I cut and pasted this from the CA Forum, but I neglected to note the url or the poster’s name. It is the definitive answer to the quotes taken from the Papal Bull, Unum Sanctum by Protestants (and some Catholics).
QUOTE
Re: Unam Sanctum question.
One must also understand what the bull Unam sanctam was actually about. Boniface VIII didn’t just wake up one day and decide to declare that non-Catholics can’t be saved. In fact, Unam sanctam has nothing to do with non-Catholics at all!
The bull was part of a fierce and longrunning political dispute between Boniface, a rather impolitic pope, and Philip the Fair of France, who wanted to tax the clergy and exert more control over religious institutions. Two two traded diplomatic barbs for several years: Philip sought to try the bishop of Pamiers for treason; Boniface shot back the condescending bull Ausculta Fili (“Now you listen to me, kiddo”).
Eventually Boniface issued Unam sanctam. Again, it has nothing whatsoever to do with non-Catholics. Everyone involved here was Catholic. It is about the relationship between temporal rulers, like kings, and the spiritual authorities. So he writes:
*t is a law of the divinity that the lowest things reach the highest place by intermediaries. . . . Hence we must recognize the more clearly that spiritual power surpasses in dignity and in nobility any temporal power whatever, as spiritual things surpass the temporal.
. . .
Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man . . . . Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God.
That, in a nutshell, is what the bull is about. Now, it would be quite strange for Boniface to have written a whole bull about the hierarchy of temporal and religious authorities, and then to tack on as a total afterthought the dogma that some think they see here: “Oh yeah, and by the way, apropos of nothing, everybody in the world must be a Catholic to be saved. Just thought I’d throw that out there.”
This is not to say that it isn’t true that people must be Catholic to be saved – what do I know? – only that Unam sanctam is simply about a totally different topic altogether. So phrases like “be subject to the Roman Pontiff” have to be understood in terms of what Boniface was actually trying to do with the bull and the message he was attempting to communicate about temporal authority; it’s misleading if we try to pretend he was writing this on a completely different subject matter.
Oh, and by the way, after this, Boniface excommunicated Philip, who then sent mercenaries to attack him and plunder his palace. Boniface died a month later from the trauma. It’s easy to read the high-sounding and rather bombastic language of Unam sanctam and think, “Wow, those were the days! What majestic papal power!” In fact, this period was a real nadir of papal authority, from which it would never fully recover.
END QUOTE*
