All heathens to Hell?

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Im not preoccupied with it. I just ask a question. That said I think there is a difference between being heathen in Saudi Arabia where there are no churches at all and being heathen in the West (let’s say Germany).

Wouldn’t it be a lot more difficult to be ignorant of the Catholic faith in Germany than in Saudi Arabia?

And I mean ’culpable’ ignorance in the sense that heathens could have easily found out, but didn’t for whatever reason…

Gr. DonQuichote
 
There is no difference. The state of the world is now secular.
Just because people in the “west” _seem t_o know more intellectually about the Judeo-Christian roots of our society doesn’t mean that they really know and understand.
 
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And that is your error.

For the record, it is not an ad hominem attack to claim that your understanding of something is faulty.

If you don’t like my comments, you don’t have to engage me. I am not writing for you specifically, but to counter your erroneous understandings of the Chruch today for people here who actually want to learn what the Church teaches.
 
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It is the Church who has given us these “ambiguous” words, as you put it. This strikes me as a very Protestant attitude: “sola tradition” with no regard for the living Magisterium. The interpretation of past dogmatic statements is the purview of the Church.
 
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twf said:
This strikes me as a very Protestant attitude: “sola tradition” with no regard for the living Magisterium. The interpretation of past dogmatic statements is the purview of the Church.
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^^^^^^^ This.
 
What Vatican II said in this regard was nothing new at all. Likewise, the Church still teaches faith is necessary for salvation (see CCC 161 as quoted in my first post in this thead). The Church has always acknowledged that, as Vatican II itself states in Ad Gentes, “God in ways known to Himself can lead those inculpably ignorant of the Gospel to find that faith without which it is impossible to please Him.”

St. Robert Bellarmine, in the 16th century) explained how this might work, in response to Protestants who said that the existence of non-Christians in far off lands means Christ does not offer salvation to all:

St. Robert Bellarmine, De Gratis et Libero Arbitrio, lib. 2, cap. 8
This argument only proves that not all people receive the help they need to believe and be converted immediately. It does not, however, prove that some people are deprived, absolutely speaking, of sufficient help for salvation. For the pagans to whom the Gospel has not yet been preached, can know from His creatures that God exists; then they can be stimulated by God, through His preventing grace, to believe in God, that He exists and that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him: and from such faith, they can be inspired, under the guidance and help of God, to pray and give alms and in this way obtain from God a still greater light of faith, which God will communicate to them, either by Himself or through angels or through men.
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Pope Francis teaches the same thing in his first encyclical:

Lumen Fidei
Because faith is a way, it also has to do with the lives of those men and women who, though not believers, nonetheless desire to believe and continue to seek. To the extent that they are sincerely open to love and set out with whatever light they can find, they are already, even without knowing it, on the path leading to faith…Any-one who sets off on the path of doing good to others is already drawing near to God, is already sustained by his help, for it is characteristic of the divine light to brighten our eyes whenever we walk towards the fullness of love.
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Such persons who are led to this faith, would not therefore be excluded by the definition of Florence, but would fall under the “unless” it ends with–they would belong to the Church. The definition of Boniface VIII merely clarifies that the Church one must belong to is subject to the Roman Pontiff.
 
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Note too that the text reads “not at all” in the Church of Christ. Those non-Catholics who are saved will, in some mystical manner, be incorporated into the Church of Christ.
 
This is a good point. Condemnations of errors only affirm that there is a contradictory (someone else pointed out the fact that the false hope applies to “all” in that situation being saved). It’s also worth pointing out that the Syllabus of Errors is not authoritative in itself, but is an index by topic of other documents that are authoritative. The one in question points to the encyclical Quanto conficiamur.

This encyclical itself states exactly what Vatican II does.
  1. Here, too, our beloved sons and venerable brothers, it is again necessary to mention and censure a very grave error entrapping some Catholics who believe that it is possible to arrive at eternal salvation although living in error and alienated from the true faith and Catholic unity. Such belief is certainly opposed to Catholic teaching. There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments.
    http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm
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Your arguments have no substance as your ideas and beliefs contradict what the Church teaches now.

That is evident when you cannot post a link to something because it comes from a sedevacantist site.
They do not speak with or for the Church. If that is where you are getting your information, you are in error.
Period.
 
Partial communion is a thing and is nothing new. It’s why we don’t rebaptize.

St. Augustine, On Baptism
And so others could receive from them, while they still had not joined our society, what they themselves had not lost by severance from our society. And hence it is clear that they are guilty of impiety who endeavor to rebaptize those who are in Catholic unity; and we act rightly who do not dare to repudiate God’s sacraments, even when administered in schism. For in all points in which they think with us, they also are in communion with us, and only are severed from us in those points in which they dissent from us.

But if they observe some of the same things, in respect of these they have not severed themselves; and so far they are still a part of the framework of the Church, while in all other respects they are cut off from it. Accordingly, any one whom they have associated with themselves is united to the Church in all those points in which they are not separated from it. And therefore, if he wish to come over to the Church, he is made sound in those points in which he was unsound and went astray; but where he was sound in union with the Church, he is not cured, but recognized—lest in desiring to cure what is sound we should rather inflict a wound.
CHURCH FATHERS: On Baptism, Book I (Augustine)
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Again, this is not new with Vatican II. Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma explains the basis of this:

Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma
Although public apostates and heretics, schismatics and excommunicati vitandi are outside the legal organisation of the Church, still their relationship to the Church is essentially different from that of the unbaptised. As the baptismal character which effects incorporation in the Church is indestructible, the baptised person, in spite of his ceasing to be a member of the Church, cannot cut himself off so completely from the Church, that every bond with the Church is dissolved.
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That bond is what we call partial communion, using the concept of “communion” as St. Augustine did.
 
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Just to add, at different times “communion” has been used to mean in short “communion in those things necessary for membership.” Protestants, etc. are not in communion with the Church in this way, but are in the sense of St. Augustine above.

Fr. Hardon explained this distinction in his dissertation on St. Robert Bellarmine’s ecclesiology (his advisor was Fr. Sebastiaan Tromp, the primary drafter of the encyclical Mystici Corporis).
When the term “communion with the Church” involves such essentials as participation in the same Sacraments and submission to the Church’s common authority vested in the Pope, it is to be identified with “membership in the Church.” So that, given a person who does not communicate with the Church in these essentials, he is, by that very fact, not a member of the body of the Church of Christ, which is constituted by the common profession of the same faith, participation in the same Sacraments, and obedience to the same supreme authority.
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As an aside, hee also gives an exmaple where members of the Church may lack communion (this is why one can say the SSPX lack full communion):
In the case in point, the writer has confused “communion in some privileges enjoyed by Catholics in good standing” with “communion in the essential practices of the Catholic faith,” such as participation in the same Sacraments and obedience to the Roman Pontiff. The first kind of communion, it is clear, may be lacking while formal membership is retained. Thus, for example, a recalcitrant priest may be suspended “a divinis.” He is, therefore, “lacking in communion with the Church,” to the extent that, as a priest, he may not celebrate the Divine mysteries; yet, for all that, he is still a member of the Catholic Church.
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What did you think of what St. Augustine said? That is the sense the Church uses “partial communion”

As you note, “membership,” which is a strictly defined concept, as Fr. Hardon mentions it is communion in those elements which define membership: baptism, profession of faith, and hierarchical communion. One either is or is not a member–if any of these is lacking, so is membership–this does not admit of degrees. One can have a communion in the Church in some things, like baptism without being a member.

But there are other relationships and even salvific forms of belonging other than membership. A catechumen, for example, is not a member (lacking baptism), but may belong to the Church “in voto” and be saved.
 
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The use of the term “ad hominem attacks” tends to be used by people who can’t dialogue online with objectivity. Everything is an attack when people don’t jump on board with their line of thinking.
The CURRENT Catechism answers this quite thoroughly as many have stated,
SPPX devotees will disagree, of course. But CAF, as far as I know, is on board as an institution with the USCCB and Rome.
 
What does Eugene IV/the Council of Florence mean by “joined to the Church” and to “persevere in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church”, considering what St. Augustine said about “incorporation” into the Church?

Dan
 
Yeah, but baptism of water within the Church isn’t sufficient for salvation, either. So, your point is…?
Because of “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”, persons belonging to non-Catholic religions can be saved in very rare, and very specific circumstances
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The Church doesn’t teach this.
but they cannot be saved by their false religions
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The Church does teach this. Anyone who is saved, isn’t saved by virtue of any other belief system or institution, but rather, by virtue of Christ and the Church He founded and the graces which flow from that Church.

Bad math, though. “Not all” does not mean “very rare”, as you’ve attempted to claim.

You say this as if you think that they’re in conflict with each other… 🤔

When one teaching of the Church seems to contradict another, what is called for isn’t “placing statements of [one] over [the other].” What’s called for is a discernment that allows one to understand how the two statements aren’t, in fact, in conflict. 😉

I think I would assert it differently. It’s not baptism itself (i.e., the ritual) that is required: what’s required are the graces which normatively are gained through baptism. And therefore, one does not need an “other, extra-sacramental, baptism”; what he needs is those graces. Which, the Church teaches, God provides in ways known only to Him.
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DonQuichote1235:
Wouldn’t it be a lot more difficult to be ignorant of the Catholic faith in Germany than in Saudi Arabia?
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The standard isn’t “knowledge of the existence of the teachings”, it’s knowledge of the truth of the teachings, isn’t it?

By this standard, any person who lives in a region in which a single Bible exists, is culpable for lack of faith in the Church. Are you sure that’s what the Church teaches…? 😉
 
That’s why we have both complementary concepts: communion, which can be spoken of in degrees, and membership, which is applied in relation to identifying the visible society that is the one Church professed in the creed. One or the other might be more helpful depending on the context.

Also, it’s not just me who has applied it both ways, the Church has, both with regard to those baptized in other communities who are not members (e.g. the Decree on Ecumenism) and to those who are members, but are lacking in other areas (e.g. the Decree remitting the excommunication of the SSPX bishops, which speaks of the hope that the rest of the society–who weren’t excommunicated–attain full communion).

I would think the latter would be less controversial, which is why I pointed to St. Augustine, who used the concept of “communion” in some things, but not in others, in reference to those who were not members. This application seemed to be what (name removed by moderator) was objecting to, which is why I asked what her take on Augustine’s application was (she seemed to pass over it in her response).

It should also be pointed out that affirming partial communion does not thereby affirm those in bad faith can be saved. It simply affirms that the relationship of the baptized with the Church is fundamentally different than that of the unbaptized. In fact, historically it has been the basis for the fact that the jurisdiction of the Church extends to these separated, baptized persons, even if the Church usually refrains from exercising it as such.
 
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