Paul Danon:
The church’s teaching on her being the only way to salvation is harsh, in need of reform and has, indeed, been reformed in recent years.
I realize that you posted this as a position with which some of us (sedevacantist or not) might associate ourselves so don’t take my response as being directed toward you personally.
The idea that the Church’s teaching on being the only way to salvation being harsh is a heresy that has been rejected many many times in the past. What must be understood is what the Church means by such a delcaration and it
does not mean that all non-Catholics are doomed to Hell. Such judgments are left to God alone but the Church teaches the principle of invincible ignorance and the baptism of desire. When St. Augustine denied that baptims performed by heretics were invalid based on the idea that there is no salvation outside of the Church his position was not accepted by the Church’s authortitatve magisterium. No salvation outside of the Church means that you cannot look to any other religion as the
source of salvation.
Those who have separated from the Church but have not abandoned all of her teachings retain what graces are available in what they have retained. Thus, the graces available through the seven sacraments are available to the Orthodox but not to the Anglicans because the Orthodox have valid episcopal orders and the Anglicans do not. The graces available in the sacraments are there for one purpose alone; our salvation. It is in this sense ONLY that those who have separated from the Catholic Church have “access” to the community of salvation.
This access is not available from their religious institution, but from ONLY from what they have kept from the Catholic Church; the ONLY Church in which Christ entrusted the economy of salvation. These graces remain available through the Catholic Church and not because of their own religious institution. The extent to which they have abandoned the graces available through the Church is the extent to which they have cut themselves off from the graces God made available only through her. The graces that remain available come to them through the Catholic Church and are not in any way available through their own religious institutions.
However, not ALL graces are distributed to us through the Church. God has inscribed the natural law on our hearts and our response to it is only possible through God’s grace working through our free will. This is true for those outside of the Church as well as those within. The purpose of God’s grace, in all of its forms, is the same; to lead us to Him. Ideally, this will lead us to recognize Christ as the Messiah and to the one and only Church he founded. But that can be a long journey depending on the personal obstacles one must overcome. Invincible ignorance can come in many forms and some of those forms can be difficult to overcome.
I asked New Crusader in a previous post if the people who died after Christ established the Church but before the Church arrived in their areas to evangelize them went to Hell no matter how good they were; no matter how closely they followed the natural law. The Church does not teach that they necessarily went to hell and, yet, they were not part of the Church.
