Monday, October 5, 2009

Catholic Church-the one and only religion of God-Vatican Council II


Vatican Council II refers to the Catholic Church as 'the one and only Church of God'(Unitatis Reintigratio 3)
'Even in the beginnings of this one and only Church of God there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly condemned...'-Unitatis Redintigration 3, Vatican Council II.(Emphasis added).
Vatican Council II says all people need to enter this one and only Church of God, for salvation.(Lumen Gentium 14).
There are good things in the 'great religions',seeds of holiness, some aspects of the truth and positive things in other religions according to Vatican Council II- but they are not paths to salvation.Neither are the churches and Christian communities.

The Catholic Church is the ordinary,general means to go to Heaven and to avoid Hell.(Ad Gentes 7)
Therefore, all must be converted to Him, made known by the Church's preaching, and all must be incorporated into Him by baptism and into the Church which is His body. For Christ Himself "by stressing in express language the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:5), at the same time confirmed the necessity of the Church, into which men enter by baptism, as by a door. Therefore those men cannot be saved, who though aware that God, through Jesus Christ founded the Church as something necessary, still do not wish to enter into it, or to persevere in it."-Ad Gentes 7,Vatican Council II

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