The Pilot man must hold that there is no salvation out of the church, or not be a Catholic … The only question on this subject on which Catholics do or can differ is, Who are in the church? … Bellarmine holds, as do most theologians, on the authority of St. Ambrose, that catechumens, dying before receiving the visible sacrament of baptism in re, may be saved; but he feels a difficulty in the case. How can this be, since there is no salvation out of the church, and catechumens are not actu in proprie in the church? But this, though a difficulty to Bellarmine, would be none to the theologian of the Pilot, for he would say: “Very true, they are not members of the body of the church, but they, by their faith and charity, belong to the soul of the church, and that suffices.” Bellarmine, though an iminent theologian, and generally regarded as a high authority, appears to have been ignorant of this easy way of solving the difficulty, and he labors hard to prove that, “catechumens are after all, in the church, not actually and properly, as a man conceived, but not yet formed and born, is called man only potentially.” Billuart, as we showed in our former article, solves the difficulty in the same way, and maintains that catechumens may be said to be in the church “proximately and in desire,” or, as St. Augustine says, “in voto et proxima dispositione,” as one may be said to be in the house because he is in the vestibule for the purpose of immediately entering. “They belong to the church inchoately,” that is, are inchoate members, and the church in her prayer for them on Good Friday calls them hers- “Our catechumens:” “Oremus pro catechumenis nostris,” evidently implying that they belong to her, and are under her care, subject in some sense to her jurisdiction.
