Choose your approach to Vatican Council II

 

A group of the Council Fathers at Vatican Council II wanted to eliminate the dogma extra ecclesima nulla salus(EENS) officially and so they used the approach of the 1949 Letter of the Holy Office (LOHO). In principle they decided to project invisible and hypothetical cases as being practical exceptions to the strict interpretation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus(EENS).

So hypothetical cases in Unitatatis Redintigratio ( Decree on Ecumenism), Vatican Council II are mentioned as if they are practical exceptions to EENS and an ecumenism of return.

Hypothetical cases in Lumen Gentium are mentioned as if they are exceptions to EENS and the past exclusivist ecclesiology of the Catholic Church.

Hypothetical cases of the baptism of desire(BOD) and invincible ignorance(I.I) are mentioned in Ad Gentes as if they are exceptions to Traditional Mission and EENS.

So we must remember this point when we read Vatican Council II.Do not read Vatican Council II superficially.

Secondly, do not interpret hypothetical cases as being practical exceptions to EENS. They cannot be exceptions.

In this way Vatican Council II is in harmony with Tradition ( EENS, Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX etc) and not a rupture.

if you use the false premise i.e  project hypothetical cases as being objective in the present times(2020), then you create the hermeneutic of rupture with Tradition.This is independent of the Council-text.

So irrespective, if you are a liberal or conservative Catholic, if you use the false premise Vatican Council II becomes a rupture with with Tradition and if you avoid this error, there is a continuity with the strict interpreation of EENS.-Lionel Andrades