E-mail correspondence
Thank you for your comments. I think we both agree with the
teaching that "outside the Church there is no salvation." I think we
also agree that those that there can only be hypothetical cases of those
not in visible communion with the Catholic Church being saved. I think
I take a more benign view of the 1949 Letter of the Holy Office than
you do. I only see it as laying out the conditions for the hypothetical
cases of people being saved who are not in actual, visible communion the
Catholic Church. Some people, though, might belong or be directed (ordinantur;
LG, 16) to the Catholic Church by desire and longing rather than
actual, visible communion. Only God knows who these people since the
interior state of souls is not visible to us.
I hope these comments explain my position more clearly. Perhaps we don't diagree as much as you think.
Lionel:
Thank you for responding.
The issue is the Letter of the Holy Office (LOHO ) and Vatican Council II.
LOHO
projected the baptism of desire(BOD),invincible ignorance(I.I) etc as
being exceptions to Feeneyite EENS. In other words it implied that there
were known non Catholics saved outside the Church. So the dogma EENS (
Feeneyite) was made obsolete.
The Letter states :
From the Catechism of Pope Pius X
16 Q. Is Baptism necessary to salvation?
A. Baptism is absolutely necessary to salvation, for our Lord has expressly said:
"Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into
the Kingdom of God."
The Church in Particular
9 Q. State distinctly what is necessary to be a member of the Church?
A. To be a member of the Church it is necessary to be baptised, to believe and
profess the teaching of Jesus Christ, to participate in the same Sacraments, and
to acknowledge the Pope and the other lawful pastors of the Church.
24 Q. To be saved, is it enough to be any sort of member of the Catholic Church?
A. No, to be saved it is not enough to be any sort of member of the Catholic
Church; it is necessary to be a living member.
27 Q. Can one be saved outside the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church?
A. No, no one can be saved outside the Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church,
just as no one could be saved from the flood outside the Ark of Noah,
which was a figure of the Church.
So
LOHO assumed hypothetical cases were objective examples of salvation
outside the Church and then concluded they were exceptions to Feeneyite
EENS.
This
wrong reasoning, an error, which I call Cushingite, was repeated in
Vatican Council II. Hypothetical cases were assumed to be objective
exceptions to EENS as it was known over the centuries.So AG 7 says all
need to enter the Church and also mentions exceptions, LG 14 says the
Church is necessary for salvation but also mentions exceptions. UR 3 is
mentioned perhaps since some of the Church Fathers thought it was an
exception to an ecumenism of return.
So if the hypothetical cases are marked in red and the orthodox passages which suppport EENS are marked in blue then for most people in the Catholic Church the red passages contradict the blue ones.This comes from the reasoning in LOHO.
For
me the red does not contradict the blue. So there is another
interpretation of Vatican Council II. This is rational and traditional
and it is different.
So now we have two interpretation of Vatican Council II, one rational and the other irrational.
The LOHO error ( red is an exception to the blue) was a major error in the Catholic Church.
You
and ..., the USCCB, CDF , SSPX and sedevacantists, interpret Vatican
Council II irrationally. If you choose to interpret the Council like me
then you would also be affirming Feeneyite EENS, the past exclusivist
ecclesiology and an ecumenism of return. You would no more be
contradicting the Syllabus of Errors and the Athanasius Creed. Even the
understanding of the Nicene and Apostles Creed is changed for someone
who says 'the red is an exception to the blue'.This is first class
heresy. But it is also official with the present two popes and the CDF.
You would be affirming other magisterial documents also with the same heretical irrationality, in innocence.
So
for me the LOHO was heretical and most Catholics affirm it.The first
part of LOHO is orthodox but the second part is heretical and
contradicts the first part.It means now you and .... have to teach
students that invisible cases of LG 16 etc are visible exceptions to
EENS as it was known to the Magisterium in the 16th century.This error
was also overlooked by good apologists like Fr. William Most, Mons. Joseph
Clifford, Fr. John Hardon and others.
-Lionel Andrades
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