Outside the Church there is no salvation"

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It’s scary every simple sentence you have to read pages on the actual meaning and people wonder why people are so confused about the faith.
 
John121 said:
It’s scary every simple sentence you have to read pages on the actual meaning and people wonder why people are so confused about the faith.
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Reading a simple sentence and trying to determine its meaning from it as if it stands alone is a Protestant way of interpretation.

In the Catholic tradition, each sentence is part of a larger whole, and can only be interpreted in the context of the whole of Scripture and Tradition. People get confused only when they try to interpret things on their own while ignoring the context the statement is meant to be interpreted in.

Catholicism, unlike many branches of Protestantism, is in no way a do-it-yourself religion. Any understanding you get will be obtained solely by standing on the shoulders of the giants who preceded you: the writers of scripture, the Church Fathers, and countless theologians over the centuries.
 
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Yes, but perhaps not what some may think.

The “Church” that offers salvation is not the Holy Catholic Church, but the collective Church which is the Body of Christ.
 
angel12 said:
Have you read what the Catechism says about this?
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This is a link to the relevant passages from the Catechism:

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P29.HTM

And to Nostra Aetate, which deals in detail with this matter:

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_...ts/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
John121 said:
It’s scary every simple sentence you have to read pages on the actual meaning and people wonder why people are so confused about the faith.
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If you are looking for simplistic black and white answers, you picked the wrong religion. Catholicism is filmed in glorious technicolor, and it is a live-action show in real time.
 
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Is the church the believers in Christ or the Roman Catholic Church ?
 
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Sometimes I wonder if this would be explained differently by the church in 2019, say, compared to how it would have been explained in 1905.
 
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John121 said:
Is the church the believers in Christ or the Roman Catholic Church ?
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Those who are baptized in Christ.

Catechism
1213 … Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission …

816 "The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter’s pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in ( subsistit in ) the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."267
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Loud-living-dogma said:
Sometimes I wonder if this would be explained differently by the church in 2019, say, compared to how it would have been explained in 1905.
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Of course it would. A great deal of thought by countless theologians has been done on this matter in the last century, especially in light of the Holocaust and advances in Ecumenism. And that work is still continuing.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
Sometimes I wonder if this would be explained differently by the church in 2019, say, compared to how it would have been explained in 1905.
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Of course it is explained differently today. As Jim Blackburn in this CA article posted by GordonP above points out, the historical context needs to be taken into account when interpreting formulations of Church teaching. When the Church was worried about people defecting from Catholicism en masse (which in 1905 was a concern), they stressed the importance of staying in the Catholic Church.

Simply comparing the way the old Baltimore Catechism talks about non-Catholics with the way the current Catechism addresses the same is very enlightening.

I personally find it much easier to just be in the Catholic Church, where Jesus in his Real Presence is also, than to go somewhere else where I have to engage in mental gyrations and justifications for why I’m over there instead of here.
 
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Well, really then, that explains perfectly why Catholics don’t evangelize! Because they’re perfectly on their way to heaven outside the Church! But can we at least revive the phrase “invincible ignorance”? 😉
 
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Maybe it is the human in me, but I would like to hope that a good person who is not church affiliated will still get to Heaven.
 
We can revive whatever we want as long as we concede that we have no certain knowledge in any individual case whether God sends a particular person to heaven or hell.
 
Curious as to why you think it is such “good stuff”, TULIPed?

It’s not particularly new news to anyone.
 
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