Catholic Church consists of all people of good will?

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HomeschoolDad

HomeschoolDad

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Where do we draw the line between someone being “in the Church” versus “outside the Church”?

The way I am seeing it, Vatican II declared, in so many words, that anyone who is baptized in Christ, or even anyone who seeks to follow God as they understand him (a nod here to AA), is in some way “in communion with the Church”, even if they do not realize it. Given this, even someone who would be horrified at that proposition, is nevertheless “part of the Church” in some way, including not only Protestants and evangelicals, but also sincere Jews and Muslims, among others, who seek God and seek to do what is pleasing to Him as they understand Him.

It would be interesting for me to stop by the KJV Independent Baptist church down the road and run this by the pastor. I’m not going to do this, but I just muse “what if…?”. 😉 I stopped by one time when I saw smoke near his church and thought it might be a fire (as it turned out, someone was just cooking out nearby 🍔), seemed like a genial fellow.
 
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All people of good will could, perhaps, be mystically united to the Catholic Church by virtue of baptism of desire… certainly if they end up being saved in the final moments of life. But we can never know, this side of heaven, who falls into this category. I hope and pray it’s as broad as possible…

In a more concrete sense, baptized non-Catholic Christians are imperfectly united to the Catholic Church by virtue of baptism.
 
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To me, being “in the Church” means you are a member of the Catholic Church.

If you’re baptized into the Catholic Church, by water, blood or desire (as described in the Catechism), then you’re a member of the Catholic Church.

If you’re not baptized into the Catholic Church, then while you’re alive on the earth you are not considered a member of the Catholic Church, unless you are confirmed into it later in the case of converts. You may be “in communion with” the Catholic Church in some way (for example, Trinitarian baptism), but you are not a member and thus not “in the Church”.
 
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twf said:
All people of good will could, perhaps, be mystically united to the Catholic Church by virtue of baptism of desire
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Baptism of desire, that’s the term I was looking for, where the soul in question is not actually baptized (Jews, Muslims, et al).
 
HomeschoolDad said:
Baptism of desire, that’s the term I was looking for, where the soul in question is not actually baptized (Jews, Muslims, et al).
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Baptism of desire means you sincerely wished to be baptized into the Catholic Church and were taking steps in that direction. It does not mean you’re just a good person somewhere.

If a Muslim wants to convert to Catholicism and he is taking RCIA, or planning to take RCIA as soon as he can find a teacher in his area which doesn’t have many Catholics, but he hasn’t actually reached the date of his baptism, and he gets hit by a bus and dies, he is said to have received baptism of desire. If he stays alive he’s expected to finish up and complete his actual baptism as quickly as he can.

We don’t know if God permits some people to express the desire to join the Catholic Church at the point of death or after death in some way. For example, if a Muslim who was not interested in the Catholic Church dies and meets Jesus and God asks the Muslim if he accepts Jesus as his savior at that point of death and the Muslim says yes, maybe God grants him baptism of desire. We simply don’t know and by that point the man is dead so he’s not part of the Catholic Church here on earth.
 
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Yes, I’ve also come across the idea of “implicit” baptism of desire… that is, if someone knew the Gospel, they would seek baptism. The pre-Columbus inhabitants of the Americas, for example, had no knowledge of the Gospel, but individuals may have still sincerely sought God with what little knowledge they did have.
 
Being in the Catholic Church is not about Exclusiveness, as if God only cared about Catholics.
Being in the Catholic Church is about an exclusive mission and morality and teaching that becomes visible in the world only because the Church is different than all other peoples and cultures on the earth.
We are in the world as Salt and Light, nowhere else present in the universe, as a preservative (unless we lose our saltness due to being inclusive of all teachings just to be “nice” to others, and then, no more preservation of the world, and if we are likewise “nice” by letting all belong with no requirement of morality or doctrine, the light we might have will look no different than a democratic mixture of conservatives and liberals but no hint of “different” nor “divine”).

We are the “deliverers of peace to all people of good will”, we are the means of God’s promise to Abraham that by his seed (Jesus) all nations would be given blessing, so we must remain “different” and “faithful” to all that Christ commanded, with no admixture of falseness.

John Martin
 
Yeah, I’m guessing “implicit baptism of desire” would be similar to the idea of God’s mercy on those who through no fault of their own didn’t get a chance to learn about him. I am sure God has ways of providing for such people when they die. However, that doesn’t make them part of the Catholic Church on earth.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Baptism of desire means you sincerely wished to be baptized into the Catholic Church and were taking steps in that direction. It does not mean you’re just a good person somewhere.
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I had in mind more here an implicit baptism of desire, see below.
twf said:
Yes, I’ve also come across the idea of “implicit” baptism of desire… that is, if someone knew the Gospel, they would seek baptism. The pre-Columbus inhabitants of the Americas, for example, had no knowledge of the Gospel, but individuals may have still sincerely sought God with what little knowledge they did have.
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That’s precisely what I was driving at.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the Jumano Indians of Texas, who were visited, according to legend, by St Mary of Agreda:

https://www.desertusa.com/desert-people/lady-in-blue.html
 
I think you’re confusing the question of Catholic Church membership on earth with salvation.

The current Catechism says that there is a possibility of people who are not formally members of the Catholic Church being saved. The Pope has said the same.

This doesn’t mean that those people, while walking around on earth and having not been baptized into the Catholic Church or converted or taken steps to do these things, are somehow members of the Catholic Church. The salvation, if any, occurs at the point of death or just after death when God judges them. A priest has suggested to me that people can be essentially converted to Catholicism by God at the point of death.

Obviously once you’re in Heaven, however you got there, you’re part of the Catholic Church, as a member of the “Church Triumphant”. And once you’re in Purgatory, where your salvation is assured though you have to be purified (perhaps because you did not join the Catholic Church during your lifetime), you are a member of the Catholic Church, as a member of the “Church Penitent”.

If we just focus on people who are walking around on earth, then you’re not part of the Catholic Church (as in the “Church Militant” on earth) unless and until you formally join it.

If a human missionary had showed up to those Native Americans who allegedly saw Venerable Mary of Agreda, the missionary would have said, “Yeah that’s nice that you saw a Lady in Blue but you still need to get baptized.”
 
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Yes there are many examples of God acting in extraordinary manners outside the confines of the visible Church. Even in the Acts, we see Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit spontaneously… yet St Peter still orders that they be baptized.
 
twf said:
Yes there are many examples of God acting in extraordinary manners outside the confines of the visible Church. Even in the Acts, we see Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit spontaneously… yet St Peter still orders that they be baptized.
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Interesting…just curious…what are the specific passages in Acts that discuss this type of thing?
 
Tis_Bearself said:
If a human missionary had showed up to those Native Americans who allegedly saw Venerable Mary of Agreda, the missionary would have said, “Yeah that’s nice that you saw a Lady in Blue but you still need to get baptized.”
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I have always been of the impression that Venerable Mary baptized them. Maybe I’m wrong.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
The Native Americans, after seeing the apparition, went to a nearby mission and requested priests to come and instruct and baptize them. Apparitions don’t go around baptizing people.
The apparition in this case told them to go find a priest to baptize them.
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OK, it’s coming back to me now. Thanks.

And you are quite correct to refer to her as “Venerable Mary”. I thought she was a canonized saint. I recall now.

I can’t canonize anyone. Only the Church and newspaper obituary writers can do that 😏 (just a tad snarky, and I normally don’t do snark).

I recall many years ago being at the graveside rites of a man who died suddenly. The traditionalist priest who administered these rites (he had a traditional Latin Requiem Mass within the diocese) read a prayer which referred to “God’s just punishments” (in purgatory). At that, his widowed wife howled and sobbed so loudly that it seemed like it would pierce the overcast sky above us.

That is possibly the most Catholic thing I have ever seen.
 
I had a Catholic funeral director for my husband’s funeral. Husband and his family were Presbyterian, but this funeral director was a friend of Husband’s family for many years, had already buried both my parents-in-law, and my father-in-law used to volunteer as an usher and pallbearer for him years ago.

Because I was Catholic, this funeral director chose what he thought was a nice Catholic prayer for the prayer card, that he had apparently used on his own mother’s prayer card. It was all about the deceased suffering in purgatory. I don’t know what old prayer book he got that out of, or why he would have put that on his mother’s funeral cards. He apparently liked the prayer. But there was no way I was going to put that on a Protestant’s prayer card, especially when his entire family containing many Protestants were going to be reading the cards. I scratched it out and substituted the Divine Mercy prayer “Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless…” etc and “Jesus, I Trust in You”. Went over much better.
 
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