference to Our Lord, is violating Our Lord's
precept directly.
(5) The next paragraph is an authoritative statement to
the effect that we have a delinite and highly important precept
from Our Lord “ to be incorporated by baptism into the
Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, atid to remain
united to Christ and to His Vicar, through whom He Himself
governs the Church on earth in a visible manner.” It is highly
important to understand how this command is contained in
the sources of divine public revelation.
St. Matthew’s Gospel shows how Our Lord commanded His
apostles to teach His message and to administer His sacrament
of baptism.
And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: 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 tilings whatsoever I have commanded
you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation
of the world.3

The same idea is brought out in the last chapter of the
Gospel according to St. Mark.
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.4

Baptism is, of course, the sacrament of entrance into the
Church. Such is the force of the baptismal character that,
unless it be impeded by public heresy or apostasy, schism, or
s Matt28: 18-20.

4 Mark, 16: 15-16.

108
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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

the lull measure of excommunication, it renders the person
who possesses it a member of the true Church of Jesus Christ
on earth. In issuing the command that His followers administer the sacrament of baptism, Our Lord was, of course,
clearly imposing upon those who heard their preaching the
obligation to receive this sacrament of regeneration.
The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles shows that
this was the way in which the Apostles themselves understood
Our Lord’s orders. When, at the end of the sermon by St.
Peter on the first Christian Pentecost, his hearers asked the
Prince of the Apostles what they should do, he ordered them
to do penance and to be baptized.
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5 Acts, 2: 37-38.

The Holy Office Letter “ Suprema haec sacra ”

109

ultimate meaning of the dogma of the necessity of the Church
for salvation.
(7) The Holy Office letter is the first authoritative docu­
ment to bring out in lull explicitness the teaching that the
Church is necessary for salvation both with the necessity of
precept and with the necessity of means. A thing is said to
be necessary lor salvation with the necessity of precept when
it has been commanded in such a way that, if a person dis­
obeys this order, he is guilty of mortal sin. A means necessary
lor salvation, on the other hand, is something which a man
must have if he is to attain eternal salvation. This necessity
bolds even where there is no obduratciiess on the part of
the individual who does not possess the means. The Catholic
Church, the true kingdom of God of the New Testament, is,
according to the text of the Suprema, haec sacra, a reality
“ without which no one may be able to enter the kingdom of
eternal glory.” This, and not the statement about persons
obstinately refusing to enter the Church when they know that
it is the true Church, is the explanation of the Church’s
necessity of means.
(8) This paragraph brings out two truths about the Church
as a necessary means to the attainment of eternal salvation.
First, there is the fact that the Church is a means necessary
for salvation only by divine institution and not by intrinsic
necessity. Second is the fact that means necessary for salvation
by divine institution can produce their effects, as the document
says, “ in certain cases ” when there is only a will or desire
to possess these things.
(8a) When the document classifies the Catholic Church as
a means of salvation which is necessary only by divine insti­
tution and not by an intrinsic necessity, it likewise mentions
two other realities which are also requisite for the attainment
of salvation in this particular way. These are the sacraments
of baptism and of penance. Both of these are necessary for
salvation, and are necessary as means established by God for
the attainment of this end.
In other words, there is no reason apart from the positive

110

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

will of God why a washing with water perlormed while the
person administering the sacrament is uttering a definite
formula should be necessary lor the attainment ol the Beatific
Vision. There is no reason apart from the positive will ol
God why a man who is guilty ol mortal sin committed aller
baptism cannot have this sin forgiven except by means ol a
judicial absolution pronounced by an authorized priest.
Neither the baptism nor the sacrament of penance is by
its nature part of the supernatural life itself in the way that
sanctifying grace and charity are.
Similarly, it is by the positive will of God that men must be
within an organized society if they are to attain the forgiveness
of their sins or final blessedness. Faith, hope, and charity are
actually parts of the supernatural life. It is impossible to have
the life of grace in this world, and thus, of course, impossible to
pass from this world with the life of grace, apart from faith,
hope and charity. The life of the Beatific A^ision in heaven
necessarily involves charity.
This must be distinctly understood: in any event the men
and women who accept the supernatural teaching of God
with the act of divine faith, and who love God with the super­
natural love of friendship which we call charity, would belong
to the kingdom of God on earth. These people would be,
in any event, the individuals who subjected themselves to
God’s supernatural law, and thus would belong to His
supernatural kingdom in this world. But, as a matter of fact,
God has willed that His supernatural kingdom should be a
fully organized society. In His mercy He has decreed that
there is no other social unit which can in any way properly
be called His kingdom, or His ecclesia. If a man is going to
belong to God’s supernatural kingdom on earth at all, he
is thus going to belong in some way to the visible Catholic
Church, the religious society over which the Bishop of Rome
presides as the Vicar of Jesus Christ.
(8b) The Suprema haec sacra then brings out the fact that,
in the merciful designs of God’s providence, such realities
as the Church itself and the sacraments of baptism and penance

The Holy Office Leiter “Suprema haec sacra”

ill

can, under certain circumstances, bring about the effects which
they are meant to produce as means necessary for the attain­
ment of eternal salvation when a man possesses them only in
the sense that he desires or intends or wills to have or to use
them. Obviously the text cannot be understood unless we
realize what the “ certain circumstances ” mentioned in the
text really are.
Basic among these circumstances is the genuine impossibility
of receiving the sacraments of baptism or of penance or ol
entering the Church as a member. It is quite clear that if
it is possible for a man to be baptized, to go to confession and
to receive sacramental absolution, or really to become a mem­
ber of the true Church, the man for whom this is possible will
not attain to eternal salvation unless he actually avails himself
of these means. But, on the other hand, should the actual
employment of these means be genuinely impossible, then the
man can attain to eternal life by a will or desire to employ
them.
Here, of course, we must distinguish sedulously between the
order of intention and the order of mere velleity. What is
required here is an effective desire, an effective act of the
will, as distinct from a mere complacency or approval. A
non-member of the Church can be saved if he genuinely
wants or desires to enter the Church. With that genuine and
active desire or intention, he will really become a member of
the Church if this is at all possible. If it is not possible, then
the force of his intention or desire will bring him “ within ”
the Church in such a way that he can attain eternal salvation
in this company. An inherently ineffective act of the will,
a mere velleity, will definitely not suffice for the attainment
of eternal salvation.
As the text of the Suprema haec sacra reminds us toward
the end of its doctrinal section, the desire or intention of using
the means established by God can be effective for the attain­
ment of eternal salvation only when this act of the will is
enlightened by true supernatural divine faith and animated
by genuine charity. This, of course, holds true, not only for

112

The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

the intention of entering the Church, but also for the desire
of the sacraments of baptism and penance—which desire may
suflice for the forgiveness of sin when the sacraments them­
selves are not available.
(9) The expression “ a general help to salvation (generate
. . . auxilium salutis) ” applied to the Catholic Church in the
text of the Holy Office letter describes the Church as something
which, by God’s own merciful decree, is a means of salvation
meant for and necessary for all men without exception. It is
definitely not necessary for salvation only to those who have
heard of it. It is not necessary merely for those who seek to
Jive in the higher levels of the spiritual life. It is a means
and a help meant for and requisite for all men without
exception.
Thus, in the words of the Holy Office document, “ in order
that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required
that he be incorporated into the Church actually (reapse)
as a member, but it is required that he be united to it at least
by intention and desire (voto et desiderio) .
(10) Previous paragraphs of the Holy Office letter had
brought out the validity of two distinctions, long contained
in the traditional works of Catholic theology, but never before
stated so explicitly in an authoritative document of the Holy
See. The first was the distinction between the necessity of
means and the necessity of precept. The second was tire dis­
tinction of belonging to the Church in re and in voto. This
second distinction is used, in theology and in the text of the
Suprema haec sacra, in explaining how the Church is a means
genuinely necessary for all men for the attainment of eternal
salvation.
The present paragraph explains the distinction between the
explicit and the implicit votum of entering the true Church,
and teaches that even the implicit votum can be effective for
the attainment of eternal life. It teaches that “ this desire
[of entering the true Church as a member] need not always
be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but, when a person is
involved in invincible ignorance, God accepts also an implicit

The Holy Office Letter “Suprema haec sacrii

113

intention, which is so called because it is included in that
good disposition of the soul whereby a person wishes his will
to be conformed to the will of God.”
It is to be noted here that, according to the language of the
Suprema haec sacra and of all the other authoritative docu
ments which have dealt with this matter, the desire ol entering
the Church does not give a man anything like “ a real though
incomplete membership in the Church.” 6 Ί hose who, like
Father St. John, speak in this way, simply fail to take the
meaning of the expressions in the Church’s documents into
consideration. A man who intends or wills to enter the Church
is really not a member of it in any way whatsoever. If he
were already a member, his desire would be absurd.
The Suprema haec sacra describes an explicit desire of
entering the Church as something found in catechumens. The
catechumen is the adult preparing to enter the true Church
of Jesus Christ through the reception of the sacrament of
baptism. His desire is said to be explicit because he has a
clear and distinct (though not necessarily in any way adequate)
knowledge of the society he seeks to enter. In other words,
he is a man who knows that the Catholic Church is the true
Church of Jesus Christ and who wants to become a member
of that Church through the reception of baptism.
On the contrary, a man has only an implicit desire when he
wants a thing but does not realize definitely what it is that
he desires. The word “implicit” has the sense of something
“ folded in.” When a man desires an objective which cannot
be obtained without the attainment of something else, and
does not have any clear and distinct awareness of this other
thing, he is said to have an implicit desire of this latter.
The Suprema haec sacra states explicitly that it is possible
for a man to be saved if he has only an implicit desire of
entering the Catholic Church. Thus it teaches that a man
can attain the Beatific Vision without having had any definite
a Ct. Henry St. John, Ο. P., Essays in Christian Unity: 1928-195-f (West­
minster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1955) , p. 139.

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

and explicit knowledge of the Catholic Church during the
course of his lifetime in this world.
(11) In this paragraph the Holy Office document cites the
passage in the encyclical Mystici Corporis dealing with mem­
bership in the Church, the genuine supernatural kingdom ol
God of the New Testament. In this context it is interesting
to note that the text of the /Mystici Corporis does not imply
that there is some other sort of real though incomplete mem­
bership possessed by persons who do not have the qualifica­
tions mentioned here. The encyclical is teaching about those
who actually (reapse) are to be counted as members of the
Church. It insists that only these people who have the quali­
fications mentioned are to be enumerated reapse as members.
All others, then, simply are not members.
Furthermore, this does not by any means imply that the
word “ reapse " in the text of the Mystici Corporis is a mere
redundancy. If this were so, words like “ genuinely ” and
“ truly ” would not be part of any real vocabulary. Moreover,
the word “ reapse ” as it is used here connects this teaching
of Pope Pius XII with the traditional doctrine of the Catholic
theologians who distinguished between belonging to the
Church “ in re,” that is, as a member, and belonging to it
“ in voto,” that is, by a desire or intention to enter it as a
member.
(12) The following paragraph shows that the Mystici
Corporis had taught very clearly that there is a possibility
of salvation for those non-members of the Catholic Church
who desire to enter this company with a desire that is merely
implicit. In the encyclical, the Holy Father had stated that
these people could not be secure about their own eternal salva­
tion, and had given reasons to justify this assertion. Obviously,
then, he had unmistakably implied that there really is a
possibility of eternal salvation for these individuals.
(13) The Suprema haec sacra shows that the text of the
Mystici Corporis, particularly those sections of the encyclical
mentioned in the Holy Office letter, reproves two mutually op­
posed errors. The first error condemned in the Mystici Corporis

The Holy Office Letter "Suprema haec sacra’’

j

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I
I

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115

is that according to which a man who has merely an implicit
desire of entering the Catholic Church is in a situation in
which it is impossible for him to attain to his eternal salvation.
The second error proscribed is that which holds that men
can be saved equally in every religion. Those who taught
either error after the publication of Mystici Corporis were
guilty of ignoring or defying the authority of the Sovereign
Pontiff, teaching in his ordinary doctrinal activity or magis­
terium.
Most of the translations of the Suprema haec sacra render
“ aequaliter ” into “ equally well.” I do not consider these
two expressions exactly equivalent in the context of the Holy
Office letter. The Mystici Corporis teaches by clear implication
and the Suprema haec sacra teaches quite explicitly that men
may be saved only " within ” the Catholic Church. They can
be “ within ” this society so as to obtain salvation in it either
as members of this organization or as people who seek truly,
even if only implicitly, to join it. There is no other religion
“ within ” which men may attain the Beatific Vision. It would
be a gross understatement to say that men cannot be saved
“ equally well ” in every religion. The only one within which
they can attain their ultimate supernatural end is that of the
Catholic Church. Thus, it would seem that the meaning of
the Latin “ aequaliter ” in its context in the Holy Office
letter, is best expressed in English by the term “ equally,”
rather than by “ equally well.”
(14) In some ways this last paragraph in the doctrinal
section of the letter Suprema haec sacra contains its most
important contribution to the section of sacred theology that
deals with the Church's necessity for the attainment of eternal
salvation. Here the Holy Office insists that it is a mistake to
think “ that any kind of intention of entering the Church is
sufficient in order that one may be saved.” It states that no
desire of entering the Church can be effective for the attainment of eternal salvation unless it be animated or informed
by perfect charity and enlightened by supernatural faith.
The expression “ perfect charity,” here in the context of

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

the Suprema haec sacra, means a genuine and supernatural
love of friendship for God based on the awareness of divine
faith. It is, in other words, a love of God known as He has
told us about Himself in the content of divine public revela­
tion. In the love of charity, as distinct from the merely natural
love of God which definitely does not suffice for the attainment
of eternal salvation, there is a love of friendship for God
known, at least in a confused way, in the Trinity of His
Persons.
This charity is distinct from the supernatural affection ol
hope, in which man loves the Triune God as man's own
ultimate Good. It is distinct from the initial love of which
the Council of Trent speaks, in that this charity is a love ol
benevolence and of friendship, founded on a common posses­
sion. This common good is the divine nature itself, which
is the Godhead, and which is shared by the person who lives
the life of sanctifying grace.
The Holy Office letter also teaches that “ no implicit inten­
tion can produce its effect [of eternal salvation] unless the
man has supernatural faith.” Here it is imperative to remem­
ber that the document speaks of that faith which is defined
by the Vatican Council as “ the supernatural virtue by which,
with the impulse and aid of God’s grace, we believe the things
He has revealed to be true, not because of their intrinsic
truth, seen in the natural light of reason, but because of the
authority of God Himself revealing, who can neither be
deceived nor deceive.” This is the faith which the same
Vatican Council described as " the beginning of human salva­
tion.”
In the text of the Suprema haec sacra we are reminded that
the need for this supernatural faith holds true even where
there is merely an implicit desire to enter the Church. Tn
other words, it is possible to have a man attain salvation
when he has no clear-cut notion of the Church, and desires
to enter it only insofar as he wills to do all the things God
wills that he should do. The desire to enter the Church can
be implicit in the desire to please God and to achieve salva-

The Holy Office Letter “Suprema haec sacra ”

117

tion. But, at the same time, there must be some explicit
supernatural truth, actually revealed by God and actually
accepted as true on the authority ol. God revealing, on the
part of every man who attains eternal salvation.
When the desire is merely implicit, then a man's faith in
the divinely revealed truths about the Church is likewise
implicit. The point made here by the Holy Office letter is
precisely that there must be some definite and explicit content
to any act of genuine supernatural faith. If a man is to be
saved, he must accept as true, on the authority of God reveal­
ing, the teaching which God has communicated to the world
as His public and supernatural message.
The following, then, are the explicit lessons brought out
in the text of the Suprema haec sacra·.
(1) The teaching that there is no salvation outside the
Catholic Church is a dogma of the Catholic faith.
(2) This dogma has always been taught, and will always
be taught, infallibly by the Church’s magisterium.
(3) The dogma must be understood and explained as the
Church’s magisterium understands and explains it.
(4) The Church is necessary for salvation with both a
necessity of precept and a necessity of means.
(5) Because the Church is necessary for salvation with the
necessity of precept, any person who knows the Church to
have been divinely instituted by Our Lord and yet refuses to
enter it or to remain within it cannot attain eternal salvation.
(6) The Church is a general and necessary means for salva­
tion, not by reason of any intrinsic necessity, but only by
God’s own institution, that is, because God in His merciful
wisdom has established it as such.
(7) In order that a man may be saved “within” the
Church, it is not always necessary that he belong to the
Church in re, actually as a member, but it can sometimes be
enough that he belong to it as one who desires or wills to be
in it. In other words, it is possible for one who belongs to
the Church only in desire or in volo to be saved.

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

(8) It is possible for this desire of entering the Church to
be effective, not only when it is explicit, but also (when the
person is invincibly ignorant of the true Church) even when
that desire or votum is merely implicit.
(9) The Mystici Corporis reproved both the error of those
who teach the impossibility of salvation for those who have
only an implicit desire of entering the Church, and the false
doctrine of those who claim that men may find salvation
equally in every religion.
(10) No desire to enter the Church can be effective for
salvation unless it is enlightened by supernatural faith and
animated or motivated by perfect charity.

VIII
THE ENCYCLICAL LETTER HUMANI GENERIS
This encyclical, one of the most important doctrinal state­
ments issued in the twentieth century, is dated August 12, 1950.
In this letter Pope Pius XII listed and reproved some definite
errors in the field of sacred theology. He denounced certain
basic misinterpretations about the Church’s magisterium and
about the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Then he listed
some false teachings which he described as the “ deadly fruit ”
of these other mistakes. Among these “ deadly fruits ” he men­
tions the following:
Some think that they are not bound by the doctrine set forth a
few years ago in Our encyclical letter and based on the sources of
revelation, [the doctrine] which teaches that Christ's Mystical Body
and the Catholic Roman Church are one and the same. Others
reduce the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to
attain to eternal salvation to an empty formula.1

In this passage Pope Pius XII put his finger upon the cause
and the nature of the defective explanations of the Church’s
necessity for salvation which had occurred in some popular
Catholic writing over the course of the past few decades. In
the final analysis, men made mistakes about the necessity of
the Church for salvation because they did not realize the
paramount fact that the visible society which we know as the
Catholic Church is actually the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ,
the true and supernatural kingdom of God on earth, and thus
the community wfithin which alone men may achieve salvific
union with God in Christ. And likewise, in the last analysis,
the mistakes common among some Catholic popularizers in
the field of sacred doctrine were made by attempting to show
how we could accept the formula “ no salvation outside the
Church ” and, at the same time, explain that formula in such
a way as to void it of all real meaning.
■The Latin original is in AER, CXXIII, 5 (Nov., 1950), 391.

119

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The Dogma of Salvation- in Official Pronouncements

These errors, in their turn, had stemmed from a false atti­
tude toward the documents of the ecclesiastical magisterium.
They rvere, together, “ deadly fruits ” of a tendency to ignore
the clear teachings of the Sovereign Pontiffs, teaching in the
course of their ordinary doctrinal activity.
It is important to note that the encyclical Humani generis
was written about a year after the Holy Office’s letter to
Archbishop Cushing. In the Suprema haec sacra the Holy
Office had explained what the Church has always understood
and taught about the dogma that there is no salvation outside
the Church. It had particularly stressed the fact that it is
possible for a man to be “ within ” the Church in such a
manner as to attain eternal salvation even when he had only
an implicit desire to enter the Church. Thus it had rebuked
those individuals who had tried to explain the dogma in too
narrow a fashion.
The Humani generis, on the other hand, repudiates the
teaching of those who had interpreted the dogma in too broad
a sense. It complains that some people “ reduce to an empty
formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church so as
to attain eternal salvation.” The terminology employed in
this rebuke is highly significant. It so happens that this is
the one section of sacred doctrine of which it is true to say
that the individuals who try to weaken or to obscure its
meaning tend to reduce it to an empty formula.
The Catholic assertion of the truth that there is no salvation
outside the true Church is and has always been a point on
which the attacks of the Church’s enemies have been centered
with particular intensity. A claim that the Catholic Church is
a highly acceptable religious society, or even that it is by far
the best religious organization, would never have aroused any
special animosity against the Church. As a matter of fact,
claims of this sort have always been made and are still being
made by religious societies distinct from the Catholic Church.
What the enemies of the Church have always found and still
find infuriating is the Catholic insistence on the truth that
the Catholic Church is actually the Mystical Body of Jesus

h

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The Encyclical "Humani generis"

12J

Christ, the one and only true supernatural kingdom of God
on earth, the only social body within which men are to find
salvific contact with God through Our Lord.
Hence some Catholic writers on theological subjects, in
their anxiety to present the Church m as lavorable a light
as possible to non-Catholics, hare tended to soften or even,
for all intents and purposes, to suppress this part of Catholic
doctrine. They realize that the very heart or center of the
dogma that the Catholic Church is truly the one and only
supernatural kingdom of God on earth is to be found in the
teaching that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.
Most of them had enough hislorital learning· to know that,
during the period of the earliest controversies between Catholic
and Protestant writers, the matter of the necessity of the
Church for salvation was hardly ever subject to dispute. They
recognized that both Catholics and Protestants held that the
true Church was necessary for the attainment of eternal salva­
tion. The basic theological question that divided these fif­
teenth- and sixteenth-century authors was this: Exactly where
is the true Church of Jesus Christ, the one and only super­
natural kingdom of God on earth, to be found?
Basically the Protestant position was that the true Church,
the Mystical Body of Christ, is to be found in this world among
the justified or the predestined people, and that only God
knows exactly who these individuals really are. The heresiarchs
of the Reformation contended that this true Church, the social
body outside which no one can be saved, is something invisible
to men in this world.
Against the writers who advanced this contention, the con­
troversialists set forth and defended the divinely revealed
truth that the true Church, the Mystical Body of Christ is,
by God’s merciful institution, an organized and hence a
visible society, the religious community within which the
Bishop of Rome rules as the successor of St. Peter and as
the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Their triumphant thesis that the
Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, God’s super­
natural kingdom on earth, carried with it the dogma that

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

this organized and visible society is the social unit outside
which no one at all can attain eternal salvation. To them
and to their Protestant adversaries, any denial or weakening
of the doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Catholic
Church would have meant a denial or weakening of the
assertion that the Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of
Christ, the true Church of the divine promisses.
Now during the last decade of the nineteenth century there
appeared among some Catholic writers a tendency and a
desire to make the Catholic Church more acceptable to non­
Catholics and even to make it appear more respectable to the
better educated among the non-members of the Church. In
line with this desire, some of them adopted an attitude
sharply criticized by Pope Leo XIII in his letter Testem
benevolentiae. Pope Leo repudiated those who “ contend that,
to entice the wills of those who differ from us, it is opportune
to pass over certain points of doctrine as of lesser importance
or to soften them so that they do not keep the same meaning
that the Church has constantly held." 2
This attitude manifested itself most strongly with regard
to the dogma of the Church’s necessity for eternal salvation,
the point of doctrine against which the opponents of the
Church tended to react most violently. Thus there were some
Catholic publicists who produced statements of the Catholic
position in which the dogma of the necessity of the Church
for the attainment of salvation was simply ignored. Others,
however, wrote and taught in such a way as to weaken this
teaching and to explain it in a wray inconsistent with the
pronouncements on the subject by the ecclesiastical magis­
terium. These were the people who reduced the necessity of
the Church for the attainment of salvation to a mere empty
formula.
Of course, they had to use a formula, and they usually
employed either the Latin expression “ Extra ecclesiam nulla
salus,” or its English equivalent, “ No salvation outside the
Church.” Since there is hardly another dogma which has been
2 Benz., 1967.

The Encyclical “ Humani generis ”

123

so constantly reasserted by the Church’s magisterium, no
Catholic writer could possibly get around the fact that the
truth expressed succinctly in this formula was an integral
part of Catholic teaching. Most of the men who wrote im­
perfectly on this subject were at least logical enough not to
want to deny some statement which had been set forth
explicitly and in an authoritative fashion by the official
teachers of the Church. Hence they adopted the expedient
of holding the formula itself, and then explaining this formula
in such a way as to make it appear to mean quite the opposite
of what it says. In their hands the expression “ Extra ecclesiam
nulla salus ” became a mere empty or vain formula, since
they presented this statement as signifying, in effect, that there
really is salvation outside the Church.
There have been various ways in which Catholic writers
have tended to reduce the teaching on the necessity of the
Church for salvation to a meaningless formula. Among them,
the following may be regarded as among the most important:
(1) A few writers, obviously unschooled in sacred theology,
have simply rejected the formula itself, and thus completely
denied the teaching. The unfortunate Arnold Harris Mathew,
writing during his days as a Catholic, produced teaching of
this sort. He makes this statement in the chapter “ Extra
Ecclesiam Salus Nulla,” in the symposium Ecclesia: The
Church of Christ, a work which Mathew himself edited:
Now the further question arises as to how far Catholics are bound
to hold that for those outside the Roman Church there is no salva­
tion. Catholics are not bound to hold anything of the kind.3

Akin to Mathew’s tactic and almost as crude is the procedure
of writers who speak of “ the Catholic doctrines concerning
salvation ‘ outside the Church.’ ” It is obvious that men who
teach in this way are denying the dogma that there is no
salvation outside the Church. If they choose to pay some lip
8 Mathew, in his chapter, “Extra Ecclesiam Salus Nulla,” in the sym­
posium, Ecclesia: The Church of Christ, edited by Arnold Harris Mathew
(London: Burns and Oates, 1906), p. 148.

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The Dugina of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

service to the formula ‘'Extra ecclesiam nulla salus," that
formula, in their hands, becomes vain and meaningless.

(2) The teaching that the dogma of the necessity of the
Church for salvation admits of exceptions is, in the last
analysis, a denial of the dogma as it lias been stated in the
authoritative declarations of the ecclesiastical magisterium
and even as it is expressed in the axiom or formula " Extra
ecclesiasm nulla salus.” It is important to note that such
teaching is found in Cardinal Newman’s last published study
on this subject, a study incorporated into his Letter to the
Duke of Norfolk, perhaps the least valuable of all his pub­
lished works. Because of Newman’s great influence in the
field of contemporary theological studies, it will be helpful
to see how he treated this subject in the Letter.
Mathew, who held ultimately that Catholics were simply not
bound to hold anything like the leaching that no one can be
saved outside the Catholic Church, was enthusiastic in his
praise of Newman’s explanation. He claimed that the Cardinal
had “ dealt with the question in such a masterly way that it is
impossible to improve upon what he says.” 4 As a group,
the theologians of the Catholic Church have shown no dispo­
sition whatsoever to share Mathew’s enthusiasm for this section
of Newman’s teaching.
In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman dealt with
the Church’s necessity for salvation, not for its own sake, but
only as a teaching that he considered as offering “ the oppor­
tunity of a legitimate minimizing.” 5 Despite the fact that
he complained when his theological opponents designated him
as a minimizer, he set out to show that the dogmas taught in
the Vatican Council’s constitution Pastor aeternus were subject
to legitimate minimizing.0 He tried to support his contention
by appealing to the example of the dogma that there is no
4 Ibid.
5 In Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London:
Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), II, 334.
a Cf. Fenton, “John Henry Newman and the Vatican Definition of Papal
Infallibility,” in AER, CXIH, 4 (Oct., 1945), 300-20.

The Encyclical " Humani generis "

125

salvation outside the Catholic Church. Hence it was from
this angle that he approached the teaching on the necessity
of the Church for salvation.
Newman taught that the principle “out of the Church, and
out of the faith, is no salvation ” admits of exceptions. He
believed that what Pope Pius IX had taught in his encyclical
Quanto conjiciamur moerore indicated the existence of such
exceptions.7 In support of his contention, he quotes the
following lines front the encyclical:
We and you know, that those who lie under invincible ignorance
as regards our most hoi)' religion, and who, diligently observing the
natural law and its prciepts, which are engraven by Cod on the
hearts of all, anti prepared io obey Cod. lead a good and upright
life, are able, by the operation of the power of divine light and
grace, to obtain eternal life.8

According to the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, these words
of Pope Pius IX conveyed what Newman called “ the doctrine
of invincible ignorance—or, that it is possible to belong to
the soul of the Church without belonging to the body.” He
concluded his treatment of the dogma with this question:
“Who would at first sight gather from the wording of so
forcible a universal [“ Out of the Church, and out of the
faith, is no salvation ”], that an exception to its operation,
such as this, so distinct, and, for all we know, so very wide,
was consistent with holding it? ” 9
If Newman’s words mean anything, they assert that the
Church holds and proposes as “ a dogma, which no Catholic
can ever think of disputing,” a statement which it contradicts
at the very same time. He claims that the doctrine “ Out of
the Church, and out of the faith, is no salvation ” is a dogma
of the Church, a truth revealed by God to be held on divine
faith by all men. This dogma is set forth as a universal
negative proposition, something which is contradicted by a par­
ticular affirmative. And Newman taught here that the particu­
lar affirmative proposition contradicting this very universal
7 Cf. Newman, op. cit., 335 1.

* Ibid.

v Ibid., 336.

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

negative dogma is true. He believed that in at least one
definite case, which may have a very wide application, there
can be salvation outside the faith and outside the Church.
Newman believed that it was “consistent” to hold at the
same time that there is no salvation outside the Church and
outside the faith. Obviously there could be no more effective
way of reducing the teaching on the necessity of the Church
for the attainment of eternal salvation to an empty formula
than the explanation advanced by Newman in what are
probably the least felicitous pages of all his published works.
That explanation is certainly one of those reproved in the
encyclical letter Humani generis.
(3) Some Catholic authors attempted to explain the dogma
of the Church’s necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation
by saying that the Church is only the ordinary means, and
that it is still possible, in extraordinary cases, for a man to
attain the Beatific Vision outside the Church. At the same
time they resolutely claimed, as Newman had done, that it
is a Catholic dogma that there is no salvation outside the
Church. Manifestly, according to this explanation, the dogma
would be nothing more than a vain formula, something which
the very people who accept it as a dogma would be expected
to treat, for all practical purposes, as untrue. Ultimately,
of course, this explanation coincides with the one offered by
Newman in his Letter to the Diike of Norfolk.
< (4) By all means the most important and the most widely
employed of all the inadequate explanations of the Church’s
necessity for salvation was the one that centered around a
distinction between the “ body ” and the “ soul ” of the
Catholic Church. The individual who tried to explain the
dogma in this fashion generally designated the visible Church
itself as the “ body ” of the Church and applied the term
“ soul of the Church ” either to grace and the supernatural
virtues or to some fancied “ invisible Church.” Prior to the
appearance of the encyclical Mystici Corporis there were sev­
eral books and articles claiming that, while the “ soul ” of
the Church was in some way not separated from the ” body,”
it was actually more extensive than this “ body.”

The Encyclical "Humani generis

127

Explanations of the Church's necessity drawn up in terms
of this distinction were at best inadequate and confusing and
all too frequently infected with serious error. When the ex­
pression “ soul of the Church ” was applied to sanctifying
grace and the organism of supernatural virtues that accompany
it, the explanation was confusing in that it stressed the fact
that a man must be in the state of grace, and that he must
have faith and charity if he is to attain to eternal salvation,
but it tended to obscure the truth that a man must in some
manner be “ within ” the true and visible Catholic Church at
the moment of his death if he is ever to reach the Beatific
Vision.
When, on tire other hand, some imaginary “ invisible
Church,” some assembly of all the good people in the world,
was designated as the “ soul of the Church,” these explanations
lapsed into doctrinal inaccuracy. The great paramount mys­
tery of the Church is to be found in the fact that the visible
and organized religious society over which the Bishop of
Rome presides as the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of
St. Peter is the true and only ecclesia of the New Testament.
This society, and this alone, is the true kingdom of God on
earth, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. It holds within its
membership both good men and bad. It includes those who
are truly appreciative of their membership and those who are
not. Nevertheless, in the mysterious and merciful designs of
God’s providence, this community and no other is the social
entity within which men are to find salvific contact with God
in Christ.
(5) There were many other inadequate explanations of
this dogma current before the appearance of the Mystici
Corporis and of the Suprema haec sacra. Some writers tried
to restrict the meaning of the Church's necessity for salvation
to the fact that the gifts of grace whereby a man actually
achieves salvation really belong to the Church. Others tried
to make it appear that the visible Church itself was necessary
for salvation only with the necessity of precept. Still others
represented the attainment of salvation within the true Church

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The Dogma of Salvation in Official Pronouncements

as the " ideal ” willed by God, but imagined that this salvation
could be obtained elsewhere and otherwise in special circum­
stances.
The only method by which the dogma can be explained
satisfactorily is that employed in the Suprema haec sacra. The
Holy Office letter merely restates, in more detailed form,
exactly what all of the declarations of the ecclesiastical magis­
terium have taught about the meaning of the Church’s neces­
sity for the attainment of eternal salvation. Whatever progress
there will be in the explanation of this dogma will come and
must come along the line laid down in this Holy Office letter.
Such is the teaching of the encyclical letter Humani generis.
The Humani generis is certainly one of the most important
documents issued by the Holy See during the course of the
twentieth century. The perspective of years will be needed
lor a proper appreciation of the beneficial effects it has brought
into the teaching of sacred theology. Yet even today we can
see clearly that one of its finest and most valuable lessons was
contained in its brief reference to the dogma that the Catholic
Church is really necessary for the attainment of eternal salva­
tion.
It repudiated and condemned the practice, which, incident­
ally, had been all too frequent, of reducing this doctrine to
an empty or vain formula. Actually this section of sacred
theology or of Catholic doctrine was one in which inadequate
or inaccurate teaching had precisely the effect of representing
a part of Catholic teaching as mere meaningless verbiage.
Almost every Catholic writer who touched in any way upon
this subject began in some way with a consideration of and
an assent to a definite formula: “ No salvation outside the
Church.” Most of the men who taught this subject in an
incorrect or faulty manner managed, in the last analysis, to
give the impression that, although Catholics are bound in
conscience to accept this formula as true, it really means little
or nothing.
That doctrinal tactic was and is completely erroneous. More­
over, it had and it could only have the most absolutely

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129

disastrous effects upon the people who were misled by it.
These people were influenced to believe that a dogma of the
Catholic Church, a teaching which the Church presents as
a divinely revealed truth which all men are obliged to accept
with the assent of divine faith, was, in the last analysis, some­
thing practically devoid ol. meaning. They were encouraged
to imagine that a dogma which the Church’s magisterium
had, in ages past, set forth as a part of divine public revelation,
turned out, on further analysis, to be an empty set of w’ords,
which modern intellectual Catholics could accept only when
they had been voided of the meaning they were manifestly
meant to convey. Not to put too fine a point on it, the people
who were encouraged to accept the latdty Leachings repudiated
in the Humani generis were put in a position to fancy that
the Church was something less than sincere when it still
insisted upon the dogma that there is no salvation outside
the Church.
And, if a man could be deluded into imagining that the
formulae employed by organs of the magisterium like the
Fourth Lateran Council and the Cantate Domino to teach
about the necessity of the Church did not mean what they
said, he could just as easily be influenced to imagine that any
other definition of the teaching Church was likewise devoid of
any real significance. The worst doctrinal tendencies of our
time found their expression in the heresy of Modernism, and
it was a basic tenet of the Modernists that the declarations
of the ecclesiastical magisterium are to be accepted only when
they are interpreted to mean something different from what
the Ghurch originally and constantly taught that they mean.

PART II
THE THEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND OF THE DOGMA
Until now we have been considering what various docu­
ments of the Church’s magisterium have said about the
necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of eternal
salvation. We have found that the teaching according to
which there is no salvation outside the Church is a dogma, a
truth revealed by God and presented as such by the ecclesia
docens. We have seen also that the Holy See rejects and
forbids any attempted explanation of this dogma which would
represent the statement that there is no salvation outside the
Church as an empty formula.
The Holy Office letter Suprema haec sacra, asserting ex­
plicitly and in detail the truths which have been taught in
a more general way in other authoritative documents of the
ecclesiastical magisterium, has assured us that the Church
is necessary for the attainment of eternal life in two distinct
ways, with the necessity of precept and with the necessity
of means. By God’s own positive institution, the visible re­
ligious society over which the Roman Pontiff rules as Christ’s
Vicar on earth is a necessary means for the attainment of the
Beatific Vision, in the sense that a person must be “ within ”
this society at the moment of his death, either as a member
or as one who explicitly or implicitly desires to become a
member, if he is to be saved forever.
Furthermore the Suprema haec sacra has shown us that no
one can be “ within ” the Church even by implicit desire or
intention in such a way as to attain the life of grace in it
unless he has true supernatural faith and unless he loves God
and his neighbor with the genuine and supernatural affection
of divine charity.
It is clearly the function of sacred theology to set forth
and to analyze the teachings of the magisterium on the subject

131

132

The Theological and Historical Background

ic proposes to investigate. Just as clearly, however, this is
not the complete work of theology. As Pope Pius Xll has
reminded us in his encyclical Humani generis, “ Pius IX,
teaching that the noblest function of theology is to show how
a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources
of revelation, added these words, and with very good reason:
‘ in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church.’ ”1
To attempt anything like a full performance of this noblest
work of sacred theology with reference to the Catholic teaching
about the Church’s necessity lor the attainment of salvation
would require a literary production of great size. Such an
attempt lies far outside the purpose of this little book. But,
even in a volume as small as this, it is necessary to investigate,
however briefly, what Sacred Scripture has to say about the
nature of salvation itself and about the constitution of the
true Church of Jesus Christ according to the dispensation of
the New Testament. And, in the light of that teaching, we
shall be able to see with a clarity otherwise unattainable, the
true and basic meaning of the dogma about the necessity of
the Church for salvation.
Furthermore, in order to have a useful presentation of the
theological background of our subject, we must take some
cognizance of the accidents in the history of Catholic theology
which have affected the treatise on the Church as a whole and
the teaching on the necessity of the Church in particular.
What we may call the scholastic treatise on the Church
developed later than most of the other great sections of
dogmatic theology. And, unlike most of the other sections of
scholastic theology, the tractatus de ecclesia was influenced in
its ordering and in its very content by the controversy against
the early Protestant heresiarchs. It was in great measure due
to these historical accidents that certain well known, influ­
ential, and fundamentally inadequate explanations of the
Church’s necessity for salvation arose and developed.
In this second part I shall attempt to show something of
this theological background of our thesis.
1 AER, CXXIII, 5 (Nov., 1950) , 390.

I
THE CONCEPT OF SALVATION

The concept of eternal salvation runs throughout the entire
New Testament. It is one of the basic notions in the teaching
which Our Lord preached as the divine message He had
received from His Father. Fie described Himself as coming
to save what was lost. “ For the Son of man is come to save
that which was lost.” 1 Christ is Our Saviour. His work is
preeminently that of our salvation.
Now, the term “ to save,” employed in sacred theology and
in the English translations of the New Testament as the
equivalent of the Latin “ salvare ” and of the Greek “ σώζαν,”
designates the process by which a person is removed from a
condition in which he is destined for ruin or death and is
transferred to a condition in which he may live and prosper.
Basically, that is the meaning expressed by the expression
“ saving someone,” employed in ordinary terminology. Thus,
years ago, when we frequently read in the newspapers about
the feats of the then young first officer of the steamship
America (later Commodore Harry Manning) in saving the
lives of the crews of several fishing boats that had been
swamped in Atlantic storms, we all understood that this man
and the mariners under his command had taken the victims
off the wrecked boats to which they were clinging and had
brought them to the safety of the ocean liner to which he was
assigned.
The men w'ere saved, in the sense that they v/ere transferred
from positions in which they would inevitably have drowned
very soon into the security of the liner, and eventually to the
shores of their own countries. Men who were transferred at
sea from one seaworthy vessel to another could never have
been described as “saved.”
The salvation of men, described in divine public revelation,
1 Matt., 18: II; see also Luke, 19: 10.

133

i 3-J

The Theological and Hislorical Background

is a salvation in the strict or proper sense ol the term. It
is a process by which men are removed Irom a condition or
status which would involve them in everlasting death if they
remained within it, to a condition in which they may enjoy
eternal life and happiness.
It is highly important to understand that this process is
quite complex. The terminus a quo, the undesirable condi­
tion, from which men are removed in the process of salvation
is basically sin, the status of aversion from almighty God. A
man is said to be saved, absolutely and simply, when he is
taken out of the condition of original or mortal sin and
brought into the status of the eternal and supernatural life
of grace. Ultimately that process is achieved and perfected
when the person saved comes to possess the life of grace
eternally and inamissibly, in the everlasting glory of the
Beatific Vision. There is genuine salvation, however, when
the man who has hitherto been in the state of original or
mortal sin is brought into the life of sanctifying grace, even
in this world, when that life of grace can be lost through the
man’s own fault.
There is, however, a definitely social aspect to the process
of salvation. In the merciful designs of God’s providence, the
man who is transferred from the state of original or mortal
sin into the state of grace is brought in some way “ within ”
a social unit, the supernatural kingdom of the living God.
In heaven that community is the Church triumphant, the
company of the elect enjoying the Beatific Vision. On earth
it is the Church militant. Under the conditions of the new
or the Christian dispensation, that community is the organized
or visible religious society which is the Catholic Church, the
Mystical Body of Jesus Christ on earth.
We must not lose sight of the fact that people in the con­
dition of aversion from God, in the state of original or mortal
sin, belong in some way to a kingdom or an ecclesia under
the leadership of Satan, the moving spirit among the spiritual
enemies of God. Hence the process of salvation involves
necessarily the transfer of an individual from one social unit

The Concept of Salvation

135

or community to another, iront the kingdom of Satan to the
true and supernatural kingdom of the living God.
The opening paragraphs of Pope Leo XIH’s encyclical
against Freemasonry, the letter Humanum genus, brings out
the relations between these two communities with unmatched
clarity and accuracy.
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 parts, of which the one steadfastly con­
tends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are
contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God
on earth, 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 necessity 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 possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal
example of their leader and of our fust 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 de­
scribed after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because
striving for contrary objects; and with subtle brevity he expressed
the efficient cause of each in these words: “Two loves formed two
cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly
city; and the love of God, reaching even to contempt of self, a
heavenly one.” At every period of time each has been in conflict
with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of
warfare, although not always with equal ardor and assault.2

This intrinsically social aspect of salvation is brought out
in the account, in the Acts of the Apostles, of the end of St.
Peter’s sermon on the first Christian Pentecost and of the
results of that sermon.
Now when they had heard these things, they had compunction in
their heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles: What
shall we do, men and brethren?
But Peter said to them: Do penance: and be baptized every one
of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins.
And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
3 This passage is found in Father Wynne’s edition of The Great
Encyclical Leiters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers,
1903), p. 83.

!,·>()

The Theological and Historical Background

For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that
arc far off, whomsoever the Lord our God shall call.
And with very 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.
And they were persevering in the doctrine of the apostles and
in the communication of the breaking of bread and in prayers.3

According to the inspired word of God in the Acts of the
Apostles, St. Peter exhorted the men who listened to him on
that first Christian Pentecost to “ save themselves from this
perverse generation.” Furthermore, we are told that the indi­
viduals who ‘‘received his word ” received the sacrament of
baptism, and that they were ” added ” to the number of the
disciples of Christ who had been with St. Peter and the other
apostles before he delivered his sermon. The society of the
disciples of Jesus Christ, the organization which we know now
as the Catholic Church, continued, with this great number
of new members, to do exactly what it had been doing since
the day of Our Lord's ascension into heaven.
We read that the group, composed as it was of these new
converts who had come into the Church as a result of St.
Peter’s Pentecost sermon and of the disciples who had entered
the group during Our Lord’s public life, was “ persevering
in the doctrine of the apostles and in the communication of
the breaking of bread and in prayers.” And we read the same
sort of account of the activity of the original band of disciples
that returned to Jerusalem immediately after the Ascension.
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount that is called
Olivet, which is nigh Jerusalem, within a sabbath day’s journey.
And when they were come in they went up into an upper room,
where abode Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and
Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James of Alpheus and Simon
Zelotes and Jude the brother of James.
All these were persevering with one mind in prayer, with the
women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.4

Both the text and the context of the Acts of the Apostles
a Ads, 2: 37-42.

Acts, 1, 12-14.

The Concepi of Salvation

137

assure us that the people who heeded St. Peter’s injunction
to save themselves Irom this perverse generation entered the
true Church of God, the kingdom of God on earth. They
entered the Catholic Church.
Now, if St. Peter’s words on this occasion meant anything
at all, they signified that the individuals to whom iie was
speaking were in a situation which would lead them to eternal
ruin if they continued in it. They were described as belonging
to a “perverse generation.” They were told to save themselves
by getting out of it. The institution into which they would
enter by the very fact of leaving “ this perverse generation ”
was none other than the society of Our Lord's disciples, the
Catholic Church itself.
The clear implication of St. Peter’s statement is that the
Church, the kingdom of God, was the only institution or social
unit of salvation. Not to be within this society was to be in
the perverse generation within which a man was faced with
eternal and entire spiritual ruin. To leave the perverse genera­
tion was to enter the Church.
In other words, the clear teaching of this section of the Acts
of the Apostles is precisely that given by Pope Leo XIII in
the opening passages of his encyclical Humanum genus. The
central point of this teaching is that the entire human race
is divided between the kingdom of God, the ecclesia, and the
kingdom of Satan. To be saved from the kingdom of Satan
is to enter the kingdom of God. In this context it is not
difficult to see how, by God’s institution, the Catholic Church,
the one and only supernatural kingdom of God on earth, is
presented as a necessary means for the attainment of salvation.
By God's institution the process of salvation itself involves
a passage from the kingdom of Satan into the ecclesia.
Now, for the proper understanding of this doctrine, especial­
ly in view of the teaching on this subject contained in some
recent books and articles, it is imperative to understand the
religious condition of the people to whom St. Peter delivered
his sermon on that first Christian Pentecost. Again, the Acts
of the Apostles contains essentially important information.

138

'The Theological and Historical Background

This book describes them in general with the statement
that “ there were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men
out ol' every nation under heaven.” The homelands of these
men are enumerated in the statement attributed to the multi­
tude itself.
And they were all amazed and ivondered, saying: Behold, are
not all these that speak, Galileans?
And how have we heard, every man, our own tongue wherein we
were born?
Parthians and Medes and Elamites and inhabitants ol Meso­
potamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya about
Cyrene, and strangers of Rome,
Jews also and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians: we have heard
them speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.5

According to the text of the Acts, a great many of these
people were pilgrims, men and women who had come to
Jerusalem to celebrate the great Jewish feast of Pentecost.
Our Lord had died on the Cross only a little over seven weeks
before St. Peter delivered that sermon, and many of the people
who listened to St. Peter must have been on their way to
Jerusalem at the very time Our Lord died. They had begun
their pilgrimage as an act of worship in the Jewish religion
at the very time when the Jewish religion was the one approved
especially by God and when the Jewish politico-religious
commonwealth was actually the supernatural kingdom of God
on earth, the ecclesia of the Old Testament.
These people as individuals probably had nothing whatso­
ever to do with the persecution and the murder of the In­
carnate Word of God. They had started on their journey
as members of God’s chosen people, the people of His covenant.
Their journey to Jerusalem was made precisely in order to
worship and honor God. They were truly devout individuals.
Yet, seven weeks before, the religious body to which they
belonged had ceased to be God’s ecclesia. The Jewish politico­
religious social unit had definitively rejected Our Lord, the
5 Acts, 2: 7-11.

The Concept o/ Salvation

139

Messias promised in the Old Testament. This company had
hitherto enjoyed its position as God’s ecclesia or His congre­
gatio fidelium by virtue of the fact that it had accepted and
professed its acceptance of the divine message about the
promised Redeemer. In rejecting the Redeemer Himself, this
social unit had automatically rejected the teaching God had
given about Him. The rejection of this message constituted
an abandonment of the divine faith itself. By manifesting this
rejection of the faith, the Jewish religious unit fell from its
position as the company of the chosen people. It was no longer
God's ecclesia, His supernatural kingdom on earth. It became
part of the kingdom of Satan.
While the great Jewish social unit was rejecting Our Lord
and thus repudiating its acceptance of the divinely revealed
message about Him, the little company of the disciples, organ­
ized by Our Lord around Himself, retained its faith. It con­
tinued to accept and to obey Our Lord and to believe the
divinely revealed message that centered around Him. Thus,
at the moment of Our Lord’s death on Calvary, the moment
when the old dispensation was ended and the Jewish religious
association ceased to be the supernatural kingdom of God on
earth, this recently organized society of Our Lord’s discijales
began to exist as the ecclesia or the kingdom.
This society was the true continuation of Israel. The men
who were within it were the true sons of Abraham, in that
they had the genuine faith of Abraham. This society was the
new association of the chosen people. Its members were, as
St. Paul called them, the elect or the chosen of God.
It must be understood, incidentally, that this society was
actually God’s supernatural kingdom on earth in a much more
complete and perfect sense than the old Jewish commonwealth
had ever been. The old Israel had constituted the people of
the covenant. According to God’s unfailing promise, the Re­
deemer was to be born within that company. Yet conditions
had never been such that a man had to be within this com­
pany in order to attain to eternal salvation.
On the contrary, the new and faithful Israel was completely

140

The Theological and Historical Background

identical with the supernatural kingdom of God on earth. It
was the true ecclesia or company of the faithful in the sense
that no man could attain to eternal salvation unless he passed
from this life “within” it. This organized society, within
which unworthy members would be intermingled with the
good until the end of time, was actually Our Lord’s own
Mystical Body.
So it was that when St. Peter spoke to the crowd on the
first Christian Pentecost, the society of which he had been
constituted the visible head was actually the ecclesia Dei, the
necessary terminus of the process of salvation. His hearers
who, a few weeks before, had belonged to God’s supernatural
kingdom on earth by reason of their membership in (he old
Lsraelitic commonwealth, now actually Hound themselves in
ihe “perverse generation” precisely by reason of that same
membership. When St. Peter first spoke to them, they were
in a position from which they needed to be saved. They
were no longer members of the chosen people.
By heeding and obeying the words of St. Peter they regained
the position they had formerly possessed, and their new posses­
sion of the dignity of membership in the ecclesia was much
more perfect and complete than that which they had formerly
enjoyed. Previously they had been within a company which
had been God’s congregatio fidelium by reason of the profes­
sion of its acceptance of the divine message that centered
around the promise of a Redeemer. When they accepted
St. Peter’s teaching, performed their duty of penance, and,
by their reception of the sacrament of baptism, were “ added ”
to the society of Our Lord’s disciples, they entered the super­
natural kingdom of God which enjoyed its status by reason
of its acceptance of the divinely revealed teaching about the
Redeemer who had become incarnate and had died to reconcile
them with God.
It is extremely important for us to remember, however, that
the people St. Peter urged to save themselves from the perverse
generation in which they were living at the time were definitely
not men of no religion at all. They were devout members

The Concept o) Salvation

Hl

of the establishment which had been, less than eight weeks
before, God’s supernatural kingdom on earth. In that estab­
lishment they had learned love lor God and zeal in His service.
Many of them were so moved by zeal for the service of God
that they were willing to travel very considerable distances
and to undergo serious hardships in order to assist at the
temple sacrifices in Jerusalem during the days of the great
religious festivity of Pentecost.
St. Peter did not recommend the Church to these people
merely as something far more perfect than the religious affilia­
tion they already possessed. He did not in any sense imply
that, in entering the ecclesia, they would be simply passing to
a better religions community. Quite on the contrary, he made
it clear that it was necessary for them to transfer themselves
from the “ perverse generation ” in which they then existed
to a condition of salvation. The acceptance of his teaching
was in fact an entrance into the Church. It is in line with
this teaching that St. Paul, in his epistles, refers to those within
the Church as “ saved.” The Epistle to the Ephesians tells
us that God, “ even when we were dead in sins, hath cpiickened
us together in Christ (by whose grace you are saved) .” 6 And
it explains that “ by grace you are saved through faith: and
that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God.” 7 The entire
context of the New Testament brings out the fact that by
entering the Church, men are actually being_ saved from the
dominion of Satan, the prince of this world.'
This is the basic social aspect of the process of salvation.
In that process there is always involved a passage or a transitus
from the kingdom of God’s spiritual enemy into the actual
kingdom of God Himself, His ecclesia. St. Peter made it
clear that, in entering the Church, the people to whom he was
speaking on that first Christian Pentecost were really being
saved.
We must not lose sight of the fact that in our own day there
is sometimes a tendency to imagine that persons who are in
a position comparable with that of the people to whom St.
e Eph., 2: 5.

7 Eph., 2: 8.

142

The Theological and Historical Background

Peter’s sermon was addressed are really in an acceptable
position. The people who encourage this tendency are careful
to state that the Catholic Church is more advantageously
placed than other religious bodies in this world. They assert
that the Church has the fullness of God’s revealed message;
but, at the same time, they likewise insist that other religions
are really from God, and that they constitute the plenitude
of God’s teaching for those whom He does not call to the
higher position of Catholicism. The Modernist Von Hügel
brought out this teaching in a volume recently republished in
this country. According to Von Hügel
The Jewish religion was not false for the thirteen centuries of the
pre-Christian operations; it was, for those times, God’s fullest self­
revelation and man’s deepest apprehension of God; and this same
Jewish religion can be, is, still the fullest religious truth for numer­
ous individuals whom God leaves in their good faith; in their not
directly requiring the fuller, the fullest, light and aid to Christianity.
What is specially true of the Jewish religion is, in a lesser but still
very real degree, true of Mohammedanism, and even of Hinduism,
of Parseeism, etc.8

Von Hügel, like others of his class, was careful to insist that
“ it is not true that all religions are equally true, equally
pure, equally fruitful.” But, as a matter of fact, no one but
the most militant and ignorant atheist ever claimed that they
were. His own position is completely incompatible with the
teaching of St. Peter in his sermon on the first Christian
Pentecost. He depicted non-Catholic religions as acceptable,
even though less perfect than Catholicism. If his contention
had been in any way true, then St. Peter would have been
guilty of seriously deceiving the people to whom he spoke on
that Pentecost morning. Very definitely it is not true to say
that a man is saved when he is transferred from a less perfect
to a more perfect condition. He is saved only by being trans­
ferred from a ruinous position into a status wherein he can
live as he should.
Von Hügel described the religious condition of the people
e Letters from Baron Friedrich Von Hügel to a Niece (Chicago: Henry
Regnery Company, 1955), p. 115.

The Concept of Salvation

j
:
ί
j
;

143

to whom St. Peter spoke as “ still the fullest religious truth
for numerous individuals whom God leaves in their good
faith; in their not directly requiring the fuller, the fullest,
light and aid to Christianity.” St. Peter asserted that these
individuals rvere in a perverse generation, and told them to
save themselves from it. There is no possibility of any agree­
ment between these two positions.
In every age of the Church there has been one portion of
Christian doctrine which men have been especially tempted to
misconstrue or to deny. In our own times it is the part of
Catholic truth which was brought out with special force and
clarity by St. Peter in his first missionary sermon in Jerusalem.
It is somewhat unfashionable today to insist, as St. Peter did,
that those who are outside the true Church of Jesus Christ
stand in need of being saved by leaving their own positions
and entering the ecclesia. Nevertheless, this remains a part
of God’s own revealed message.
It is a part of Catholic doctrine that entrance into the
Church (actually by becoming a member of the Church; and,
when this is impossible, by at least an implicit though sincere
desire or intention) is a part of the process of salvation. It is
equally a part of Catholic teaching, however, that this is by
no means the only part. A man is saved from the evil of
belonging to the kingdom of Satan by his entrance into the
Church, but this entrance in no way constitutes a guarantee
that he will actually enjoy the Beatific Vision for all eternity.
The process of salvation is not fully completed, a man cannot
be said to be “ saved ” in the full sense of the term, until
he has attained the Beatific Vision itself.
St. James, writing to men who are already Christians, mem­
bers of the true Church, warns them to “ receive the ingrafted
word, which is able to save your souls.” 9 He was setting forth
God’s own teaching when he reminded those within the Church
that they were still obliged to work, under the direction of
the divine doctrine, for the salvation of their own souls. It
remains possible for a man to be within the Church and to be
disloyal to God. Such a man constitutes himself as an unworthy
James, 1: 21.

144

The Theological and Historical Background

member of the Church and, unless he repents of his sins, he
will be cut away from the kingdom of God for all eternity
when he dies. And, if the sinner within the Church turns
again toward God, he is being saved by the power of Jesus
Christ, working through the sacrament of penance. Obviously
he cannot be saved other than in and through the Catholic
Church.
Thus, despite the fact that it is possible for a man to be
within the Church and to lose his soul, salvation is in itself
a process which involves a social aspect. Everyone who has
been born since the sin of Adam, with the exception of Our
Lord and of His Blessed Mother, lias come into the world
or begun his existence as a member of the fallen family ol
Adam, and thus as one who belongs to what St. Peter desig­
nated as the “ perverse generation ” and what Pope Leo XIII
called the “ kingdom of Satan.”
He has likewise begun his existence as a human being in
the state of original sin and has very frequently increased his
aversion from God by the force of his own mortal sins. The
process of salvation is the process by which such men have been
brought from that condition of aversion from God into the
final and inamissible possession of His friendship and the
enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. Involved in that process,
by God’s own institution, is a transfer from the kingdom of
Satan into the one supernatural kingdom of God on earth.
Since the moment of Our Lord’s death on the Cross, that
kingdom has been, again by God’s own institution, the Catholic
Church, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ on earth.
Thus, if we examine the actual concept of salvation, we find
that the Church as God’s kingdom on earth is actually involved
in it. Thus, in this process, the Church is not merely an
extraneous factor which has been somehow introduced into
the Christian teaching about eternal salvation. It is, in the
social aspect of salvation, the necessary terminus ad quem of
that transfer by which men are brought from sin to grace, by
being changed from a position of belonging to the kingdom
of Satan, the dominion of “ the prince of this world,” into
the one and only supernatural kingdom of God on earth.

!

11

I
f

SALVATION AND THE BASIL CONCEPT’
OF THE CHURCH

i
Î

In the previous chapter we studied what God’s revealed
message has to say about the nature oi salvation. We found
that this concept, as God Himself has described it, is that of
a transfer, effected by the grace God gives men by reason of
Our Lord's sacrificial death, from the state of spiritual death
to that of the spiritual life of sanctifying grace. We saw that
ultimately it terminates in the everlasting possession of the
life of grace in heaven.
It was likewise apparent, however, that, in the divine mes­
sage, salvation is depicted as something which has a social as
well as an individual aspect. It is not only a passage from
the state of sin to the life of grace in its everlasting perfection:
it is also, and essentially, a transitus from the social unit
described as the kingdom of Satan into the true and super­
natural kingdom of God.
The social unit properly called the true and supernatural
kingdom of God lives at home, in its proper and everlasting
environment, only in the glory of heaven. It also lives, in a
transitory and preparatory status, in this world. It is an
essential part of the divinely revealed teaching about salva­
tion that no one enters into the Church triumphant, the king­
dom of God in heaven, unless he has departed this life
“ within ” the kingdom of God on earth. In the dispensation
of the New Testament, which will endure until the end of
time, the Roman Catholic Church is completely identified
with the supernatural kingdom of God on earth. Hence no
one will attain the Beatific Vision unless he dies “ within ” the
Catholic Church.
This lesson is one element of the basic theological proof of
the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of
eternal salvation. The other element is obviously to be based
on an examination of the way in which the Church itself is
145

146

The Theological and Historical Background

described as God’s kingdom in the content ol divine public
revelation. This is the business of the present chapter.
An adequate examination of what God’s revealed message
tells us about the Catholic Church in its capacity as His super­
natural kingdom in this world will show clearly that this
society has been instituted by God Himself as the social unit
which one must enter and “ within ” which one must die if
he is to attain to the Beatific Vision. But, if this objective is
to be achieved, the examination must be truly adequate. All
of the elements of the description of the Church given in the
deposit of the divine public revelation must be taken into
account.
It would be highly imprudent and unrealistic, incidentally,
to take it for granted that all educated Catholics have an
explicit cognizance of all the elements which enter into the
concept of the Church contained in God’s supernatural re­
vealed message. There has been, as the result of events
definitely ascertainable in the history of sacred theology, a
kind of impoverishment of the notion of the ecclesia in recent
theological literature and in the popular Catholic mind. The
net effect of this impoverishment has been a tendency to
envision some of the real components of the notion of God’s
supernatural kingdom on earth in an obscure and imperfect
manner.
A somewhat crude but genuinely enlightening index of this
impoverishment can be found in the average Catholic’s expla­
nation of the statement: “ The Roman Catholic Church is
the true Church of Jesus Christ.”
This sentence is a truth, a dogma of the Catholic faith.
It contains within itself the plenitude of divinely revealed
truth about the status and the dignity of the religious society
over which the Bishop of Rome presides. Yet when most
Catholics are asked what it means, they seem to restrict them­
selves to the facts that this is the one Church actually estab­
lished by Our Lord, and the one society of which He is the
Head. Actually there are other elements essential to an
adequate concept of “ the true Church of Jesus Christ ” or
“ God’s supernatural kingdom.”

Salvation and the Basic Concept oj the Church

!
•
■

L

I

11/

Older ecclesiologists, like the Dominican Cardinal John de
Turrecremata, brought out all the elements included in the
revealed description of the true Church tvhen they explained
the various names applied to this company and to its members,
in Scripture and in tradition. Thus they shotted what God
had told us about the Church when the term εκκλησία, the
Greek name of which the English “ Church ” is the translation,
was applied to it. They likewise pointed out what was taught
about the nature of this society by reason of the fact that it
was indicated as the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the
Father, as Christ’s own kingdom, as the city of God and as
the household of the faith. They showed that what is con­
tained under the metaphorical names of the temple of God
and the Body of Christ is rightly applied to the Catholic
Church. Furthermore, they brought out the connotations of
the titles of “ the called,” “ the chosen,” and “ the disciples,”
applied to the members of the Church.1
When all of these names and titles had been explained,
the Church was clearly shown to be the social unit outside
which no one at all can be saved. The divine message summed
up under these various designations made it completely evi­
dent that, by reason of God’s own institution, there is no
salvation whatsoever to be attained outside the visible Catholic
Church. It has been most unfortunate that contemporary
ecclesiology has failed to give explicit and clear consideration
to the content of all these names of the Church and of its
members.
Thus, in our own time, we have become accustomed to
think of the word “ Church ” as properly applicable to any
religious society, or at least to any religious society which
claims to be composed of followers of Our Lord. In the
writings of men like Turrecremata, on the other hand, the
point is made that the Greek word “ εκκλησία ” (Latinized as
ecclesia} is used in Sacred Scripture, and particularly in the
1 For a brief explanation of these titles, see Fenton, “ New Testament
Designations of the Catholic Church and Its Members,” in Catholic
Biblical Quarterly (Jan.-April, 1947) , 127-46; 275-306.

;

i
j

9
■

9
9
■

148

The Theological and Historical Background

New Testament, to designate the chosen people of God, the
society of the covenant. It was the name given at the time
of Our Lord’s public ministry to the people of Israel con­
sidered precisely as the people of God. Hence, in point of
fact, the name “ Church ” is properly applicable now only to
the chosen people of the New Testament, to the religious
society over which the Bishop of Rome presides as the supreme
visible head. This is the community within which God Him­
self is the supreme Ruler and Teacher.2 It is the company
within which alone the authorized sacrifice of the New Testa­
ment is offered.
The supernatural kingdom of God is the company of men
and women who profess to accept the divine law by which
God directs us to the attainment of the Beatific Vision. God,
of course, is the supreme Ruler of the universe. Thus, in
a sense, the entire created universe, with all the rational and
non-rational creatures within it, may be said to constitute
His kingdom. Properly speaking, however, the term “ kingdom
of God ” is applied to a social unit within which God Himself
is the Supreme Lawgiver.
Understood in this proper sense, the kingdom is the social
unit of men and women who subject themselves to the direc­
tion God gives them so as to bring them to the attainment of
their one ultimate and eternal end. Now, the only ultimate
and everlasting happiness available to men, as a matter of
fact, is to be found in the possession of the Triune God in the
clarity of the Beatific Vision. The law which directs men to
the attainment of this ultimate end must be something super­
natural, since the end itself is supernatural. Because that law
is supernatural, it is definitely not something which men can
observe through the use of their merely natural faculties of
knowledge. It is something which can be known only through
the process of divine revelation here on earth.
Hence the people who make up the kingdom of God on
earth are those who accept as certain, on the authority of
11 Cf. Fenton, “The Meaning of the Name ‘Church,’” in AER, CXXXT,
4 (Oct., 1954), 268-76.

Salvation and lhe Basic Concept oj the Church

149

God Himself revealing, the message in which God’s super­
natural law is incorporated. They are the congregation of
the faithful or of the believers. "l he social unit to which these
people have belonged has always been the one and true
ecclesia.
This supernatural kingdom of God on earth passed through
various stages during the Old Testament times. At the time
of the Incarnation, it was practically or nearly identical with
the Israelitic religious commonwealth. This situation continued
until the moment of Our Lord’s death on the Cross.
At that moment, the old Israelitic commonwealth, the Jewish
nation, definitely rejected Our land and His teaching. By
the force of that rejection, it automatically and completely lost
its status as the congregation of the faithful, it was no longer
the kingdom of God on earth, God’s ecclesia.
But, at that same moment, the society of the disciples which
Our Lord had gathered and organized around Himself during
the course of His public life on earth began to exist as the
true ecclesia. This new society, which Our Lord had originally
formed within the fabric of the old Jewish community, became
completely identified with the supernatural kingdom of God
on earth. It thus began to possess a perfection which the
older community had never enjoyed. It was the true Israel,
the Israel of God. Its people were the people of the new
covenant. It was, and it will remain until the end of time,
the one congregation of the faithful in this world.
According to Our Lord’s own teaching, however, the true
supernatural kingdom of God exists and lives on this earth
only in a preparatory and transitory status. Its real patria
or homeland is in heaven, where it is meant to exist and where
it will exist forever in the glory of the Beatific Vision. In the
cities of this world it lives only in pilgrimage. Here it is the
ecclesia militans, fighting against the forces that oppose it and
that will render its operations difficult until the end of time.
In heaven it will be the ecclesia triumphans, having overcome
these opposing forces completely and forever.
For the understanding of this section of Catholic doctrine

150

The Theological and Historical Background

it is imperative to remember that the social unit which is
now the Church militant is the very same community which
will one day be the Church triumphant. Our Lord taught us
this lesson in His explanation of the parable of the cockle
in the field, one of the great parables of the kingdom.
Who made answer and said to them: He that soweth the good
seed is the Son of man.
And the field is the world. And the good seed are the children
of the kingdom. And the cockle are the children of the wicked one.
And die enemy that sowed them is the devil. But the harvest is
the end of the world. And the reapers are the angels.
Even as the cockle therefore is gathered up and burnt with fire: so
shall it be at the end of the world.
The Son of man shall send his angels: and they shall gather out
of his kingdom all scandals and them that work iniquity.
And shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There, shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their
Father.3

On the day of judgment, according to Our Lord Himself,
His kingdom will be purified. Those who have lived and died
in that kingdom as “ the children of the wicked one ” will be
removed from it forever. These are the Catholics wrho have
passed from this life in the condition of mortal sin, working
for objectives other than the love of God and objectives in
defiance and contempt of God. Such individuals have set
themselves definitely to work for the objectives of the kingdom
of Satan.
Within the kingdom there will remain, to be glorified for­
ever, those who have died in the state of grace either as
members of this kingdom on earth or as people who sincerely
and genuinely desired to be members despite the fact that
in this world they could not actually enter the Church as
members. The desire which this latter group expressed to
God in the form of prayer will be answered. God will give
them what they have asked. The kingdom of God, thus
3 Matt., 13: 37-43.

Salvation, and the Basic Concept of the Church

151

purified and glorified, will exist forever as the Church trium­
phant.
The community which exists in this world as the ecclesia
militans will be the Church triumphant despite the changes
in its condition that will be effected on the last day. After
its purification and glorification it will no longer be plagued
by the disloyal and sinful members who have impeded its
work here on earth. It will no longer be subject to persecution
and suffering inflicted by opposition from the outside. Finally,
and this is most important, it will be no longer subject to
the internal conditions which are attached to it precisely
by reason of its earthly sojourn.
Thus the entire human government of the Church will no
longer have to function in the ecclesia trizimphans. There will
be no more need for the sacraments, which are essentially signs,
in the Church when that company possesses the Good of which
the sacraments are the signs. It is to the Church, in its final
and triumphant status, that these words of the Apocalypse
apply:
And I saw no temple therein. For the Lord God Almighty is
the temple thereof, and the Lamb.
And the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine
in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it: and the Lamb
is the lamp thereof.
And the nations shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the
earth shall bring their glory and honor into it.
And the gates thereof shall not be shut by day: for there shall
be no night there.
And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it.
There shall not enter into it any thing defiled or that worketh
abomination or maketh a lie: but they that are written in the book
of life of the Lamb.4

This citation from the Apocalypse speaks of the Chruch
triumphant as a city. The term “ city,” however, is employed
in the writings of the older ecclesiologists to bring out still
another aspect of the divine teaching about the concept of the
true Church. These earlier writers spoke of the Church as
* Apoc., 21: 22-27.

152

The Theological and Historical Background

the City of God precisely insofar as it is a social unit set against
and opposed by the kingdom of Satan. They summarized
under the heading of “ the City of God ” that portion of
divine doctrine about the Church set forth in the opening
lines of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Humanum genus.
According to this part of Catholic doctrine, the entire human
race since the sin of Adam has been divided into two dis­
tinct and mutually opposed communities. The one is the
kingdom of Satan, the domain of “ the prince of this world."
The other is the kingdom of God, the true Church of Jesus
Christ. During the entire course of history these two communi­
ties have struggled against one another. They will continue
to do so until the day of the final judgment.
Essential to this section of Catholic doctrine is the truth
that every human being who has lived since the sin of Adam
has belonged to one of these two societies. The conflict between
them is the basic conflict of human history. There never has
been, there is not now, and there never will be any group of
human beings not contained within one or the other of these
two groups.
The kingdom of God is composed of those who profess to
accept His supernatural law, incorporated into His revealed
message. Its work is the accomplishment of God’s glory
through the sanctification and the salvation of men.
The work of salvation is the work of the Incarnate Word,
Jesus Christ Our Lord. The kingdom of God, then, is the
company of those who have been incorporated into Christ,
who compose the Body of which He is the Head. It is. in
this state of the New Testament, the visible Catholic Church.
The kingdom of Satan, then, embraces all of those who
have not been incorporated into Christ, and those who have
left or been cast out of His community. Since the sin of
Adam, every person who has been born, with the exception
of Our Lord and of Our Blessed Mother, has entered this
world in the state of original sin. As such, they have begun
their lives within the kingdom of Satan, since it is one of
the consequences of sin or aversion from God that it inevitably

Salvation and the Basic Concept of the Church

153

carries with it a kind of subjection to the leader in the work
of sin, the foremost among the enemies of the living God.
Hence, according to this Catholic teaching, there is no such
thing as entrance into the kingdom ol: God except by way
of a transfer from the kingdom of Satan. And, on the other
hand, no man leaves the kingdom of Satan except to enter
the true and supernatural kingdom ol God. Thus it is only
within the city of God that salvation from sin and from the
eternal death of sin is to be attained.
When the older ccclcsiologists described the Church as the
household of the faith, they brought out die relation to God
and to Our Lord and to each other which has been granted
to those within the kingdom. Those who live within the
true ecclesia are those who have received Our Lord. They
are the people thus described in the Gospel according to St.
John:
He was in the world: and the world was made by him: and the
world knew him not.
He came unto his own: and his own received him not.
But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made
the sons of God, to them that believe in his name.
Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God.3

Our Lord Himself described these people, His disciples, as
His own family. Thus it is recounted in the Gospel according
to St. Matthew:
And one said to him: Behold thy mother and thy brethren stand
without, seeking thee.
But he answering him that told him, said: Who is my mother
and who are my brethren?
And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said:
Behold my mother and my brethren.
For whosoever shall do the will of my Father that is in heaven,
.he is my brother, and sister, and mother.6

The household of the faith has its own family repast, the
Eucharistic banquet, the reality which is the sacrifice of the
B John, 1: 10-13.

‘Malt., 12: 47-50.

154

The Theological and Historical tiackgrouml

true ecclesia of the New Testament. Those who belong to it
are the friends and the intimates of the Lord.
When we consider the Church as Our Lord’s Body, we are
led to see how He is its Founder and Sustainer and Sanctifier.
As the Head of His Mystical Body, He rules and teaches those
within it. They co-operate, each in his assigned station, in a
work which is His own. They act as His instrument in His
accomplishments for God’s glory.
As the Temple of God, the Church is the community within
which the Blessed Trinity resides, in an indwelling appro­
priated to the Holy Ghost. It is the company to which Our
Lord’s promises were made and in which they are fulfilled.
The Four Dimensions

If we are to sum up the teachings about the Church con­
tained in divine revelation, we can do so quite effectively if
we consider the concept of the ecclesia according to four
dimensions.
First, the Church bears a relation to the Triune God, to
the sacred humanity of Christ, to Our Lady, and to the saints.
This we may call the upward dimension.
Second, the Church militant of the New Testament cannot
be properly or adequately described apart from reference to
the kingdom of God, the ecclesia of the Old Testament. This
is the historical dimension of the concept of the true Church.
Third, the Church militant of the New Testament cannot
be adequately conceived or described apart from reference
to the Church triumphant. This is the para-historical dimen­
sion.
Fourth, this Church cannot be adequately conceived and
described apart from reference to the kingdom of Satan, the
social unit which is unalterably opposed to it and within
which all of those who are not incorporated into the Church
are contained. This is the background of the Church.7
7 Cf. Fenton, “ The Church in Adequate Perspective,” in AER, CXXXIII,
4 (Oct., 1955), 258-74.

Salvation and the Basic Concept of the Church

155

There is no such thing as an adequate examination of the
divinely revealed teaching about the nature of the true Ghurch
unless all of these four dimensions are taken into consideration
explicitly. Our awareness of God’s supernatural kingdom
on earth would be quite imperfect and subject to serious con­
fusion were we not to take cognizance of these four distinct
sets of relations.
It goes without saying that we could never begin to appre­
ciate the nature and the dignity of the Church if we failed
to consider the fact that it is genuinely God’s one and only
supernatural kingdom, that it is the Church and the Mystical
Body of Christ, and that it is the realm over which Our Lady
reigns as Queen. Any neglect along this line would result in
a failure to appreciate the powers and the activities of the
Church itself. And, in the same way, it is impossible to know
the Church as God has actually constituted and described it
unless we are clearly aware of the fact that this society of the
disciples, established directly and immediately by Our Lord
during the course of His earthly life, is the continuation and
the final stage on this earth of the supernatural kingdom of
God in Christ which has been in existence since the time of
our first parents.
In exactly the same way, the nature of the ecclesia cannot
be understood apart from an explicit realization of the fact
that the ecclesia militans existing and contending against
opposition here on earth is the very same society which will
one day reign in heaven as the ecclesia triumphans. Our
Lord, in His parables of the kingdom, made it abundantly
clear that the company which will enjoy the Beatific Vision
forever is not a newly constituted group, but the kingdom
which has lived in this world and which will be purified and
prepared on the last day.
Finally, it is an integral part of the revealed teaching about
the Church that this society is one of the two social units
into which the entire human race has been divided since the
time of Adam’s sin. This, incidentally, is the doctrine on
which St. Peter’s command to his hearers on the first Christian

156

The Theological and Historical Background

Pentecost obviously depends. He exhorted his hearers on
that day to save themselves from this “ perverse generation."
The text of the Acts of the Apostles asserts that those who
“received his word were baptized: and there were added in
that day about three thousand souls." s
The “ word ” which these people received was clearly St.
Peter’s exhortation to the people to save themselves from this
“ perverse generation." This “ perverse generation ” was obvi­
ously the kingdom of Satan, the domain of “ the prince ol
this world." The individuals who “ received " this word were
the people who obeyed him and who actually took themselves
out of the domain of God’s spiritual enemy.
This salvation from the kingdom of Satan was accomplished
in the only way possible, by entrance into the true and only
kingdom of God. The people who were saved were added to
the group already in existence, the group which, according to
the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles had counted about
one hundred and twenty men of voting age immediately after
Our Lord’s ascension into heaven. The people who, obeying
St. Peter’s command, saved themselves from the kingdom of
Satan, did not set up any new social group, but “ were added ’’
to this already existent congregation which had begun to exist
as the ecclesia, the one and only kingdom of God on earth,
at the moment of Our Lord’s death on the Cross.
Now, the adequate concept of the Church, the one which
takes explicit cognizance of all four of the requisite dimen­
sions, is such as to bring out with matchless clarity and certi­
tude the doctrine that there is no salvation for anyone outside
the Catholic Church. First of all, it assures us that these four
dimensions of the supernatural kingdom of God on earth
belong to the visible and organized religious community over
which the Bishop of Rome presides as the Vicar of Christ
on earth. The social unit which is the kingdom of God, the
Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, and the realm of Our Lady,
which is the continuation and the final status of the ecclesia
in this world, which is the Church triumphant in its prepara* Acts, 2: 4!.

Salvation and the Basic Concept of the Church.

157

tory and sojourning stage, the ccclesia in pilgrimage awaiting
its call to its eternal patria, which is the one kingdom of God
embracing all those who are not in the “ perverse generation ”
that is the dominion of “ the prince of this world,” is the
visible Roman Catholic Church.
Then it shows us that salvation is possible only by union
with Our Lord and by removal from the domain of the
spiritual enemy of God. This is to be effected by, and only
by, a transfer from the kingdom of Satan into the true Church
of Jesus Christ. And, since the Church triumphant is only
the continuation of the Chinch militant, the ecclesia which
lives now here on earth, the people who attain the Beatific
Vision in the Church triumphant are and can only be the
individuals who have passed from this life “ within ” the
Church militant. That is the true Catholic doctrine, and the
clear teaching of the parables of the kingdom.
Obviously the first of these “ dimensions ” is the one upon
which all the force of the teaching on the Catholic Church’s
necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation ultimately
rests. The Church is that outside of which no one at all can be
saved because it is the ecclesia, the community which constitutes
the one and only supernatural kingdom of the living God,
and because it is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Divine
Redeemer. And this necessity for the attainment of salvation
is a property of the Catholic Church because God, in His
goodness and wisdom, has decreed that this visible society
should be His supernatural kingdom of the New Testament.
When we look at the Church in terms of the four dimensions,
it becomes immediately apparent that this society can be
described and identified precisely in the light of its necessity
for the attainment of eternal salvation. This, as a matter of
fact, was the procedure employed by St. Augustine. His
statement in a sermon delivered to the people of the Church
at Caesarea is an exact expression of Catholic teaching.
Outside of the Catholic Church one can have anything except
salvation. One can have honor. One can have the sacraments. The
“ Alleluia ” can be sung. The response “ Amen ” can be given. One

158

The Theological and Historical Background

can hold to the Gospel, and can have and preach the faith in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. But one
can never find salvation except in the Catholic Church.9

Thus, when the divinely revealed teaching is viewed at all
adequately, the true Church of Jesus Christ is seen as the
social unit within which alone man has access to salvation.
The process of salvation involves a transfer from the kingdom
of Satan into the kingdom of God, which is Our Lord’s true
Church. The attainment of the Beatific Vision, the ultimate
and perfective salvation of man, involves dying “ within ”
the Church militant. The Church militant of the New Testa­
ment is, by God’s own institution, the visible and organized
society we know as the Roman Catholic Church.
Salvation

and

Membership

in the

Church

The authoritative documents of the teaching Church cited
in the first part of this book, particularly the Holy Office
letter Suprema haec sacra, have made it abundantly clear
that, according to God’s revealed message, it is not necessary
to be a member of the Catholic Church at the moment of
death in order to attain to the Beatific Vision. We know that
under certain circumstances a man may be saved if, at the
moment of his death, he is not actually a member of the
Church but only one who intends or wills to be within it.
We know also that this desire or intention of entering the
Church can be effective for the attainment of eternal salvation
even when it is only implicit.
The Suprema haec sacra explains this truth in terms of the
fact that the Catholic Church, like the sacrament of baptism,
is requisite for the attainment of the Beatific Vision, not by
any intrinsic necessity, but by reason of God’s own choice or
institution. Now, when we are considering the adequate
concept of the Lord’s true ecclesia in terms of its necessity for
the attainment of salvation, we should examine this portion
of the Catholic doctrine about it.
’St. Augustine, Sermo ad Caesariensis ecclesiae plebem, 6. MPI., XLIII,
695.

Salvation and lhe Basic Concept <>j lhe Chinch

1 :j9

A thing is said to be necessary for sahation with an intrinsic
necessity when this thing is an essential element or lactor in
the life of sanctifying grace to which the Beatific Vision itself
belongs. Thus divine charity is intrinsically necessary for sal­
vation. The affection of charity is the love of friendship lor
God as He is known supernaturally, in the Trinity of His
Persons. Thus the love of charity is essentially a part of the
life of the Beatific Vision both in heaven, and here in this
world. Where such a love docs not exist, the life of the Beatific
Vision, the life of sanctifying grace, does not exist.
Genuine supernatural faith, that virtue by which we accept
the truths God has revealed as perfectly certain precisely on
His authority, is an essential part of the life of sanctifying
grace during its preparatory status in this world. There can
obviously be no such thing as a supernatural life with refer­
ence to God, known in the Trinity of His Persons, apart from
an awareness of Him in this way. In the patria of heaven,
those who belong to the Church triumphant understand the
Triune God in the Beatific Vision itself. But the Beatific
Vision is precisely the reward of, the thing merited in, the life
of grace in this world. The possession of the Beatific Vision
is incompatible with the status of one in the Church militant.
The Beatific Vision is the direct, intuitive, and clear under­
standing of the Blessed Trinity. And, apart from the Beatific
Vision itself, the only certain knowledge or apprehension of
the Blessed Trinity and of the supernatural order that centers
around the Blessed Trinity is to be found in the acceptance of
a supernaturally revealed message about the realities of this
order. The certain acceptance of that body of revealed truth,
made possible by the gift of God’s grace, is the assent of
divine faith. Thus faith is absolutely requisite for the living
of the supernatural life of grace in its preparatory status in
this world. And, because only those who have passed from
this life living the life of sanctifying grace can attain to the
Beatific Vision, faith is absolutely necessary for the attainment
of eternal salvation.
As as result, there can be no such thing as any substitute

JfiO

The Theological and Historical Background

lor the actual possession of faith and hope and charily as
requisites for the attainment of the life of heaven. A man
could not be saved if he were to have faith and charity merelv
in desire or intention at the moment he passed from this life.
A desire or willingness to believe with the act of faith or to
love God with the affection of charity definitely would not
and could not take the place of faith and charity themselves.
If a man is to attain eternal salvation he must possess genuine
supernatural faith and the true and supernatural love of
charity at the moment of his death.
Now, faith and hope and charity are factors or elements
entering into the composition of the Catholic Church itself.
Together they constitute what the older theologians called the
inward or spiritual bond of unity within the Church, joining
men to God and to each other within this company. Further­
more, they are intrinsically or absolutely necessary as com­
ponents of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth. There could
be no such thing as the ecclesia, the people of the Covenant,
the company of men and women who subject themselves to
the divine law directing them to the supernatural end of the
Beatific Vision apart from the acceptance of that supernatural
message in faith and obedience to it in charity.
Furthermore, faith, hope and charity are completely insepar­
able from the ecclesia as factors uniting those who belong to
the supernatural kingdom of God on earth with one another.
There could be no such thing as a social unit identifiable as
the true Church of Jesus Christ apart from the inward or
spiritual bond of union of faith and hope and charity.
In the composition of the Church militant of the New
Testament there are, however, two distinct bonds of unity,
two sets of forces tending to unite men to God and to each
other in Jesus Christ. Besides this inward or spiritual bond,
there is another, designated by some of the classical theologians
as the outward or bodily bond of unity within the true Church.
This outward bond consists in the baptismal profession of the
faith, access to or communion in the sacraments, and subjec­
tion to the legitimate pastors of the Church.

Salvation and the Basic Concept of the Church

161

This second or outward bond of union within the true
Church is something made necessary in the supernatural life
only because of God’s free choice. None of its elements, taken
in themselves, are necessarily parts of the life of sanctifying
grace. There could have been an ecclesia, a supernatural
kingdom of God on earth, in which these elements would not
have entered. And, as a matter of fact, during its various Old
Testament stages, God’s ecclesia on this earth did not contain
the factors which go to compose the outward bond of ecclesi­
astical unity in the Church militant of the New Testament.
These factors actually belong to the composition of the
true ecclesia in its final status in this world only because God,
in His infinite wisdom and mercy, freely decreed that they
should do so. He established His supernatural kingdom of the
New Testament as a visible and organized society. He con­
stituted it with this definite set of factors which go to make
up the outward or visible bond of unity within it. He formed
His Church of the New Testament in such a way that member­
ship in it depended entirely on the possession of that outward
bond of ecclesiastical unity.
Because the factors that enter into membership in the
Church militant of the New Testament belong to the composi­
tion of the true ecclesia only by reason of God’s free choice,
and not because they enter into the actual life of sanctifying
grace, it has pleased God in His goodness and mercy to allow
men to have the benefits of this membership when it is really
impossible for them to attain the membership in itself and
when they sincerely desire to enter and to remain within His
ecclesia. If there is a sincere and supernatural will to come
and to stay within the true Church of Jesus Christ, the man
who has that desire will realize that the good he seeks is
something only God will be able to give. The expression of
that desire to God in the form of a petition is the act of
prayer.
Now prayer, the act of worship which consists in the petition
of fitting things from God, is infallibly efficacious, according

162

The Theological and Historical Background

to Our Lord's own promise.10 It is infallibly effective for the
attainment of the individual benefits sought in it when certain
conditions have been fulfilled. The prayer must be said for
one’s self, and must seek either eternal salvation of something
necessary for the attainment of salvation if it is to obtain
its effect without fail. It must also be pious, that is, enlightened
by true divine faith and motivated by the theological act
of hope and by some supernatural love of benevolence for
God. Finally, it must be persevering, that is, it must be the
expression of a genuine desire or will of the person offering
the prayer.11
When a man desires or prays lor entrance into the true
Church of Jesus Christ, even when this objective is appre­
hended only in an implicit way by the person praying, the
first two of these conditions are necessarily fulfilled. The
prayer is offered for the person himself, and it seeks a good
which is truly requisite for the attainment of eternal salvation.
In order that this prayer for entrance into the Church may
be effective for salvation, the prayer and the intention behind
it must be enlightened by faith and motivated or animated
by charity. And it must also be a persevering prayer.
If a person who is praying in this way should die before
he can actually become a member of the Church, then by
the very force of his prayer, he will die as one contained
“ within ” the Church by will or desire. And if the person
who is praying in this way dies loving God and his neighbor
with the love of charity, that person leaves this world “ within ”
the true Church of Christ on earth and will remain in the
Church triumphant for all eternity.
It must not be imagined that such an individual has his
prayers answered only by the granting of a fictitious connec­
tion with the true ecclesia. The individual who accepts God's
supernatural revelation with the certain assent of faith and
who loves God with the affection of charity is actually and
< !. Mark, 11: 24; John, 16: 23.
’’ Cf. Fenton, The Theology of Prayer (Milwaukee: The Bruce Pub­
lishing Co., 1939) , pp. 206-15.

Salvation and the Basic Concept of the Church

168

necessarily ordering his conduct in accord with the corporate
activity of the true Church itself. We must never lose sight
of the teaching about the nature of the true Church set forth
in the opening passage of Pope Leo’s encyclical Humanum
genus if we are to understand this section of Catholic doctrine.
According to that document, the kingdom of Cod, which is
the true Church of Jesus Christ, “ steadfastly contends for
truth and virtue ” in such a way that “ those who desire from
their heart to be united with it so as to gain salvation must
of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their
whole mind and with an entire will.” 12
Now, it is the basic contention of that part of Catholic
doctrine presented in this passage of Pope Leo XIH’s encyclical
that this work of God’s supernatural kingdom in this world
is continuously and bitterly opposed by the kingdom of Satan.
The non-member of the Church who has faith and charity and
who sincerely desires to enter the Church has organized his
life to fight on the side of the ecclesia for the objectives which
the ecclesia seeks.
It must be remembered that God’s supernatural kingdom
here on earth has no corporate allies in its warfare against the
kingdom of “ the prince of this world.” There is not, and
there never will be, another social unit fighting alongside the
true Church for the attainment of those ends for which the
Church contends. If a man really fights for truth and virtue,
if he really works to serve and to glorify the Triune God, then
he is fighting on the side of, and in a very real sense “ within,”
the true Church itself.
And, if a man really has divine charity, he is actually fighting
this battle for the Church. The virtue of charity is the ultimate
motivating force in the life and conduct of the man who
possesses it. It is something intensely and essentially active.
If a man really loves God with the affection of charity, his
activity is necessarily directed toward the objective of pleasing
God. If, on the other hand, a man is not working to please
12 The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII, p. 83.

164

The Theological and Historical Background

God, to glorify and serve Him, this man does not truly love
God with the love of charity.
The situation of the person who is not a member of the
Church, but wrho is “ within ” it by intention, desire or prayer,
can be understood best in comparison with the condition of a
Catholic in the state of mortal sin. Despite the fact that he
is a member of the society which “ steadfastly contends for
truth and virtue,” this individual’s will is turned away from
God and strives for objectives opposed to those sought by
the Church. He is one of 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.” In
other words, in spite of his membership in the supernatural
kingdom of God on earth, he is actually working and fighting
for the things the kingdom of Satan seeks.
The ultimate orientation of a man’s activity comes from the
supreme intention of his will. For the man in the state of
grace, this supreme intention is the love of charity. It is
the desire to please God in all things. The man in the state
of mortal sin has some other supreme objective. There is
some end he seeks in contempt of God. Even though some
of his acts are good in themselves, ultimately his life is directed
to the attainment of that end, which is the purpose of the
kingdom of Satan.
If a member of the Church should die in the state of mortal
sin, he will be condemned forever to hell, the homeland of
Satan’s kingdom. He will, in other words, be assigned forever
to the social unit in which and with which he was fighting at
the tnoment of his passage from this life. In exactly the same
way, the non-member of the Church who dies believing God’s
message with the assent of faith, loving God with the affection
of charity, and sincerely willing and praying to enter God’s
ecclesia, will live forever in the social unit within which he
willed and prayed to live and for which he was fighting at the
moment of his death.

HI
SOME SOURCES OF MISUNDERSTANDING

This book would not be complete without at least a quick
indication of the historical accidents which have brought about
inadequate and even inaccurate teachings about the Church’s
necessity for salvation in some sections of the popular Catholic
literature of our day. It is quite evident to anyone who is well
acquainted with popular Catholic writing during the past
century that this dogma has been misunderstood and misin­
terpreted more extensively and more profoundly during this
period than any other portion of Catholic teaching. Even
today, after the appearance of the Mystici Corporis Christi,
the Suprema haec sacra, and the Humani generis, we still
sometimes encounter objectionable interpretations of this
doctrine.
Most of the faulty explanations of this dogma stem from a
lamentably inadequate notion of the Church itself. During
the past century there have been a good many Catholic writers
who could never seem to realize the complete truth of the
doctrine that the visible Roman Catholic Church is actually
the same thing as the Mystical Body of Christ and the super­
natural kingdom of God on earth. The lesson taught in the
Mystici Corporis Christi and reiterated in the Humani generis
was badly needed in the world of Catholic letters.
Now, it is quite apparent to any student of the history of
sacred theology that there is no other section of Catholic
doctrine in which such widespread and profound misunder­
standing occurred. There has been no such fairly widespread
misinterpretation of revealed truth within, for instance, the
confines of the treatises on the Blessed Trinity and the Incar­
nation. The fact that such a condition was possible on this
particular subject, within the theological treatise on God's
Church, certainly requires explanation. And the reason for
this condition is quite manifest in the history of the treatise
de ecclesia.
165

I 66

The Theological and Historical Background

In the first place, it must be remembered that the theological
treatise on the Church was one of the last sections ol dogmatic
theology to take scientific form. Scholastic theology has been
studied intensively since the twelfth century. For all intents
and purposes, the treatises which have been investigated and
written up most perfectly were those contained in Peter the
Lombard’s Libri sententiarum and later in St. Thomas
Aquinas’ Summa theologica.
In the old scholastic arrangement of ecclesiastical studies
there was at least as much about the Church in Gratian’s
Decretum as there was in the Four Books of Sentences or in
the Summa theologica. And, under these old conditions, the
nearest thing to a scholastic treatise on the Church was to be
found incorporated into some occasional writing, like Moneta
of Cremona’s controversial work against the Waldensians and
the Cathari or the Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed by St.
Thomas. The De regimine Christiano by James of Viterbo
came out at the very beginning of the fourteenth century.
It was a complete book, but it was essentially and primarily
polemical in purpose.
It was not until the middle of the fifteenth century that
the first well-developed treatise on the Church in scholastic
literature appeared. This was the famous Summa de ecclesia,
written by the Dominican Cardinal John de Turrecremata. It
too had a controversial objective, but it attained its purpose
by means of a thorough scholastic study of what God has
revealed about the nature and the characteristics of His
kingdom on earth.
The Summa de ecclesia has always been a rare book. It
was last published in Venice in 1561. It was never commented
and explained in the way the Four Books of Sentences and
the Summa theologica have been. If it had been used as a
source book for a genuine study and development of the
scholastic treatise on the Church, the history of this treatise
would certainly have been different.
Actually the Summa de ecclesia was never used as it might
have been and should have been because of the historical

Sonie Sources of Misunderstanding

l ii ι

accident of the Reformation. Toward die end ol the hl teen th
century, the theologians of the Catholic Church became en­
gaged in the most serious controversy that has ever centered
around the treatise de ecclesia. The Protestant writers de­
fended the thesis that the true and genuine supernatural
kingdom of God on earth was not an organized society at all,
but merely the sum-total oii all the good men and women in
this world. They classified their own religious organizations,
those of the Lutherans, the Calvinists and the like, as merely
voluntary societies which could be helpful to people who were
already within the ecclesia through membership in what they
called the “ invisible Church.”
The Catholic writers who first opposed the Protestant
polemicists successfully defended the revealed truth that God,
in His wisdom and mercy, has actually constituted the one
and only true ecclesia of the New Testament as an organized
society, the religious unit which is described in the Acts of
the Apostles and which exists now as the Roman Catholic
Church. But these first Catholic champions of truth in the
controversy against the Protestant authors were primarily
polemicists themselves. Their works were not, and did not
claim to be, anything like complete or adequate treatises on
the true Church. They merely set out to unmask the errors
defended by their opponents. They did not explain those
points on which there was no controversy whatsoever. Perhaps
the best examples of this procedure are to be found in Michael
Vehe’s Assertio sacrorum quorundam axiomatum, John Eek’s
Enchiridion locorum communium, and especially in Peter
Soto’s Assertio catholicae fidei circa articulos confessionis
nomine Illustrissimi Ducis Wirtenbergensis oblatae per legatos
eius Concilio Tridentino,
It is a matter of fact that the Protestant writers were per­
fectly convinced that there is no salvation attainable outside
the true Church of God on earth. Hence there was no need
for the Catholic theologians to dispute them on this particular
point. And, since the writings of these Catholic theologians
were directed at that time primarily and essentially to the

KhS

The Theological and Historical Background

refutation of the Protestant position, the dogma on the neces­
sity of the Church for the attainment of salvation was not
treated at all extensively in these writings.
The next generation of Catholic theologians who wrote
about the Church included some of the most brilliant men
God has ever given to the study of sacred theology. Among
them were such figures as Thomas Stapleton, John Wiggers,
Melchior Cano, Francis Suarez, St. Robert Bellarmine, Gregory
of Valencia, Dominic Banez, Adam Fanner, and Francis
Sylvius. Some writers of the first generation of Counter­
Reformation theologians had recently begun to organize the
content of this Catholic controversial teaching, l he Louvain
teachers John Driedo and fames Latomus were pre-eminent in
this group. The men of the second generation developed and
explained what these earlier writers had set forth.
Some of these second generation writers, like Stapleton,
organized their teachings into monographs. Others, like Cano,
St. Robert and Sylvius, incorporated them into more or less
extensive summaries of Catholic controversy. Wiggers and
Bânez and others, however, inserted this controversial the­
ology de ecclesia into their scholastic commentaries on St.
Thomas’ Summa theologica. This tactic was destined to have
immense repercussions in the history of the scholastic treatise
de ecclesia.
Of course, at that time no real place had been found in the
actual organization of the Summa theologica for a tractatus
de ecclesia. Wiggers, Banez, Gregory of Valencia, and Tan­
ner, however, attempted to make a place by inserting this
treatise as a kind of appendix after the matter treated by
St. Thomas in the first question of his Secunda secundae. In
every case, however, the material thus incorporated into a
commentary on the Summa, a work of the highest order in
the field of speculative scholastic theology, was the same
essentially controversial material which polemicists like St.
Robert Bellarmine and Francis Sylvius had included in their
Controversiae. It was, in other words, the development of
the teaching which had been contained in the works of the

Sume Sources of Misunderstanding

169

original Counter-Reformation theologians who had, for all
intents and purposes, limited themselves to the point of
Catholic doctrine which had been directly opposed by the
Protestant heresiarchs. No one of these writings has anything
like an adequate treatment of the dogma that there is no
salvation outside the Catholic Church.
The tradition which had been epitomized and perfected in
Turrecremata’s Summa de ecclesia had given special attention
to this dogma. After all, the necessity for the attainment of
salvation is one of the basic characteristics of God’s super­
natural kingdom on earth. Turrecremata gave adequate atten­
tion to it, just as he gave adequate attention to the task of
explaining the characteristics of the true Church by describing
the titles applied to this social unit and to its members in
Scripture and in divine apostolic tradition.
In the works of the great Counter-Reformation theologians,
however, the dogma is mentioned primarily with reference
to the teaching that neither catechumens nor excommunicated
persons are members of the true Church. Theologians like
Stapleton and St. Robert, who were the first to use the termin­
ology which was to become classical, take cognizance of the
dogma when they consider objections to their own teaching.
St. Robert taught rightly that a catechumen is not a member
of the Church. He likewise upheld the Catholic truth that
a catechumen can be saved if he should die before he has
the opportunity to receive the sacrament of baptism. Looking
at the dogma that no one can be saved outside the Church
as an objection urged against his own teaching, St. Robert,
following the example of Thomas Stapleton, asserts that the
dogma means that a man cannot be saved if he is not within
the Church either in reality as a member, or in voto as one
who desires or intends to become a member.1
Such, following the example of Stapleton and of St. Robert,
was the procedure of all the classical ecclesiologists of the
Counter-Reformation period. And, despite the fact that
1 Cf. St. Robert, De ecclesia militante,
3; Stapleton, Principiorum
fidei doctrinalium demonstratio methodica ('Paris, 1579) , p. 314.

170

The Theological and Historical Background

neither Stapleton nor St. Robert produced textbooks of scho­
lastic theology, their approach to the dogma of the Church’s
necessity for salvation and their very terminology entered into
the fabric of these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts
of scholastic theology. These commentaries developed, through
“Courses” like those produced by John of St. Thomas, the
Salmanticences, Tournely and Billuart, into the nineteenthand twentieth-century manuals of dogmatic theology. The
tractatus de ecclesia in these modern manuals was basically
the kind of thing which had been inserted into the commen­
taries of Wiggers, Banez, and Tanner. And, in these modern
manuals, the treatment of the dogma that there is no one
saved outside the Church is of the sort to be found in the
works of St. Robert and of Sylvius, and not of the type found
in Turrecremata’s Summa de ecclesia.
That in itself has been highly unfortunate for the well-being
of the scholastic theology about the Church. The teaching
that a man could be in the Church only in intention or desire
and not as a member and still attain eternal salvation “ with­
in ” this society is, of course, tremendously important. It is
a part of Catholic doctrine about the nature of God’s ecclesia.
But the learning of this section of Catholic truth in no way
makes up for neglect of the equally important doctrine that
the Church is essentially, as actually instituted by God Him­
self, the vehicle and, as it were, the terminus of the process of
salvation. Because the modern manuals took the tradition of
Stapleton and of St. Robert to the exclusion of that of Turre­
cremata, they were doctrinally impoverished by an inadequate
explanation of the dogma.
The modern writers whose aberrations were reproved in
the Singulari quadam and more recently in the Humani
generis had available to them in their contemporary manuals
of sacred theology a highly inadequate exposition of the dogma.
All of the attention was focussed, in these manuals, on bringing
out the fact that membership in the Church was not necessary
with the necessity of means for the attainment of eternal life.

Some Sources ol i\Iisunderslandin^

171

There was almost nothing in them to show how the Church
itself, by its very institution, belongs in the scheme of salvation.
This impoverishment of the tractatus de ecclesia as a result
of the historical accident of tire controversy against the Protes­
tants was not by any means the only, or even the most serious,
blow dealt to the explanation of the dogma of the necessity
of the Church in the literature of scholastic theology. One
of the most tragic, yet in some ways comical, stories recounted
in the history of theology has to do with a highly important
misunderstanding of the teaching set forth by St. Robert him­
self in the most important of his writings, the book De ecclesia
militante. This misunderstanding had most unfortunate conse­
quences in the teaching about the necessity of the Church for
the attainment of salvation.
St. Robert’s De ecclesia militante is essentially devoted to
the defense of one thesis: the truth that God’s true and only
ecclesia of the New Testament is an organized and visible social
unit. This thesis is presented in the second chapter of the book,
and all the rest of the work is devoted to a detailed and
classically effective demonstration of this truth. It will be
impossible to understand how St. Robert’s teaching was mis­
interpreted without a knowledge of what he actually said in
that second chapter.
The first part of this chapter “ On the Definition of the
Church ” is devoted to the description and the refutation of
the various theories evolved by heretics to explain the com­
position of the true Church militant of the New Testament.
St. Robert deals with five of these theories, and then sets forth
his own teaching, which is true Catholic doctrine. This is
the pertinent section of the second chapter.
But it is our teaching that there is only one ecclesia, and not two,
and that this one and true Church is the assembly of men bound
together by the profession of the same Christian faith and the
communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of the legitimate
pastors, and especially that of the Roman Pontiff, the one Vicar
of Christ on earth. From this definition it is easy to infer which
men belong to the Church and which do not belong to it. There
are three parts of this definition; the profession of the true faith,

i 72

Th e, Theological and Historical Background

the communion of the sacraments, and subjection to the Roman
Pontiff, the legitimate pastor.
By reason of the first part all infidels, both those who have nevei
been in the Church, such as Jews, Turks, and pagans; and those who
have been in it and have left it, as heretics and apostates, arc ex·
chided. By reason of the second part catechumens and exiommum
cated persons are excluded, because the former are not yet admitted
to the communion of the sacraments, while (he latter have’ been
sent away from it. By reason of the third part there are excluded
the schismatics who have the faith and the sacraments, but who
are not subject to the legitimate pastor and who thus profess the
faith and receive the sacraments outside [of the Church]. All others
are included [within the Church in the light of the definition] even
though they be reprobates, sinful and impious men.
Now there is this difference between our teaching and all the
others [the “ definitions ” offered by the various heretics, and dis­
cussed in the first section of this second chapter of the De ecclesia
militante}, that all the others require internal virtues to constitute
a man “ within ” the Church, and hence make the true Church
invisible. But, despite the fact that we believe that all the virtues,
faith, hope, charity, and the rest, are to be found within the Church,
we do not think that any internal virtue is required to bring it
about that a man can be said absolutely to be a part of the true
Church of which the Scriptures speak, but [that w'hat is required
for this] is only the outward profession of the faith and the com­
munion of the sacraments, which are perceptible by the senses.
For the Church is as visible and palpable an assembly of men as
the assembly of the Roman people or the Kingdom of France or the
Republic of the Venetians.
We must note what Augustine says in his Breviculus collationis,
where he is dealing with the conference of the third day, that the
Church is a living body, in which there is a soul and a body. And
the internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, faith, hope, charity, and the
rest are the soul. The external profession of the faith and the
communication of the sacraments are the body. Hence it is that
some are of the soul and of the body of the Church, and hence
joined both inwardly and outwardly to Christ the Head, and such
people are most perfectly within the Church. They are, as it were,
living members in the body, although some of them share in this
life to a greater extent, and others to a lesser extent, while still
others have only the beginning of life and, as it were, sensation
without movement, like the people who have only faith without
charity.
Again, some are of the soul and not of the body, as catechumens

Some Sources of Misunderstand in,

173

and excommunicated persons if they have faith and charity, as
they can have them.
And, finally, some are of lise body and not of lhe soul, as those
who have no internal virtue, but who still by reason of some
temporal hope or fear, profess the 1'aidi and communicate in the
sacraments under the rule of the pastois. And such individuals arc
like hairs or fingernails or evil licjuids in a human body.
Consequently, our definition takes in only this last way of being­
in the Church, because this is required as a minimum in order
that a man may be said to be a part of the visible Church.2

In the passage just quoted, St. Robert Bellarmine sets out
to explain and to define the thesis he is going to defend and
explain throughout the rest of the book De ecclesia militante.
The outstanding talent of this great Doctor of tiie Church is
precisely his power of forcefid and clear exposition. In the
section we have just cited, that talent was exercised as perfectly
as it is in any section of his works.
St. Robert contends that the one and only supernatural
kingdom of God on earth, the ecclesia spoken of in the Scrip­
tures, has been constituted by God as a society composed of
members or parts whose appurtenance to this company is
manifest to all men. He asserts that the factors by which a
man is constituted as a member or a part of this company
are the profession of the true Christian faith, access to the
sacraments, and subjection to the Roman Pontiff. The group
which is God’s one and only ecclesia in this world is actually
the company of men who have these factors of unity.
He acknowledges the presence within the Church of faith,
hope, charity, and the other supernatural virtues. Furthermore
he realizes that these infused virtues themselves constitute
another bond of unity with Our Lord and among His disciples.
Nevertheless he insists that this spiritual or inward bond of
unity is not the factor which constitutes a man as a part or a
member of the Church militant of the New Testament.
Yet, despite the perfection of St. Robert’s teaching and the
clarity of his exposition, this section of the second chapter of
his De ecclesia militante was destined to be the source of
2 De ecclesia militante, c. 2.

17-1

The Theological and Historical Background

serious and highly unfortunate misunderstanding by subse­
quent theologians. The weak part of this, perhaps the most
important single passage in the writings of any post-Tridentine
theologian, was St. Robert’s use of the terms “ soul ” and
“ body ” with reference to the Church.
In the first place, St. Robert’s reference to St. Augustine’s
Breviculus collationis is lamentably inexact. There is no such
statement as “ the Church is a living body, in which there is
a soul and a body ” to be found in any part of the Breviculus
collationis. In a subsequent chapter of the De ecclesia mili­
tante, St. Robert again attributes this soul-body dichotomy to
this particular book by St. Augustine, and there he indicates
the sentence to which he obviously refers here as well as in
the later chapter. In the ninth chapter of the De ecclesia
militante \\!e find the following passage.
Because of these sources [a citation from one of St. Augustine’s
works and references to other statements made by him] not only
Brenz and Calvin, but even some Catholics imagine that there are
two Churches, but this is only imagination. For neither the Scrip­
tures nor Augustine ever indicate two Churches, but they always
speak of only one. Now, in the Breviculus collationis, in the account
of the conference of the third day, when the Donatists were urging
against the Catholics the calumny that the Catholics taught that
there are two Churches, one containing only the good, and another
containing good people along with evil individuals; the Catholics
retorted that they had never dreamed that there were two Churches,
but that they had only distinguished two parts or periods of the
Church. There are parts, because good people belong to the Church
in one way, and bad people in another. For the good people are
the interior part and, as it were, the soul of the Church. The bad
people are the outward part and, as it were, the body [of the Church].
And they gave the example of the inward and the outward man,
who are not two men, but two parts of the same man.
Distinguishing the periods of the Church, they say that the Church
exists in one way now, and that it will exist in a different way after
the resurrection. For now it has both good and evil [members]. Then
it will have only the good. And they gave as an example Christ,
who. although always the same, was mortal and subject to suffering
prior to His resurrection but, after it, is immortal and not subject
to suffering.3
s Ibid., c. 9.

Some Sources of M isunderstandin g

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[

175

With this passage from the ninth chapter of the De ecclesia
militante before us, it is quite easy to find the passage of the
Breviculus collationis to which St. Robert appealed to justify
his use of the expression “ body of the Church " and “ soul of
the Church.” Here is the actual teaching of the Breviculus
collationis.
They [the Catholics] did not say that this Church which now has
evil members interspersed within it is distinct from the kingdom
of God, where there will be no evil members; but [they said] that
the Church exists in one way now, and is going to exist in another
way in the future. Now it has evil men mingled within it. Then
it will not have them. Likewise now it is mortal, in that it is
made up of mortal men. Then it will be immortal in that no
one within it will die even a bodily death. In the same way there
are not two Christs just because Me first died and afterwards was
immortal. And they also spoke of the outward and the inward man,
who, although they are different, still cannot be said to be two
men. There is even less reason to say that there arc two Churches,
since these very same good persons who now suffer the evil men
mingled among them and die as people who are going to rise again
are the ones who then xvill have no evil members mingled with
them and will be completely immortal.4

In this passage the word “ soul ” does not occur at all. The
word “ body ” is found once, but with a meaning completely
different from any it might have when employed in the expression “ body of the Church.” In this section of the Breviculus
collationis the w’ord is used in a clause explaining that the
Church triumphant is called immortal “ quod in ea nullus
esset vel corpore moriturus.” St. Augustine has used the word
in explaining the Catholic teaching that the Church triumphant is truly immortal because none of its members will be
subject to the spiritual death of sin or even to bodily death.
It would, of course, be grossly inaccurate to say that St.
Robert misquoted the Breviculus collationis. He was a man
of his own time and, in line with the customs of the period
in which he lived, he referred to older writings in a way that
4 St. Augustine, Breviculus collationis cum Donatistis. coll. 3, c. 10, n. 20.
MPL, XLIII, 635.

176

The Theological and Historical Background

would be considered quite unacceptable according to the
stricter standards of modern scholarship. The teaching he
attributed to this section of the Breviculus collationis is
actually to be found in that document, at least in an implicit
manner. But St. Robert couched that teaching in his own
terminology and, without quoting his document verbatim,
wrote as though his own terminology as well as the truths
expressed in that terminology were to be found in the original
source.
St. Robert obviously was fond of employing the “body”
and “ soul ’’ dichotomy to explain and illustrate various dis­
tinctions within the Church. In the two passages quoted from
the De ecclesia militante in this book, we find the term
“ body ” used with reference to the Church in three ways,
and the word “ soul ” in two. He speaks of the Church itself
as “a living body.’’ Despite the fact that this terminology is
not found in the Breviculus collationis, as St. Robert’s manner
of speaking would imply that it was, it is a standard expression
used to describe the Church of God. Basically, of course, it
is the name of the Church employed in the epistles of St.
Paul. The Church is such that it can accurately be designated
under the metaphor of a living body, the body of Christ.
In the very same sentence in which he speaks of the Church
as “ a living body,” St. Robert states that “ there is a soul
and a body ” within the Church. This “ body ” in the Church
is described as consisting in “ the external profession of the
faith and the communication of the sacraments.” The “ soul ”
within the Church, according to the De ecclesia militante, is
constituted by “ the internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, faith,
hope, charity, and the rest.”
He then goes on to explain the function of the “ body ” and
the “ soul ” that he has described as existing within the living
body that is the true Church. He tells us that “ some are of
the soul and of the body of the Church, and hence joined both
inwardly and outwardly to Christ, the Head.” In other words,
in this second chapter of the De ecclesia militante, “ soul ”
and “ body ” are metaphorical names applied to two distinct

Some Sources o/ MLimdcrs/tmdmg

177

sets of forces or factors that function, as bonds of unity within
the Church militant of the New Testament. A person who
is what St. Robert calls “ de corpore ecclesiae ” is one united
to Our Lord in His Mystical Body by the profession of the
true faith, access to the sacraments, and subjection to legiti­
mate ecclesiastical authority. The individual who is “ de anima
ecclesiae ” is joined to Our Lord in His Church by all “ the
internal gifts of the Holy Ghost,” or at least by genuine divine
faith.
St. Robert was not by any means the first of the Counter­
Reformation theologians to incorporate an explanation of
these two factors or bonds of unity within the Church into
his defense of the Catholic position. Some teaching along this
line had always been a necessary part of the delense ol Catholic
truth against opponents who claimed that the true super­
natural kingdom of God of the New Testament was not an
organized society at all, but was merely the entire group of
men and women in the state of grace. St. Augustine had faced
a similar problem in his controversy against the Donatists,
and his writings were freely used by the Catholic writers who
defended the Church against the Protestant polemicists.
Two of the earlier Counter-Reformation theologians, John
Driedo and James Latomus, both professors at Louvain, pre­
pared the way for St. Robert by their work in describing these
two bonds of unity within the true Church. Driedo spoke
of them in this passage from his famous work, De ecclesiasticis
scripturis et dogmatibus.
Augustine teaches in the seventh book [On Baptism] against the
Donatists that there are two ways of being in the House of God
or in the Church. One way is to be in it as a member in the body
of justice, that is, as one sharing in the spiritual life or joined with
the other members in the spirit of charity. The other way to be
in the House of God, or in the Church, is to be attached to the other
members as the chaff is to the grain.5

Driedo goes on to explain that people must be considered
5 Driedo, De eccelsiasticis scripturis el. dogmatibus
IV, c. 2, p. 517.

(Louvain, 1530),

Some Sources of Misunderstanding

178

179

The Theological and Historical Background

to be in the Church or, as we would say today, to be members
of the Church if four conditions are fulfilled. The members
are those who are “ visibly attached to the Church by the
sacrament of faith,” living peaceably with the Christian people,
not having been expelled from the Church, and not having
left it. His teaching on this point is exactly what St. Robert
was to give in his De ecclesia militante half a century later.
The outward or visible bond of unity within the Church,
the reality to which St. Robert attached the name “ body of
the Church,” is described by Driedo as a joining “according
to a kind of visible form of the Christian faith.” What St.
Robert called “the soul of the Church” appears in the De
ecclesiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus as “ the unity of the
spirit and the bond (vinculum) of charity.” Catholics in the
state of mortal sin remain joined to the Church in a bodily
way (corporaliter), although they are inwardly separated
from it.
James Latomus refers to these two bonds of union within
the Church as the bodily communication and the spiritual
communication.
All ecclesiastical communication is either bodily or spiritual. The
spiritual communication belongs to those who arc in the house as
composing the house itself. This is the communication of those
who possess charity and who are united to the one God and among
themselves. Likewise this spiritual communication pertains to those

who are in the house, but who are not parts of the house itself.
These are still spiritually joined to the parts of the house; and,
on the other hand, the parts of the house are joined to them in
Catholic peace. Although this Catholic peace is the effect of charity,
its extension is far greater than that of charity, and it is found in
some persons in whom charity does not exist. I mean charity of
a pure heart, through which the Holy Ghost dwells in a man’s
heart. Through this union the bad Catholic shares even spiritually
in many gifts which the heretic and the schismatic do not share. The
bad Catholic is deprived of these gifts when he is justly excommuni­
cated and delivered over to Satan.
Likewise the bodily communication is divided. There is a certain
bodily communication according to place, and in a common life
and in the active and passive communication of the visible sacra­

;
ί

ments. There is another bodily communication of superior and
subject.6

In the field of ecclesiology it is St. Robert Bellarmine’s
special glory that he clarified and perfected the teachings of
Latomus and of Driedo on this particular section of the
treatise on the Church, and used this teaching as the key
to his classical definition of the Church in terms of its member­
ship. What turned out to be quite unfortunate for the under­
standing of St. Robert’s teaching by subsequent theologians
was his application of the terms “ body ” and “ soul ” to the
two bonds of union within the Church which had been
recognized and described by his predecessors.
It is one of the ironical twists of history that St. Robert,
pre-eminent among the writers of the Catholic Church for
the clarity of his expression, should have offered the occasion
for such serious misunderstanding. There can be no doubt
whatsoever about the magnitude of his accomplishment in
the line of clarity in his exposition of the two bonds of
ecclesiastical unity. In effect, Latomus and Driedo had taught
in what would be regarded today as a highly esoteric fashion.
Their theses were couched in the words and phrases of St.
Augustine, and a man would have to be fairly well aware of
what St. Augustine had written, particularly in his contro­
versial writings against the Donatists and in his In epistulam
loannis ad Parthos in order to understand the full import of
what either Latomus or Driedo had written. St. Robert, on
the contrary, wrote effectively and clearly so that anyone
capable of reading Latin would have no difficulty in grasping
what he had to say.
It would have been easier for him and much more profitable
for subsequent theologians if he had simply named the two
bonds of unity in the Church for what they actually are.
His brilliant younger contemporary, Francis Sylvius of Douai,
did exactly that. Sylvius spoke of a twofold colligatio within
e Latomus, in his Ad Oecolampadium responsio, in the Opera (Louvain,
1550) , 131''.

180

The Theological and Historical Background

the Church militant of the New Testament. He stated that:
“ One is internal, of minds, through faith and through the
common affection which is called in the Second Epistle of
St. Peter the ' love of the brotherhood (amor fraternitatis) .’ ”
And he explained that “ the other bond of union is external,
consisting in the administration and the reception of the sacra­
ments and in other matters pertaining to the worship of God
and to the administration of the Church.” 7
Obviously Sylvius, like many of his contemporaries, did not
agree with St. Robert in his concept of membership in the
Church. The Douai theologian was mistaken on this point,
but he was much more felicitous than St. Robert had been
in designating the factors which unite men with Our Lord
and to each other in God’s supernatural kingdom on earth.
The brilliant and distinguished Louvain theologian John
Wiggers actually used and properly explained St. Robert’s
own terminology.
And so the Church exists with, as it were, a twofold form, one
internal and the other, in a way, external. For it has some char­
acteristics that correspond to the soul and its perfections and orna­
ments, and still others that have an analogy with the external form
of the body, as with its figures and facial properties and movements.
Properly, faith corresponds to the soul of the Church. To the
ornaments of the soul there correspond charity and the other virtues
that accompany it and that belong to the dowry and the perfection
of the Church. To the body there correspond the external profession
of faith, the works of brotherly love, the communion of the sacra­
ments, and perhaps other characteristics.8

In the course of the history of theology, however, St. Robert’s
expressions “ soul ” and “ body ” of the Church were not
destined to receive the kind of treatment accorded them by
Wiggers. They were doomed to serve as instruments for the
reversal of St. Robert’s teaching by theologians who, when
they employed this part of St. Robert’s terminology, seemed
to imagine that they were actually repeating or at least de7 Sylvius, Controversiarum Liber Tertius, in his Opera omnia (Antwerp,
1698), V, 237.
8 Wiggers, Commentaria de virtutibus theologicis (Louvain, 1689) , p. 97.

Some Sources of Misunderstanding

181

veloping his teaching. The first slight step in this direction
is observable in the immensely popular seminary manual, the
Breviarium theologicum published in the seventeenth century
by the Cambrai theologian, John Polman. In this manual
the “ body ” and “ soul ” ol the Church appear, not as parts
of an explanation of a thesis, but as realities requiring defini­
tion in their own right.
According to Clement of Alexandria and Augustine, the Church
is like an animated human body. Faith, hope, charity, and the gifts
of the Holy Ghost constitute its soul. The body is the external
profession of faith, the communion of the sacraments, and the
acknowledgment of the Roman Pontiff as the head. Of the soul
alone are catechumens who intend to be baptized and who have
faith, hope and charity. Occult heretics are of the body alone. Bap­
tized persons in the state of grace arc of the body and the soul.9

St. Robert had made it perfectly plain to anyone who took
the trouble to read the De ecclesia militante in its entirety
that he did not claim that the interior bond of unity within
the Church was actually the soul of the Church. He applied
the metaphorical title of “ soul ” of the Church to God the
Holy Ghost, and he spoke of Catholics in the state of grace
as constituting “ as it were, the soul ” of this society. In the
same way, he spoke of the Church itself as a “ body ” and
described bad Catholics as being “ as it were, the body ” of
the Church. It was a misfortune for the history of theology
that Polman’s seminary manual led men to imagine that the
inward bond of unity was the soul, and the outward bond was
the body, of the Catholic Church.
The misuse of St. Robert’s terminology went a step farther
at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the well-written
manual Elementa theologica written by the Sorbonne profes­
sor, Charles du Plessis d’Argentré. This book employs St.
Robert’s terminology in such a way as to undermine the basic
thesis of the De ecclesia militante. Thus, in speaking of
excommunicated persons, D’Argentré asserts that if they “ pro­
fess the Catholic faith, they will be in some measure (ali’ Polman, Breviarium theologicum (Paris, 1682) , p. 206.

182

The Theological and Historical Background

quatenus) members of the Church by reason of its soul, that
is, by faith, and perhaps by charity (if the excommunication
is unjust) .” He insists, however, that these individuals “ are
not of the body of the Church.” 1011
St. Robert Bellarmine had constituted as the one basic
thesis of his book De ecclesia militante the truth that, by God’s
own institution, the visible or outward bond of ecclesiastical
unity, the thing he designated as the “ body ” of the Church,
is the one and only element requisite for membership in the
Church militant of the New Testament. He devoted all the
resources of his talent and erudition to demonstrate the fact
that the society composed of men united by this outward bond
of unity is Our Lord’s Mystical Body on earth. Less than a
century after his death, the terminology peculiar to St. Robert’s
De ecclesia militante was being used to advance the thesis
contradictory to his own teaching.
D’Argentré seems to have had the dubious distinction of
having been the first to use the term “ soul of the Church ”
in the Bellarminian sense to explain the Church’s necessity
for salvation. Like most of the books of its period, the
Elementa theologica treats of the dogma of the necessity of
the Church in the section devoted to catechumens and their
relation to the Church. D’Argentré holds that “ catechumens
are certainly not of the body of the Church, but still there
is nothing to prevent their being of the Church by reason
of its soul (quoad ejus animam) . With the desire of baptism
this suffices for salvation.” 11
D’Argentré used St. Robert’s own terminology, but made this
“ soul ” of the Church something quite distinct from the
internal bond of unity within the Church described by St.
Robert. He says that the Church militant " must be considered
as like a living body, which consists of Christ as the Head,
the faithful as members, and faith, hope and charity as the
soul, acting as a principle of spiritual life for the faithful.” 12
His use of this “ soul ” of the Church as a factor which can
10 D’Argentré, Elementa theologica (Paris, 1702), p. 167.
11 Ibid., p. 166.
12 Ibid., p. 161.

Some Sources of Misunderstanding

183

make an excommunicated person “ in some measure a member
of the Church ” and as a factor in the explanation of the
Church’s necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation is
quite consistent with his own view of the matter. It is, how­
ever, completely inconsistent with the teaching of St. Robert.
Honoratus Tournely, an older confrere of D’Argentré on
the faculty of the Sorbonne, carried the misuse and the mis­
application of St. Robert’s terminology far past the limits
reached by D’Argentré. Tournely s manual was one of the
most popular and influential textbooks employed during the
eighteenth century. Through these books the basic misunder­
standing of St. Robert’s terminology and the consequent
undermining of his basic thesis became widespread. Tournely
used St. Robert’s terminology to set forth theses about the
Church which, in the last analysis, were the very doctrines
St. Robert wrote the De ecclesia militante to disprove.
The Church can be considered in two ways. First, [it can be
considered] according to its interior status, or according to that
part which we call the soul of the Church. Thus it is the society
of those who are bound together by the bond of true faith in Christ
and of sincere charity. In this sense it is entirely invisible. Only
the saints and the just belong to it as true and living members.
Secondly, it can be considered according to its exterior status, or
according to the body, and insofar as it is the society of those who
are joined together in the public profession of the same faith, and
the communion of the same sacraments and ecclesiastical rulers. In
this sense it is certain that the Church is visible and conspicuous13

Tournely used St. Robert’s expressions “soul ” and “ body ”
of the Church to inaugurate an explanation of the Church’s
necessity for salvation which was to become all too common
among theologians until the appearance of the Mystici Corporis
Christi and the Suprema haec sacra. He taught that “ no one
can be saved outside the Church, considered both in terms
of the soul and of the body.’’ As far as the “ body of the
Church ” was concerned, Tournely treated it as if it were
necessary for the attainment of eternal salvation only with the
13 Tournely, Praelectiones theologicae de ecclesia Christi (Paris, 1739),
I, 234.

184

ΐ

The Theological and Historical Background

necessity of precept. He held that a man cannot be saved
“ if, through his own fault, he is not in the body of the
Church.” If a man is outside of the “ body ” through no fault
of his own, then, according to the thought of Tournely, he
can be saved. Such individuals, in Tournely’s view, can be
in the “ body ” of the Church by intention or desire.14
After Tournely, the process of changing the teaching of St.
Robert through the use of his own terminology had not far
to go. Heinrich Kilber, who wrote the treatise on the Church
for the collection called the Theologia Wirceburgcnsis, brought
these terms into his definitions of the Church, and thus used
them to support doctrines utterly at variance with what St.
Robert had taught.
The Church of Christ, considered inadequately in function of the
soul (inadequate secundum animam considerata) , is the assembly
of those called to the faith of Christ, conjoined to Christ by super­
natural gifts.
The Church of Christ, considered inadequately in function of
the body, is the assembly of the baptized, united in the profession
of the same Christian faith and in the communion of the same
sacraments under the one Vicar of Christ on earth.
The Church of Christ, considered adequately, is the assembly of
the baptized faithful whom faith, hope and charity animate inwardly,
and the profession of the same Christian faith and the communion
of the same sacraments unite outwardly, under one Head in heaven,
Christ, and under His Vicar on earth, the Sovereign Pontiff.15

What Kilber called an inadequate definition of the Church
in function of its body is the very definition which St. Robert
had shown to be the real description of the Church militant
of the New Testament. St. Robert had used every resource
available to him to prove conclusively that the Church cannot
be defined in terms of its members other than through the use
of the outward bond of ecclesiastical unity.
By the inept and unrealistic use of St. Robert’s own termin­
14 Ibid., I, 654.
15 Kilber, Principia theologica (in the RR. Patrum Societatis Jesu
Theologia Dogmatica, Scholastica et. Moralis Praelectionibus Publicis in
Alma Universitate Wirceburgensi Accommodata, the Paris edition of
1880) , I, 86 f.

Some Sources of Misunderstanding

185

ology, Tournely had come up with a description of the Church
as invisible, the very thing St. Robert had worked to prove
that the Church militant of the New Testament is not. Kilber
had imagined an “ adequate ” definition of Our Lord’s Church
which would apply only to Catholics in the state of grace.
There was only one more step possible in the process of
misinterpreting St. Robert’s teaching. That step was taken
before the end of the eighteenth century. Tired of the com­
plexity involved in trying to teach that “ an inadequate defini­
tion of the Church in function of its soul,” as given by
theologians like Kilber, applies to an “ invisible Church,”
Louis Legrand and other writers after him cut the Gordian
knot and began to apply the term “ soul of the Church ” to
the internal or invisible society they had imagined. According
to Legrand, “ the internal Church, which we call the soul of
the Church, can be defined as the company of those in the
state of grace, and especially of those who are predestined
to eternal life, who are endowed with the living faith that
works through charity.” And, in the words of the same
theologian, “ the external or visible Church, which is called
the body of the Church by Catholics, can be defined as the
assembly of men gathered together and united in the profession
of the true Christian faith, the correct use of the sacraments,
and the administration instituted by Christ.” 10
These two definitions are contained in the sub-section en­
titled “ On the More General Notion of the True Church.”
18 The passage is from Legrand’s De ecclesia, in Migne’s Theologiae
cursus completus, IV, 25. It must be noted that Legrand was not by any
means the first Catholic theologian to describe the just and the predestined
as constituting some sort of unit within the Catholic Church. Thus, in
the second book of his Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae
(Venice, 1621) , I, 160, Thomas Netter of Walden, the fifteenth-century
English Carmelite, had described “ the glorious Church of the predestined ”
as being within the visible Church " like a wheel within a wheel.” And
the sixteenth-century James Latomus, in his De ecclesia et humanae legis
obligatione, had written of “ the assembly of the good ” within the
” ecclesia permixta.” Cf. his Opera, p. 93T. What is remarkable about
Legrand's teaching is that he employed St. Robert’s own terminology to
bring out a doctrine—the existence of an “ invisible Church ’’—which St.
Robert had worked to disprove.

186

The Theological and Historical Background

In the following sub-section, “ On the More Special Notion
of the True Church,” Legrand gives a definition of the Church
“ considered adequately, that is, in terms of its soul and its body
together.” 17 Despite the fact that this “ adequate ” definition
of the Church is slightly more prolix than the one Legrand
applied to that “ which is called the body of the Church by
Catholics,” the two formulae are objectively identical.
Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century the misuse of
St. Robert’s term “ body ” and “ soul ” of the Church had
reached its final result. The De ecclesia militante had been
written in the first place to prove beyond the shadow of a
doubt that the one and only supernatural kingdom of God
of the New Testament is an organized society, the religious
community over which the Roman Pontiff presides as the
Vicar of Christ on earth. St. Robert had shown conclusively
that there is and there can be no such thing as an “ invisible
Church ” in the dispensation of the New Testament. He had
concentrated on the proof that there is only one ecclesia, and
that consequently there is no possibility of postulating an
“ invisible Church ” in any way distinct from the one visible
Mystical Body of Jesus Christ in this world.
Now, hardly more than a century and a half after St.
Robert’s death, the very contradictories to his basic teaching
were being set forth by Catholic writers using his own termin­
ology. The name “ soul of the Church,” which St. Robert had
applied to what his contemporaries called the inward or in­
visible bond of ecclesiastical unity, was gradually deflected
from the purpose it had served in the De ecclesia militante
until it finally became a vehicle for the expression of the very
teaching St. Robert had set out to disprove. For D’Argentré,
the “ soul of the Church ” in the Bellarminian sense was no
longer one of the two bonds of union within the Church but
became a factor “ acting as a principle of spiritual life for
the faithful.” For Tournely and Kilber this same “ soul of
the Church ” was made to function as a principle in the
definition of an “ invisible Church ” made up of men and
17 Cf. Legrand, loc. cit.

Some Sources of Misunderstanding

187

women in the state of grace. For Legrand and the men who
followed him, this same “ soul of the Church ” became itself
an “ invisible Church.” And the reality to which St. Robert
had applied his classical definition became, not the one true
ecclesia of the New Testament, as it was in the De ecclesia
militante and as it is in Catholic doctrine, but only “ the
body of the Church.”
Legrand’s misuse of the Bellarminian terminology was copied
quite frequently during the course of the nineteenth century.
One of those who followed him was Bonal, who wrote in his
popular and highly influential manual:
The body of the Church is the collection of men who outwardly
profess the doctrine of Christ and partake of the same sacraments
under the magisterium and rule of legitimate pastors and particularly
of the successors of Peter.
The soul of the Church is the collection of men who interiorly
assemble in one spiritual Church through the spiritual and internal
bond of faith and of charity.18

This kind of teaching came down into the twentieth century,
and by this time it had acquired a false appearance of theo­
logical tradition. Paul Vigué asserted that “ the theologians
distinguished two Churches, the one visible and the other
invisible, the body and soul of the Church.” 19 Otto Karrer
claimed that “ theology has deduced the doctrine of an in­
visible Church of good men and women, even outside the
communion of the visible Church.” 20 The “ theology ” re­
sponsible for this deduction was, in the last analysis, merely
a long and gradual deformation of terms originally and un­
fortunately employed by St. Robert Bellarmine in his De
ecclesia militante. The “ theologians ” who propagated this
teaching were men who misunderstood the original meaning
18 Bonal, Institutiones theologicae ad usum seminariorum, 16th edition
(Toulouse, 1887), I, 400.
13 Vigué, in the symposium Ecclesia, edited by Agrain and published
by Bloud et Gay (Paris, 1933), p. 101.
30 Karrer, Religions of Mankind, translated by E. I. Watkin (New York:
Sheed and Ward, 1938), p. 262-

188

The Theological and Historical Background

St. Robert had attached to the terms “ body ” and “ soul ”
of the Church.
There can be no doubt that the progressively more in­
accurate teachings about the “ body ” and the “ soul ” ol the
Church were in great measure responsible for poor teaching
about the dogma that no one can be saved outside the Catholic
Church. The individuals who were misled into believing the
reality of an “ invisible Church,” in some way more extensive
than the visible Church of Jesus Christ, were prone to imagine
that this “ invisible Church ” was the social unit really neces­
sary for the attainment of eternal salvation.
The greatest favor accorded to sacred theology by the
encyclical letter Mystici Corporis Christi was the banishment
from theology, once and for all, of this teaching about an
“ invisible Church.” Since the appearance of the Mystici
Corporis Christi, and especially since the publication of the
Humani generis and the Suprema haec sacra, the elements that
have militated against an accurate explanation of this dogma
have lost their force. These documents of the Holy See have
manifested the truth of the Church’s necessity for salvation
for what it really is, the statement of the dignity of the Catholic
Church as the one supernatural kingdom of the living God.

INDEX
Actual grace outside of Church, 2629
Ambrose, St., 11
Augustine, St., 10, 82, 157 f., 175

Hügel, Baron Friedrich von, 142 f.
Humani generis, 3 f., 119-29, 132,
170
Humanum genus, 135

Bâftez, Dominic, 77, 168, 170
Beatific Vision, 16-20
Billot, Louis Cardinal, 94 n
Billuart, Charles, 170
Bonal, 187
Boniface VIII, 13-30

Innocent III, 6-12
Innocent XI, 26 f.
Intention, distinct
39 f.

velleity,

Jacobites, Decree for, 31-41
James of Viterbo, 166
John of St. Thomas, 170

Cano, Melchior, 168
Cantate Domino, 31-41
Church, basic notion of, 28 ff., 145-

Karrer, Otto, 187
Kilber, Heinrich, 184 f.

64
D’Argentré, Charles du Plessis, 18185
Dogma, nature of, 3 ff.
Driedo, John, 82, 168, 177 f.
Eating the Flesh of the Son of Man,
24
Eck, John, 167
Eucharist, its function in process
of salvation, 24 f.
Eugenius IV, 31-41
i
Fidelis, 8 ff.
Firmiter, 6-12
Florence, Oecumenical Council of,
31-41
Fourth Oecumenical Council of the
Lateran, 6-12
Franzelin, John Cardinal, 91

Grace and salvation, 13-29
Gratian, 166
Gregory of Valencia, 168

from

Lateran, Fourth Oecumenical Coun­
cil of, 6-12
Latomus, James, 82, 168, 170, 178 f.,
185 n
Legrand, Louis, 185 ff.
Leo XIII, 122, 135, 144, 163
Magisterium, assent due to doc­
trinal statements of, 2-5
Mathew, Arnold Harris, 123 f.
Membership in Church, 76-79, 15864
Moneta of Cremona, 166
Mystici Corporis Christi, 76-99

Natural knowledge about God, 16 f.
Necessity of means and of precept,
62-66
Netter of Walden, Thomas, 185 n
Newman, John Henry Cardinal, on
necessity of the Church, 124 ff.

189

190

Index

Peter Lombard, 166
Pius IX, 42-75, 132
Pius XII, 76-129, 132
Polman, John, 181
Pope’s ordinary magisterium, 3ff.

Quanto conficiamur moerore, 5Ί-Ί5
Quesnel, Pasquier, error of, 26-29

Remission of sin and salvation, 1329
Robert Bellarmine, St., 77, 79, 82,
89, 168-88

St. John, Henry, 113
Salvation, as work of Our Lord,
22-29; basic notion of, 133-64; and
membership in Church, 158-64
Sahnanticenses, 170
Si diligis, 106
Sin as terminus a quo in process of
salvation, 20 ff.
Singulari quadam, 45-56, 170
Soto, Peter, 167
Stapleton, Thomas, 168 f.

Suarez, Francis, 168
Supernatural order, 15-20
Suprema haec sacra, 100-18
Sylvius, Francis, 79, 168, 170, 179 f.

Tanner, Adam, 168 ff.
Testem benevolentiae, 122
Thomas Aquinas, St., 166
Tournely, Honoratus, 170, 183 f.,
186
Tuas libenter, 4 f.
Turrecremata, John Cardinal de,
166-69

Unam sanctam, 13-30
Unigenitus, 26 f.
Velleity, not sufficient to constitute
a votum of entering Church, 49 f.
Vigué, Paul, 187
Vine and branches, 23

Waldensians, profession of faith for
returning, 6
Wiggers, John, 168, 170, 180