Salvation outside the Church

[Portrait]

I think you are still operating under the assumption that “church” is to be taken as the visible, institutional church. Am I correct?

Dear St.TommyMore,

Thankyou for your response.

As I understand it the Catholic Church does not draw a Protestant distinction between the visible and invisble Church, the two are co-exentsive are they not?; we do not pit the Mystical Church against the institutional, or visible Church, as most Evangelicals are wont to do. The Mystical and visible “churches” are like two circles that largely intersect, but which are not synonymous. They exist together - somewhat paradoxically and with tension - until the consummation of all things. However, the fact remains that a man must belong to the visible Church if he is to be eternally saved and entrance to this Church is by baptismal regeneration, as our Lord himself taught (St. John 3: 5). In any event, if men are to locate the Church in the world, then clearly they must be able to find it - “a city that is set upon a hill cannot be hidden”, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the amount.

We need to beware that, in our charitable desire to offer a ‘larger hope’ to the heathen, we do not fall into the Protestant error of viewing the Church as comprising of some predestined elect, to which visible Church membership is inconsequential in the final analysis since they are all members of the Mystical Body of Christ, “born again” with or without the Sacrament of Regeneration.

Sorry dear friend if I sound obtuse and perhaps I am completely off-beam in all this and totally misunderstand Church teaching, but it seems that there was a radical rethink as regards the status of non-Christians at Vatican II that just does not sit comfortably with what had been taught hitherto. Many devout, God-fearing Catholics are of this opinion and are utterly confused, as threads such as this evince only too clearly.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[Portrait]

Are you saying that irrespective of the life people lead, their final justification can only be through baptismal regeneration? I got a different idea when I read the same verses you quoted and some more: Rom 2:6-29, 1Tim 2:1-4, & 1Cor 1:17

Dear Pitcharan,

Cordial greetings and thankyou kindly for your response above.

If our Lords words in St. John 3: 6 mean anything, then surely they teach unequivocally that men must be sacramentally regenerated if they are to enter the church. That is the Dominical means whereby men are baptized into the Body of Christ (I Cor. 12: 13).

Of course God desires that all men should be saved and come unto a knowledge of the Gospel, but obviously not all men will be saved (they are endowed with free will), to assert otherwise is to fall into the heresy of a wishy-washy universalism.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[StTommyMore]

Dear St.TommyMore,

Thankyou for your response.

As I understand it the Catholic Church does not draw a Protestant distinction between the visible and invisble Church, the two are co-exentsive are they not?; we do not pit the Mystical Church against the institutional, or visible Church, as most Evangelicals are wont to do. The Mystical and visible “churches” are like two circles that largely intersect, but which are not synonymous. They exist together - somewhat paradoxically and with tension - until the consummation of all things. However, the fact remains that a man must belong to the visible Church if he is to be eternally saved and entrance to this Church is by baptismal regeneration, as our Lord himself taught (St. John 3: 5). In any event, if men are to locate the Church in the world, then clearly they must be able to find it - “a city that is set upon a hill cannot be hidden”, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the amount.

We need to beware that, in our charitable desire to offer a ‘larger hope’ to the heathen, we do not fall into the Protestant error of viewing the Church as comprising of some predestined elect, to which visible Church membership is inconsequential in the final analysis since they are all members of the Mystical Body of Christ, “born again” with or without the Sacrament of Regeneration.

Sorry dear friend if I sound obtuse and perhaps I am completely off-beam in all this and totally misunderstand Church teaching, but it seems that there was a radical rethink as regards the status of non-Christians at Vatican II that just does not sit comfortably with what had been taught hitherto. Many devout, God-fearing Catholics are of this opinion and are utterly confused, as threads such as this evince only too clearly.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

There is a distinction between the two. There are those that are members of the institutional Church (that is they are formally Catholic) but there are those who have been baptized into the Church, but are not fully members of the institutional Church. Most (but not all) Protestants fall into this latter category. If it were not so, then every convert would have to be re-baptized as Catholics, but this issue was resolved many centuries ago. Remember that the Sacrament of Baptism does several things:

• Washes away the stain of original sin
• washes away personal sin (for those baptized above the age of reason)
• it remits all punisment due sin
• it makes you a member of the Church

There is a spiritual and institutional dimension of the Church, and one need not be in the institutional Church to participate in the mystical body of Christ

 

[TMC]

You can’t change something that was declared true from the chair of St. Peter and then say its no longer true and say this is the new truth, thats why the new mass is invalid because it is a new religion, a false church predicted in many places, one being our lady of la salette, in the book of Daniel etc. Bother jr is a evil heretic and so are these anti-popes

Tal, I think that referring to the good Brother, not to mention the last five popes, as an “evil heretic” is probably a violation of forum rules. Please try to remain civil and discuss. I am happy to engage in as spirited a debate as you please, but hurling insults and ranting like a child are not acceptable behaviors here.

 

[chypmonk]

Tal, I think that referring to the good Brother, not to mention the last five popes, as an “evil heretic” is probably a violation of forum rules. Please try to remain civil and discuss. I am happy to engage in as spirited a debate as you please, but hurling insults and ranting like a child are not acceptable behaviors here.

thank you well said :yup::tiphat:

 

[chypmonk]

Chypmonk,

What I am having a difficult time understanding is why you tenaciously promote your views of EENS? Is it not enough to hold your own belief? Must you persist in changing the minds of all who will listen to you as you deter them from official church teaching? Yes, I hear you say you uphold the teachings of V-II, yet in practice, you do your utmost to contradict them in every opportunity that arises on this forum. Why?

How have I contradicted Vatican II? Can you substantiate such a accusation?

What gain do you obtain by stating that everyone who does not enter the Catholic church will be damned? Is this your view of a merciful God that you hope to project upon others?

So you say that the Church now teaches there IS salvation outside the Church? Why don’t you just honestly say it straight?

It is not* my view *it is the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church.

Personally I would like no one to go to hell and we were all created straight in heaven but God has his reasons why we must toil in this vale of tears.

 

[Sirach2]

Oh my, Chypmonk … I cannot believe you are asking this question, and requiring that we go over this constantly repeated issue yet again, that was discussed in all the threads wherein you were active!

You may not have stated in so many words that you disagree with Vatican II, yet you disagree with the promulgations by insisting that one can only be saved by Catholic water baptism, and in no other way. Do you deny this? I’m certainly not going to retype all that material, but I refer you to this post which points to the Church’s beliefs outlined in the Catechism, which are, in fact, restatements of the teachngs of V-2, which you oppose. Certainly, there is more material than this to present, but you know where to find your disagreements in all of the other threads. Just do a search on your own posts and you’ll find them.

Methinks you pay much too much attention to the errors from the blog in your signature, and not enough attention to the teachings of the Church.

 

[chypmonk]

Oh my, Chypmonk … I cannot believe you are asking this question, and requiring that we go over this constantly repeated issue yet again, that was discussed in all the threads wherein you were active!

You may not have stated in so many words that you disagree with Vatican II, yet you disagree with the promulgations by insisting that one can only be saved by Catholic water baptism, and in no other way. Do you deny this? I’m certainly not going to retype all that material, but I refer you to this post which points to the Church’s beliefs outlined in the Catechism, which are, in fact, restatements of the teachngs of V-2, which you oppose. Certainly, there is more material than this to present, but you know where to find your disagreements in all of the other threads. Just do a search on your own posts and you’ll find them.

Methinks you pay much too much attention to the errors from the blog in your signature, and not enough attention to the teachings of the Church.

Could you please answer the question ? Do you think there* is* salvation outside the Church?

 

[simple_soul]

*I do not know if this will help this discusion or not but, the way I came to understand this is there is **no salvation outside the catholic church *but you have to keep in mind all that the catholic church encompases.

 

[Sirach2]

I don’t understand why I must answer your question, when you avoid answering mine. Nevertheless, absolutely, there is a possibility of salvation outside the instutional Church, as She teaches explicitly in Lumen Gentium [and others.] Do you disagree with that document’s teaching? Keep in mind that the salvation, if granted by Almighty God, flows from the grace of Jesus’ redemption AND the Catholic Church to which these souls are united, albeit imperfectly.
Mystici Corporis:

1. And first of all let us imitate the breadth of His love. For the Church, the Bride of Christ, is one; and yet so vast is the love of the divine Spouse that it embraces in His Bride the whole human race without exception. Our Savior shed His Blood precisely in order that He might reconcile men to God through the Cross, and might constrain them to unite in one body, however widely they may differ in nationality and race. True love of the Church, therefore, requires not only that we should be mutually solicitous one for another as members and sharing in their suffering, but likewise that we should recognize in other men, although they are not yet joined to us in the body of the Church, our brothers in Christ according to the flesh, called, together with us, to the same eternal salvation.

Are you finished yet? Or do you intend to promote your version of what the Church teaches? You may find you are talking to yourself, since most of us have gone over and over this subject, and becoming rather tired of repeating ourselves since you are not of a mind to listen to sound doctrine.

 

[5tunate]

Mike316, not that you or anyone else here would care, but what if you considered this from another viewpoint? For my part, I accept a view that is neither theistic in the Christian sense nor atheistic. I assert that there is God, and that Man is made in the image and likeness of God, and is subject to the dynamics of that relationship more than to any particular form of religion.

Man, as homo sapiens (wise guys), has evidently been around for about 100K to half a million years. They all were created in the image and likeness of God. “Salvable,” if you will. With Abraham we have the beginnings of the three major monotheistic religions that survive to this day, many others having been stamped out or dying natural deaths. All of them are essentially Middle Eastern faiths, though one has been more thoroughly adopted and modified into Western culture especially since the Reformation.

About 2K years ago we have the start of the Catholic Church, and about 300CE it gets a major political boost. So we have a chunk of folks from none to about 1 billion today who for one reason or another were/are called Catholics. There is pause about the accuracy of that number if we consider that, as in other religions, many of these are not strictly traditional Catholics or were even forced converts and/or habitual practitioners as distinct from arriving at accepting that faith from a neutral adult consideration. I’ve heard that that number is about 2/3 to 1/2 the claimed total. I don’t know, but simple logic and experience tells me the total doesn’t reflect hard core practitioners that toe the line all the way. Agreed?

So we have at most a sixth of humanity over 2K years who believed somewhat as you do regarding salvation, and other faiths that similarly believe that they are the one true and only. Go figure. So in the Mercy of a Loving God, what happens to all those “saps” who never had an inkling of the Church or very sincerely believe otherwise? That would be everyone before say 30CE, and a heck of a lot of people today. So salvation outside the Church is not just a current, or a small question.

But it is a question that can exist only in the realm of believing in the teaching of the Church! And I have to wonder, knowing many folks with religious inclinations, if there is not a huge propensity among the faithful to mistake belief for knowledge, however sincere they might be. So I have to ask, does the Church believe that it has jurisdiction over the hordes of humanity that existed before it did and beside it now? Is the Church similar in its scope of concern to Mormons who consider it a sacred task to baptize all of humanity retroactively, willing or not? I think that aside from being a matter of great doctrinal concern for some, this is a bit that is also of anthropological and psychological interest in general.

 

[Portrait]

There is a distinction between the two. There are those that are members of the institutional Church (that is they are formally Catholic) but there are those who have been baptized into the Church, but are not fully members of the institutional Church. Most (but not all) Protestants fall into this latter category. If it were not so, then every convert would have to be re-baptized as Catholics, but this issue was resolved many centuries ago. Remember that the Sacrament of Baptism does several things:

• Washes away the stain of original sin
• washes away personal sin (for those baptized above the age of reason)
• it remits all punisment due sin
• it makes you a member of the Church

There is a spiritual and institutional dimension of the Church, and one need not be in the institutional Church to participate in the mystical body of Christ

Dear St.TommyMore,

Thankyou for your reply to my post.

Even the Second Vatican Council teaches that the hierarchial structure of the Catholic Church and the mystical body of Christ “form one complex reality that comes to together from a human and a divine element” (Lumen Gentium 8). You are, or so it seems, drawing a false dichotomy between the instituional Church and the Body of Christ, a theory more associated with Protestant Evangelicalism than Catholicism. The Church is not some invisible reality composed of only true believers, as the Reformers erroneously insisted. In the very first proclamation of the Gospel by St. Peter at Pentecost, he did not invite his listeners to simply align themselves spiritually with other Christians. On the contary, when he exhorted them to “repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins”, he summoned them into a visible Society, the Church, which Christ had established. Only by responding to that call could they be rescued from the “crooked generation” (Acts 2: 40) to which they belonged and be saved. Why should it be different now?

How can one be baptized into the Church and yet not be a member of the institutional Chuch, that makes no sense at all and seems opposed to the whole spirit of Catholicism. The Body of Christ is the “One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”; the visible Church and the mystical Body of Christ “form one complex reality” (LG 8). Imagine the reaction of those souls who responded at Pentecost to St. Peter’s preaching being told that they were only being united to some spiritual entity and not the Visible Society of the Church. To say that one does not necessarily need to be a member of the Catholic institutional Church is tantamount to asserting that it is a matter of indifference as to whether or not one becomes Catholic at all. One can, after all, become a member of the Mystical Body of Christ by being validly baptized in any number of Protestant sects. This denudes the Catholic Church founded by Christ to be the ark of salvation of its uniqueness.

Am I to understand that you are you saying that our Church has always taught that men could be saved outside of its bosom without submitting to the Sacrament of Baptism? If so can you provide evidence to this effect please?

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

I

 

[PJM]

=chypmonk;7153553]Actually I just wanted to see if you really understand these above statements, and I see you do.The 2 statements above are both from Ecumenical Councils. There is no doubt they are infallible.
And often repeated

**INFALLIBLE TEACHINGS ( a.k.a. EX CATHEDRA) **

Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, Constitution 1, 1215, ex cathedra:
“There is indeed one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice.”

Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, Nov. 18, 1302, ex cathedra:

“With Faith urging us we are forced to believe and to hold the one, holy, Catholic Church and that, apostolic, and we firmly believe and simply confess this Church outside of which there is no salvation nor remission of sin… Furthermore, we declare, say, define, and proclaim to every human creature that they by necessity for salvation are entirely subject to the Roman Pontiff.”“Since however there is for both regulars and seculars, for superiors and subjects, for exempt and non-exempt, one universal Church, outside of which there is no salvation, for all of whom there is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism…”

Pope Leo X, Fifth Lateran Council, Session 11, Dec. 19, 1516, ex cathedra:

“For, regulars and seculars, prelates and subjects, exempt and non-exempt, belong to the one universal Church, outside of which no one at all is saved, and they all have one Lord and one faith.”

Pope Pius IV, Council of Trent, “Iniunctum nobis,” Nov. 13, 1565, ex cathedra Taken from PROFESSION OF FAITH:

“Also all other things taught, defined, and declared by the sacred canons and ecumenical Councils, and especially by the sacred and holy Synod of Trent, … I without hesitation accept and profess; and at the same time all things contrary thereto, and whatever heresies have been condemned, and rejected, and anathematized by the Church, I likewise condemn, reject, and anathematize. This true Catholic faith, outside of which no one can be saved… I now profess and truly hold…”

Pope Benedict XIV, Nuper ad nos, March 16, 1743, Profession of Faith:

“… And that this faith of the Catholic Church, without which no one can be saved. . . . “This true Catholic faith, outside of which none can be saved, which I now freely profess and truly hold…”

Dogmas don’t change their meaning thru time once pronounced infallible statements are…, well… dogma:

Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council I, 1870, Session 4, Chap. 4:
“…the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra [from the Chair of Peter], that is, when carrying out the duty of the pastor and teacher of all Christians in accord with his supreme apostolic authority he explains a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the universal Church… operates with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished that His Church be instructed in defining doctrine on faith and morals; and so such definitions of the Roman Pontiff from himself, but not from the consensus of the Church, are unalterable.”[Denzinger 1839]

Pope Pius IX, First Vatican Council, Sess. 3, Chap. 2 on Revelation, 1870, ex cathedra: “Hence, also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and there must never be a recession from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding.” [Denzinger 1800]

While neier Dogma or Docrine can change a fuller understanding ADDING to thre maning, not changing it is feasible.

By virtue of a common Baptism, and belief in the Blessed Trinity ALL Christian salvation DOES flow through the CC. The Issue of forgiveness of sin requires perfect Contrition.

CC: 776 As sacrament, the Church is Christ’s instrument. “She is taken up by him also as the instrument for the salvation of all,” “the universal sacrament of salvation,” by which Christ is “at once manifesting and actualizing the mystery of God’s love for men.” The Church “is the visible plan of God’s love for humanity,” because God desires “that the whole human race may become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit.”

**CC 819 **“Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth” are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: “the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements.” Christ’s Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, and are in themselves calls to “Catholic unity.”

 

[chypmonk]

I don’t understand why I must answer your question, when you avoid answering mine. Nevertheless, absolutely, there is a possibility of salvation outside the instutional Church, as She teaches explicitly in Lumen Gentium [and others.] Do you disagree with that document’s teaching? Keep in mind that the salvation, if granted by Almighty God, flows from the grace of Jesus’ redemption AND the Catholic Church to which these souls are united, albeit imperfectly.

No she doesn’t.
Pope Paul VI Second Vatican Council,LUMEN GENTIUM, Nov. 21,1964:
14. This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism (Mk. 16:16 “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Jn. 3:5 “Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”) and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.”

Those who have not heard of the Church do not sin in that matter but are condemned for other sin/s.

#48 “He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established His Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is continually active in the world that He might lead men to the Church and through it join them to Himself and that He might make them partakers of His glorious life by nourishing them with His own Body and Blood.”

Originallypostedby Sirach2 Mystici Corporis
96. And first of all let us imitate the breadth of His love. For the Church, the Bride of Christ, is one; and yet so vast is the love of the divine Spouse that it embraces in His Bride the whole human race without exception. Our Savior shed His Blood precisely in order that He might reconcile men to God through the Cross, and might constrain them to unite in one body, however widely they may differ in nationality and race. True love of the Church, therefore, requires not only that we should be mutually solicitous one for another as members and sharing in their suffering, but likewise that we should recognize in other men, although they are not yet joined to us in the body of the Church, our brothers in Christ according to the flesh, called, together with us, to the same eternal salvation.

I don’t have a problem with this quote. We are called to love the whole human race and Christ has died for all without exception, the red above makes it clear they are not in union but they are CALLED to salvation in the Church, i,e. in Christ.

This same encyclical condemns your notion of an invisible “Church” but you don’t even believe one needs to be a member of the Church to be saved. .

Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis June 29, 1943:

22 “Actually **only those are to be numbered among the members of the Church **who have received the laver of regeneration and profess the true faith.”​

#14 “That the Church is a body is frequently asserted in the Sacred Scriptures. “Christ,” says the Apostle, “is the Head of the Body of the Church.” [13] If the Church is a body, it must be an unbroken unity, according to those words of Paul: “Though many we are one body in Christ.” [14] But it is not enough that the body of the Church should be an unbroken unity; it must also be something definite and perceptible to the senses as Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Satis Cognitum asserts: “the Church is visible because she is a body.” [15] Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely “pneumatological” as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are united by an invisible bond. ”

The Encyclical Mystici Corporis of Pope Pius XII shows that the Pope, far from condoning your conception “Church” — whereby it has all kinds of invisible members of varied “professions of faith” — was actually condemning this very way of thinking.

 

[Sirach2]

Chypmonk,

Once again, we witness you preparing an ala-carte, pick-and-choosing of specific documents in the manner of sola-scripturists, soley to make the church agree with what you want Her to say. You completely glossed over Lumen Gentium’s specific teachings regarding those outside the fold, as we have discussed ad nauseum in other threads. I will not waste any more time in conversation with you. Your mind is completely closed, made up, fixated, obsessed … and it will cause further harm to give you yet another opportunity to spread your errors for innocent readers. You may now talk with yourself.

 

[Portrait]

While neier Dogma or Docrine can change a fuller understanding ADDING to thre maning, not changing it is feasible.

By virtue of a common Baptism, and belief in the Blessed Trinity ALL Christian salvation DOES flow through the CC. The Issue of forgiveness of sin requires perfect Contrition.

CC: 776 As sacrament, the Church is Christ’s instrument. “She is taken up by him also as the instrument for the salvation of all,” “the universal sacrament of salvation,” by which Christ is “at once manifesting and actualizing the mystery of God’s love for men.” The Church “is the visible plan of God’s love for humanity,” because God desires “that the whole human race may become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit.”

**CC 819 **“Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth” are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: “the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements.” Christ’s Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, and are in themselves calls to “Catholic unity.”

Dear PJM,

Cordial greetings and hope all is well.

It is frequently stated in these discussions that the ancient phrase, “Outside the Church there is no salvation”, was addressed to those already within the Church, lest they be ever tempted to join heretical bodies or abandon the Catholic faith. What proof do we have that this much debated phrase was decidedly not a statement that all non-Catholics were condemned?

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[RosaryCrusader]

Chypmonk,

Once again, we witness you preparing an ala-carte, pick-and-choosing of specific documents in the manner of sola-scripturists, soley to make the church agree with what you want Her to say. You completely glossed over Lumen Gentium’s specific teachings regarding those outside the fold, as we have discussed ad nauseum in other threads. I will not waste any more time in conversation with you. Your mind is completely closed, made up, fixated, obsessed … and it will cause further harm to give you yet another opportunity to spread your errors for innocent readers. You may now talk with yourself.

Sirach,

The main authority you continue to site is Vatican II which is a council which intentionally chose not to engage the charism of infallibility; explicitly stated by every conciliar and post conciliar pope. So you are pitting an uninfallible Council that dealt with pastoral considerations (a new mode of engaging the world) with Councils that did engage infallibility. I’ll let you think out the ramifications of this - but it’s clear to all with even a spoonful of a sensus fidei that V2 was a disaster for the Church and the world and is ushering in such religious indifference that it could very well be the introduction to the great apostasy.

It’s very sad to see good Catholics loose their Catholic identity and have their faith ebbed from them through exterior practices which deny their interior convictions. Yet that is the scenario we’re in today.

I don’t agree with Chypmonk concerning BOD and BOB - at least not to the extent of completely denying them but I do think they’re overstated and misapplied in such a way today that is sickening.

Something I’ve noticed in your posts, Sirach, is that you incessantly try to interpret the 2000 year history of the Church in light of Vatican II when Pope Benedict XVI (through his hermeneutic of continuity) has stated the opposite is true and that Vatican II must be interpreted in light of tradition. You really need to keep this in mind. The Church wasn’t born at a new pentecost in the 60’s - it was born on Pentecost 2000 years ago by the Holy Ghost.

What it boils down to is this: God gave us the Church and He established it as necessary (which even V2 states) as well as baptism. God may use an extraordinary way to save someone through miraculous means but he did not leave that as part of the deposit of faith so we have to preach and teach the only means we know of which is the Church. If you’re telling people anything different you’re preaching a different gospel.

 

[StTommyMore]

Sirach,

The main authority you continue to site is Vatican II which is a council which intentionally chose not to engage the charism of infallibility; explicitly stated by every conciliar and post conciliar pope. So you are pitting an uninfallible Council that dealt with pastoral considerations (a new mode of engaging the world) with Councils that did engage infallibility. I’ll let you think out the ramifications of this - but it’s clear to all with even a spoonful of a sensus fidei that V2 was a disaster for the Church and the world and is ushering in such religious indifference that it could very well be the introduction to the great apostasy.

It’s very sad to see good Catholics loose their Catholic identity and have their faith ebbed from them through exterior practices which deny their interior convictions. Yet that is the scenario we’re in today.

I don’t agree with Chypmonk concerning BOD and BOB - at least not to the extent of completely denying them but I do think they’re overstated and misapplied in such a way today that is sickening.

Something I’ve noticed in your posts, Sirach, is that you incessantly try to interpret the 2000 year history of the Church in light of Vatican II when Pope Benedict XVI (through his hermeneutic of continuity) has stated the opposite is true and that Vatican II must be interpreted in light of tradition. You really need to keep this in mind. The Church wasn’t born at a new pentecost in the 60’s - it was born on Pentecost 2000 years ago by the Holy Ghost.

What it boils down to is this: God gave us the Church and He established it as necessary (which even V2 states) as well as baptism. God may use an extraordinary way to save someone through miraculous means but he did not leave that as part of the deposit of faith so we have to preach and teach the only means we know of which is the Church. If you’re telling people anything different you’re preaching a different gospel.

I think what needs to be discussed her is what is “church”

 

[JReducation]

You can’t change something that was declared true from the chair of St. Peter and then say its no longer true and say this is the new truth, thats why the new mass is invalid because it is a new religion, a false church predicted in many places, one being our lady of la salette, in the book of Daniel etc. Bother jr is a evil heretic and so are these anti-popes

Geez, while I was on the phone with chancery officials just this afternoon, I got the impression that I’m still in good standing with the Catholic Church.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Sirach2]

Pertinent to this topic, from EWTN’s Colin Donovan:

ewtn.com/expert/answers/outside_the_church.htm

If any disagree, kindly contact EWTN. I am only a messenger.