Are conservative Protestants Christians?

[mrjames]

I am a conservative Protestant and have a Catholic friend who continually claims that I may not get eternal life if I don’t become a Catholic. What is the Catholic Church’s official teacing about Protestants? My friend sends me quotes from various Catholic Church Fathers who claim that Protestants are not going to receive eternal life. I have seen on these forums that it is okay for Catholics to go see their Protestant friend get baptized. Do Catholic leaders disagree on whether Protestants are Christian?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

In the Church’s view, a person is a Christian if he is validly baptized. Since most Protestant churches offer valid baptisms, those people baptized by those churches are Christians. There is no disagreement within the Church on that matter.

Your friend is trying to make another point, although it sounds as though he may have some confusion on what the Church teaches on the issue:

What your friend is trying to say is that the Church teaches a doctrine known as *extra ecclesiam nulla salus *(Latin, “Outside the Church, no salvation”). Some, perhaps including your friend, think that doctrine means that anyone who is not a formal Catholic in this life has no chance of salvation. That is incorrect. The Church teaches that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know that the Catholic Church was founded by God and that they should become Catholic, may be saved if they have followed to the best of their ability what they understand God to require of them:

How are we to understand this affirmation “Outside the Church, no salvation”], often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the head through the Church which is his body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it
(CCC 846).

This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation (CCC 847).

If someone were to understand that he should investigate the Catholic Church’s claims or if he knew that those claims were true, and refused to either investigate or enter the Church, then culpability for his decision to reject the Church would begin to be an issue.

In other words, the Church believes that God does not punish anyone for being innocently unaware of the fullness of religious truth to be found in the Catholic Church. We are held accountable for our positive refusal to respond to God’s grace, not for innocent ignorance. For more information on the Church’s stance on this issue, please see the links below.

Recommended reading:

What is an ontological Christian?
Can Outsiders Be Insiders? by Fr. Peter Stravinskas
It Didn’t Go Out With Vatican II by Mark P. Shea
Fear Of All Error? by Michelle Arnold