Salvation for non-Catholics prior to Vatican ll?

[Sophie111]

Unbaptized people getting into heaven is assumed as an exception, not the rule.

And there we must agree to disagree my friend.
We have no reason to believe any fewer sincere truth seekers amongst the non baptised will enter their reward than the same for the baptised.
I am a glass half full person who sees the HS at work strongly amonst the Gentiles in ways it is not ours to fathom. I am not jealous in their regard as might be an elder brother who sees the great compassion his father might show for a wayward younger brother.
I understand not all Catholics are secure or generous of heart in this regard. As I am married to a Chinese Buddhist who is clearly more virtuous and loving of others than myself thats rather obvious to me. I try not to be xenophobic either materially or spiritually.

 

[Sophie111]

Indeed, as Pope Francis has stated we are not to prosyletise but evangelise. When you live in a culture where Christians nor Europeans are not the majority you will come to understand what evangelisation really means.

 

[Sophie111]

You are on the wrong thread.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

I think many times people miss the “can be saved” part of Church teaching. That means it is possible for God in His goodness and mercy to save someone who is not a baptized Catholic but salvation is found only in the Catholic church. That is why God gave us the Church. “Can be saved” does not mean they are “saved” or have found salvation somewhere other than the Catholic church. It is best not to assume non-Catholics are “saved” of will be saved. It is our job to evangelize, pray and sacrifice for them and bring people into the Catholic church.

 

[Sophie111]

I cannot imagine you see eye to eye with our beloved Pope Francis on most matters so I suspect it would make no difference my friend .

 

[Sophie111]

It is best not to assume non-Catholics are “saved” of will be saved. It is our job to evangelize, pray and sacrifice for them and bring people into the Catholic church.

May I ask how old you are?
Have you extensively travelled overseas at all and lived in other non Christian cultures?

 

[Sophie111]

Excuse me if I imitate Pope Francis in his response to Card Burke on this one…and for the same reasons.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

May I ask how old you are?
Have you extensively travelled overseas at all and lived in other non Christian cultures?

No I have not traveled to non Christian cultures but I have met non Christians. But whether or not I have traveled to other countries, or no matter my age, that does not change Church teaching.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Baptism of Desire is a theological opinion. It has never at any point in history been a teaching of the Catholic Church (including today). Prior to Vatican II, even the idea of BoD was never considered a worthy theological opinion. There is nothing wrong with hoping that God will save someone outside the Church, but to assume it happens as an every day sort of thing? That is misleading and runs contrary to Divine Revelation and Sacred Tradition.

What you write concerning the Church prior to Vatican II and Baptism of Desire is quite incorrect.

In any event, The Catechism of the Catholic Church:

[1258] The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.

[1259] For catechumens who die before their Baptism, their explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for their sins, and charity, assures them the salvation that they were not able to receive through the sacrament.

[1260] “Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.” Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

 

[Sophie111]

As was somewhat apparent from your world view.
The issue is perhaps not Church teaching but your personal understanding of it. We are all limited or expanded in our interpretations/assumptions by our characteristic life experiences. The “Quiet American”, written many years ago demonstrates this characteristic national lacuna in an otherwise generous nation.
I warmly recommend it as a classic read for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the American psyche.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

I am not really sure how you know my world view, or my life experiences to know what my world view is. Whether or not I traveled has no bearing on Church teaching.

 

[Sophie111]

It is you who say it.

 

[Sophie111]

Baptism of Desire is a theological opinion. It has never at any point in history been a teaching of the Catholic Church (including today).

As others note you are badly mistaken on this one.
It is now clearly a teaching promoted in the Universal Catechism of 1985.

 

[TK421]

Where there any differences as to what the Catholic Church taught in regards to salvation for non-Catholics prior to Vatican ll as compared to after Vatican ll?

Yes, though it is not an immediate transition between post- and pre- Vatican II like flipping a light switch. Magisterial teachings have gradually become more receptive to the possibilities of salvation outside of the ordinary means, and this is something that picked up pace in the early 19th century (when globalization began in its infant stages). You can start to see significant differences in emphasis in Popes in the 1800s compared to the Middle Ages.

There haven’t been any changes to dogma, since this is of course logically impossible.

 

[Sophie111]

note that the Catechism (which teaches falsely in other parts and is not a reliable guide to the Catholic faith)

Please stop this already.
Your view has now completely lost credibility when you must treat the 1985 universal and Magisterial Catechism in this way simply to shore up your highly personal theology.
It is likely clear to most loyal Catholics that you are the mistaken one not the Catechism.
It doesnt matter if you believe there is no continuous explicit tradition or not on this point. In fact it doesnt matter if that were actually true. It is a Magisterial teaching now and has been for quite some time. You are free to disagree privately, but I suggest that as it is now normative teaching a loyal Catholic cannot morally do so in public fashion…and certainly not suggest in public the normative teaching is in error.

 

[ProudPapa1988]

If a teaching “evolves” to the point that it no longer holds it’s original meaning than the dogma would have changed.

“Progress” of dogmas is, in reality, nothing but corruption of dogmas…I absolutely reject the heretical doctrine of the evolution of dogma, as passing from one meaning to another, and different from the sense in which the Church originally held it." Pope St. Pius X

If the Church held a strict sense that being sacramentally Catholic was necessary for salvation in the Church and then after the injection of modernism, modernists begin saying that salvation can and does occur outside the Church…how is that not a change?

 

[Sophie111]

What part of the catechism does it say that the catechism is infallible? I’ll wait.

You miss the point.
Religious submission of heart and mind is required of normative Church teaching regardless of whether or not it is dogmatically proclaimed.

And the new catechism contradicts those that came before it on specific teaching

You dont seem to understand the current Catechism is the Churches first universal and Magisterially proclaimed Catechism. It is no surprise if it may contradict, real or imagined, lesser regional Catechisms including Baltimore.

But as I say your views are no longer worth taking seriously given your inability to accept the official positions, right or wrong in your mind, as the official teaching of the Magisterium.
Theres really nothing more to say, God bless.

 

[ProudPapa1988]

The Church cannot accept a heresy as the “official” magisterium. The Holy Spirit prevents this. That is why Vatican II remains a pastoral council (by the own council fathers verbage) and not an ecumenical one. This is why the CCC is fallible and not excluded from error. If the CCC contains error and the modernists made it the official catechism of the Church, that does not mean that the error is suddenly an acceptable Church position on a subject. It just means the Church made a mistake (which is entirely possible since, again, nothing involved here is infallible). I do agree that religious submission is required of normative Church teaching…so long as it remains orthodox. We are NOT expected to give assent to error.

Just as it is licit to resist a Pontiff who attacks the body, so also is it licit to resist him who attacks souls or destroys the civil order or above all, tries to destroy the Church. I say that it is licit to resist him by not doing what he orders and by impeding the execution of his will. It is not licit, however, to judge him, to punish him, or to depose him, for these are acts proper to a superior.

(St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice , Book II, Chapter 29)

This resisting error goes beyond just resisting a bad pope, bishop, priest, etc. Our first loyalty is to Jesus Christ and Divine Revelation as handed on from the Apostles to their successors. If there is ever conflicting ideas about a position or subject, Sacred Tradition wins out. No Pope can “change” dogma. Dogmas cannot progress if the end result is a different interpretation or understanding of the original meaning.

 

[Genesis315]

That and the bogus claim that muslims and jews worship the same God as us. This is HERESY in every literal sense of the word. They cannot, by their own definitions of God, worship the same God as us. We believe in the Trinity. Jews and Muslims both deny the Triune nature of God and explicitly and vehemently deny the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

Can you show where the fact that they worship God has been condemned as heresy? Acknowledging the fact that they do, in fact, worship the one God is a natural consequence of the Church’s other definitive teachings that the divinity of Christ and the trinune nature of God are dogmas that can only be believed with faith, whereas acknowledging the one God can (and must) be done without faith and prior to faith. This is why Muslims and Jews are always distinguished from idolators, those who adore things or ideas other God.

First, I think there should be noted the difference between worshiping God in Spirit and in truth, offering Him “true worship,” having supernatural faith, obeying Him, etc., and acknowledging God or worshiping God according to religion (which is not a theological virtue; it falls under natural justice).

St. Thomas defines this virtue in the Summa as “to show reverence to one God under one aspect, namely, as the first principle of the creation and government of things.” SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: Religion (Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 81)

They both certainly worship God as First Principle and Supreme Governor of all things, but is it the same God we know? Can one acknowledge the one God without explicitly acknowledging the Trinity?

Faith is required to acknowledge the Trinity. The Trinity cannot be reasoned out, as St. Thomas explains:

It is impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason. For, as above explained (12, 4, 12), man cannot obtain the knowledge of God by natural reason except from creatures. Now creatures lead us to the knowledge of God, as effects do to their cause. Accordingly, by natural reason we can know of God that only which of necessity belongs to Him as the principle of things, and we have cited this fundamental principle in treating of God as above (Question 12, Article 12). Now, the creative power of God is common to the whole Trinity; and hence it belongs to the unity of the essence, and not to the distinction of the persons. Therefore, by natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons.

newadvent.org/summa/1032.htm

Therefore, we can know of God, as the Principle of all things, apart from faith, but we can only know of the Trinity with faith since it is a revealed dogma. The First Vatican Council also defined that God can be known from natural reason alone (Dei Filius, Canon 2.1) and St. Paul says, on account of this, those who do not acknowledge God (but worship idols, are atheists, etc.) are without excuse (Rom. 1:20).

Therefore, one can acknowledge the one God and Creator of all things without having the supernatural faith necessary for acknowledging the Trinity.

continued…

 

[Genesis315]

continued from above…

In addition, it is the essence of the thing that determines what it is. If we acknowledge the same essence, we acknowledge the same thing. What we can say about the essence of God is that it is the same as His existence. This is summed up as “God is” or, in His own words, “I AM” or “I AM who AM.” (Exo. 3:14).

God is a purely self-existent being that exists in complete actuality. God is not a being that is created by another god; neither does God create Himself into existence. Rather, God has always existed as an unchanging, completely actualized being. God has his Being of himself and to himself such that he is absolute being and the very definition of existence (see Acts 17:22-28). Since God’s existence is the same as his essence, it follows that God is existence. (Note: this is not to assert pantheism. All other beings participate in his existence on a contingency and thus do not possess the essence of God. Therefore, no other being can be said to be a god or share a part in the godhead since they exist solely on a contingency.) This concept is at the root of the definition of all of God’s other perfections because if God is absolute being he must logically contain in Himself all perfections of being.

Since God’s essence is existence, if one acknowledges His essence, one can only acknowledge He who exists–it is impossible to acknowledge a completely actualized being that is not the one and only God. Similarly, there cannot exist two of such beings, because then neither would contain in Himself all perfections of being.

The CE article on Essence and Existence explains this from the Thomist perspective:

-If essence and existence were but one thing, we should be unable to conceive the one without conceiving the other. But we are as a fact able to conceive of essence by itself.
-If there be no real distinction between the two, then the essence is identical with the existence. But in God alone are these identical.

newadvent.org/cathen/05543b.htm

Since Muslims and Jews do conceive of God as being completely self-actualized and being non-contingent where essence and existence are one thing, they therefore can only be said to acknowledge the one God who exists and it is to Him that they honor and worship as First Principle and Creator according to the virtue of religion. As an aside, this is why we cannot say Mormons worship the same God–their god is a created being and one of many.

I would say therefore that we know God; they know of God. St. Thomas makes this distinction in his commentary on John to reconcile Biblical passages where Jesus says one must know Him to know the Father with those where people without faith are said to know or worship God (such as those passages cited above from Acts and Romans). We know Him as the Father of an only Son and worship Him in Spirit and in Truth and serve Him in supernatural faith and charity.

See also this article by a well-known Catholic philosophy professor:

Edward Feser: Christians, Muslims, and the reference of “God”