Bishop Barron's "privileged route" to salvation?

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I was rather befuddled by Bishop Barron’s comments in December 16, 2018. As an official representative of the Catholic faith, he responded to the noble Ben Shapiro’s query regarding his salvific chances as an observant Jew.
No. The Catholic view — go back to the Second Vatican Council, [which] says it very clearly. I mean, Christ is the privileged route to salvation. I mean, God so loved the world He gave His only Son that we might find eternal life. So that’s the privileged route. However, Vatican II clearly teaches that someone outside the Christian Faith can be saved.
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Bishop Barron cited “all the way back” to Vatican II. Does the Magisterium prior to Vatican II uphold this notion? Or, would this be deemed a “development of doctrine”?

Thank you.
 
Everything Bishop Barron has said here was already taught prior to Vatican II. I see nothing wrong with his comments there.
 
Bishop Barron’s comments are completely in line with Vatican II’s lumen gentium. But, yes, to some extent I would think it is a development in the sense of the Church’s own self-understanding and how the Church also see itself vis-a-vis other Christian communions and even other religions. What the Church has understood by the phrase “no salvation outside the church” has certainly developed over time.
 
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Linking to the previous thread where this was discussed at length last month.
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Bishop Barron on the privileged way to salvation Catholic News
Hey guys, i’m a huge fan of Bishop Barron as someone who was/is heavily instrumental in bringing me to greater understanding of the Catholic faith and how it relates to reality. He is probably one of the Greatest Catholic heavyweights alive today fighting for Truth against a society of relativism. In an interview with Ben Shapiro he says the following when Ben ask’s him if one can be saved outside the chruch. Barron: “ Yes…the Catholic view…go back to the 2nd Vatican Council says it very clear…
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More on topic now, I’m thinking “privileged route” is not the best way to explain the concept. The mere word “privilege” has too many connotations and cultural associations.

:coffee: 😠🚬
 
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What should be added, as an addendum, to this “priviledged route” is that anyone not on it, even if they can be saved by “other routes”, if they explicitly reject the “priviledged route” in favor of something something else, then they cannot be saved.

Explicitly rejecting the Catholic Church, is the same as explicitly rejecting Christ Himself.

Beyond that, I won’t venture into this discussion much more. Its one of those areas where fools rush in and angels dare to tread.
 
He’s a conservative political commentator. He worked for Breitbart for a very short time. He now has a podcast and radio show and like all those guys, has written a bunch of books.
He’s Jewish but is strongly anti-abortion and he was just a featured speaker at March for Life.

I’m not particularly interested in him. He supported Cruz in the 2016 election, and to be honest I was a lot more interested in the conservative commentators who were supporting Trump. They were a bit more way-out but also more interesting. To be honest if it wasn’t for the March for Life and Bishop Barron interview, I still wouldn’t know who he was. I suspect a targeted attempt to build his Catholic fan base.
 
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Shapiro is very popular in the same YouTube world that Bishop Barron is evangelizing.

If you like to watch SJWs debated on college campuses, Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Louder with Crowder are your guys.
 
He usually invites people of various beliefs to talk about their views, although the more liberal ones wouldn’t support his show for obvious reasons.

He’s one of the more moderate conservatives who isn’t afraid to call out people on his political side for their bigotry, which I respect.
 
I like Ben Shapiro. His anti-abortion views are logical and well worded. He tells it like it is.
 
adgloriam said:
@LittleFlower378

Ben Shapiro is obnoxious in his diction and articulation of words.

The interviewer had nowhere near the “nivaeu” the interviewee needs. The studio background wasn’t just distastefully “noire”, it was plain repulsive. I don’t know how anyone lends any attention to that Shapiro character.
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I’ve said the same thing about virtually everyone at CNN, NBC/MSNBC, WAPO, and NYT.
 
“Privileged way” implies there is more than one way. There is not. We are not saved merely by following our consciences–faith is absolutely necessary. However, by following an upright conscience with the aid of grace, we will be led to that necessary faith by God.

After Catechism 847 talks about those who follow their conscience being able to achieve salvation, in 848 it says how this is done: “…in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him…”

What is this necessary faith? From the Catechism:
The necessity of faith

161 Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation.42 "Since “without faith it is impossible to please [God]” and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life ‘But he who endures to the end.’"43
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St. Robert Bellarmine, in the 16th century) explained how God might lead one following an upright conscience to that necessary faith, 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 taught 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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Just to add, while there is only one way to be saved, people come onto that narrow road in many ways. Some spend their whole life on it, some convert at sometime later during their life, some are not even called until the “eleventh hour”(see Our Lord’s parable of the worker’s in the vineyard.) Sadly, some may never make their way onto the road and some may depart from it after traveling it a while.

To use an analogy, the narrow road has many on ramps, but only that narrow road passes through the narrow gate at the end.
 
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I suppose you’re speaking in an ultimate sense, and if you are then all this is true enough. But there’s another sense in which salvation can be spoken of, and that’s the proximate sense. As in, can conscience or Muslim faith or Buddhist tradition be the proximate cause (from the human’s perspective) of her salvation. The answer is yes. So in that sense, there are multiple ways. Of course, ultimately, as God is the source of all good, all these various “ways” are tending toward Him and His grace is extending to all people. Nevertheless, from the human’s perspective, there are multiple ways/routes to salvation.

“In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things,(127) and as Saviour wills that all men be saved.(128) Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.(19*) Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.(20*) She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life.” -Lumen Gentium 16
 
Yeah, it’s kind of splitting hairs to say that people following another faith are somehow not on the path when the Catechism suggests there are commonalities where they are, in some way, in communion with the Catholic Church and thus might be on the path.
 
Maybe when he was refering to a Privileged Way he was talking about a way of Salvation (being Catholic) IN that Faith you are talking about.

What Bishop Barron is saying isn’t contradicting what you are saying, it only does if you interpret it the way you did.
 
In the quote in the OP, Bishop Barron is not saying this. He did not say there are many ways to Christ; he called Christ Himself a privileged route–which makes Christ one route among many. Again, faith in Christ before judgment is necessary for salvation–one cannot be saved persevering without faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God.

The passage in Lumen gentium you provide cites the famous letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston which which emphasized the need for supernatural faith and charity. Confusing belief in other religious with faith is a major problem of our time. From the CDF document Dominus Iesus:
The obedience of faith implies acceptance of the truth of Christ’s revelation, guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself:17 “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed”.18 Faith, therefore, as “a gift of God” and as “a supernatural virtue infused by him”,19 involves a dual adherence: to God who reveals and to the truth which he reveals, out of the trust which one has in him who speaks. Thus, “we must believe in no one but God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.20

For this reason, the distinction between theological faith and belief in the other religions, must be firmly held. If faith is the acceptance in grace of revealed truth, which “makes it possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us to understand it coherently”,21 then belief, in the other religions, is that sum of experience and thought that constitutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious aspiration, which man in his search for truth has conceived and acted upon in his relationship to God and the Absolute.22

This distinction is not always borne in mind in current theological reflection. Thus, theological faith (the acceptance of the truth revealed by the One and Triune God) is often identified with belief in other religions, which is religious experience still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking assent to God who reveals himself. This is one of the reasons why the differences between Christianity and the other religions tend to be reduced at times to the point of disappearance.
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Faith in Christ is faith in what God has revealed because, in the words of the Catechism:

CCC 65:
Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one.
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Again, I have no quibble with saying the elect all take different paths to Christ, but as St. John Paul II said on the topic, this “does not justify the relativistic position of those who maintain that a way of salvation can be found in any religion, even independently of faith in Christ the Redeemer” (General Audience, May 31 1995).
 
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