St. Paul does not say that they can be saved without being members of the Church. Just because God does not hold an ignorant man accountable for the sin of infidelity to a faith which he knew nothing about, does not mean that man is thereby saved. His other sins are still upon him, even if it is only the stain of Original Sin.
You have totally missed the point of St. Paul’s words.
God calls all men to the Church. If they honestly seek God, they will have the opportunity to enter the Church.
You comment does not explain anything about the relevant theological issues involved.
First, we must agree that it is a matter of the faith (
de fide) that “membership of the Church is necessary for all men for salvation.” The problem here is that your posts do not reflect a correct understanding of the foregoing proposition.
The necessity for belonging to the Church is not merely a necessity of
precept, but also a necessity of
means, as Pius IX referred to the Catholic Church as the only Ark of salvation.
“The necessity of means is, however, not an absolute necessity, but a hypothetical one. In special circumstances, namely in the case of invincible ignorance or of incapability, actual membership of the Church can be replaced by the desire (
votum) for the same. This need not be expressly (
explicite) present, but can also be included in the moral readiness faithfully to fulfill the will of God (
votum implicitum). In this manner also those who are in point of fact outside the Catholic Church can achieve salvation.” [my emphasis] (See Dr. Ludwig Ott:
Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma)
Alongside the Tradition of the necessity for membership of the Church was, from the earliest times, a complimentary Tradition that expounded another aspect of the Church and salvation.
That is, the earliest Christian writers reflected on the biblical narrative of the “pagan” Cornelius who, the
Acts of the Apostles tell us, was “an upright and God fearing man” even before baptism. “Gradually, therefore, as it became clear that there were “God-fearing” people outside the Christian fold, and that some were deprived of their Catholic heritage without fault, on their part, the parallel Tradition arose of considering such people open to salvation, although they were not professed Catholics or even necessarily baptized. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine paved the way for making these distinctions.” (Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.:
The Catholic Catechism)
The necessity of baptism and the theories of ‘baptism of desire/baptism of blood’ are for another thread.
Actually these matters are most relevant to the subject of the Church and salvation. You are too quick to arbitrarily dismiss pertinent facts.
That is, by the 12th century it was widely assumed that a person can be saved if some “invincible obstacle stands in the way” of his baptism and entrance into the Church. (Cf. Fr. Hardon)
St. Thomas Aquinas also conceded that a person may be saved extra sacramentally by a baptism of desire and therefore without actual membership by reason of his at least implicit desire to belong to the Church.
)
How does that argument work?