According to one of my church leaders, the church is not needed for salvation. However, if the Eucharist and Confession are needed for salvation, how can salvation be found outside the church?
Unless you’re invinsibly ignorant (which you are not since you’re Catholic), yes the Church is needed for salvation, because salvation is only found within the Church.
Please answer these questions:
- Is confession necessary for salvation.
yes (there are possible exceptions but none of them apply to Catholics, except perhaps if a person dies on their way to Confession, but we should really pray that this wouldn’t happen. The only way to be forgiven of mortal sin without Confession is to have perfect contrition but that is very rare and we can never be sure if we had it or not)
- What is the full doctrine on mortal sin.
Mortal sin separates us from God. It’s a sin that a person did with knowledge, freedom, and it should be grave matter. This might help:
saintaquinas.com/mortal_sin.html
- Can salvation be found outside of the church?
No. If a person is invinsibly ignorant of the truth (that means ignorant through absolutely no fault of their own, and negligence to find out the truth doesn’t count), there are cases where they can be an “invisible” member of the Church, through their baptism for example. But it’s much harder to be saved in this way, and this person’s salvation would still be through their link to the Church, and they would be saved by Christ. We can only be saved by Christ. Strictly speaking, salvation is found within the Church. And since we know about the Church and are not invinsibly ignorant… we have the obligation to stay with the truth.
I do not have a copy of the catechism, so please source ALL 3 answers from the catechism on this page “
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM”.
here they are
- 1484 “Individual, integral confession and absolution remain the only ordinary way for the faithful to reconcile themselves with God and the Church, unless physical or moral impossibility excuses from this kind of confession.” There are profound reasons for this. Christ is at work in each of the sacraments. He personally addresses every sinner: “My son, your sins are forgiven.” He is the physician tending each one of the sick who need him to cure them. He raises them up and reintegrates them into fraternal communion. Personal confession is thus the form most expressive of reconciliation with God and with the Church.
- 1855 Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.
Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.
1856 Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us - that is, charity - necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation:
When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object . . . whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbor, such as homicide or adultery. . . . But when the sinner’s will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbor, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.130
1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."131
(more here
scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a8.htm#IV)
- “Outside the Church there is no salvation”
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 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.336
847 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.337
848 "Although 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, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."338
Hope that helps, God bless!
