Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus

Originally posted 12/25/2009.

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Merry Christmas to you and yours! I hope this post will help you better understand the dogma “there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.”

1. Absolute Necessity of Means
Definition: Absolute (metaphysical) necessity of means signifies that something cannot possibly be supplied by something else.{1} This kind of means necessitates that the means is present in its full reality (in re).{2}
Implications: The Catholic Church herself is necessary for salvation by absolute necessity of means.{3} There is no salvation without the mediation of the Catholic Church; one must somehow belong to or be united to the Catholic Church in order to be saved: “all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is His Body” (CCC 846).{4}

2. Relative Necessity of Means
Definition: Relative (normative or physical) necessity of means signifies that something can possibly be supplied by something else.{5} This kind of means can be satisfied by the presence of the desire for it (in voto).{6}
Implications: Formal membership in the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation by relative necessity of means.{7} Under certain conditions, people who are not formal members of the Catholic Church and are otherwise united to the Catholic Church can be saved.{8}

3. Necessity of Precept
Definition: Necessity of precept signifies that something is mandated by the positive will of a lawgiver of superior.{9} Necessity of precept, as part of the moral rather than the metaphysical order, ceases to apply when legitimate authority dispenses someone of it, if it is impossible to abide by the law without grave inconvenience, or if it is not physically possible to fulfill the law.{10}
Implications: The Catholic Church is necessary for salvation by necessity of precept because Christ positively wills this and made it the law of the Church{11} He founded on St. Peter [Mt 16:18; Lk 10:16; Acts 20:28; 1 Thess 5:12-13; Heb 13:7,17].

4. Ways of Belonging to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ in A.D. 33
1. Only Catholics are “actual members“ of the Church founded by Christ, formally incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ.{12} Vatican II decrees (Lumen Gentium 14): “Fully incorporated into the society of the Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept all the means of salvation given to the Church together with her entire organization, and who — by the bonds constituted by the profession of faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government, and communion — are joined in the visible structure of the Church of Christ, Who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops.”{13}
Example: St. Thomas Aquinas (†1274), the Angelic Doctor of the Schools.

2. “All validly baptized non-Catholics” (e.g., the Eastern Orthodox) are “radically joined“ to the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.{14} The indelible character imprinted by their valid baptism “gives them a proximate intrinsic exigency for incorporation into the Church.” If they are in good faith and a state of sanctifying grace, they unwittingly “really belong“ to the Catholic Church.{15}
Example: St. Sergius the Wonderworker of Radonezh (†1392), a Russian Orthodox peace-making abbot who was one of the 21 Russian saints approved by the Holy See under Ven. Pope Pius XII of Rome (†1958) for veneration by Catholics in 1940.{16} St. Sergius of Radonezh is on the Roman Martyrology for September 25.{17} It was not by, but in spite of his profession of the Eastern Orthodox faith that St. Sergius was saved, as is clear from the words of Pope Gregory XVI of Rome (†1846) in Denzinger 1613.{18}

3. “All non-Christians in the state of grace” belong to the Catholic Church in voto (by desire).{19} Those who, through no “fault of their own, have never heard of Jesus Christ as their only Savior” and who, with the help of grace, follow what their conscience tells them, have the potential to be saved.{20} Their implicit desire needs to “be accompanied by supernatural faith and informed by perfect charity,” as Vatican II teaches in Lumen Gentium 16.{21} If these conditions are satisfied, these people are invisibly joined to the visible Catholic Church (which is coextensive with the Mystical Body of Christ), but cannot be called “invisible members” because the Church nowhere calls them members.{22}

Notes & References
{1} Eminyan, M. “Necessity of Means.” New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 228. 15 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Fordham University Libraries. 3 Dec. 2009.
{2} Ibid.
{3} Ibid.
{4} Ibid.
{5} Ibid.
{6} Ibid.
{7} Ibid.
{8} Ibid.
{9} Idem., “Necessity of Precept.” New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 228. 15 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Fordham University Libraries. 23 Dec. 2009.
{10} Ibid.
{11} Ibid.
{12} Idem., “Salvation, Necessity of the Church for.” New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 626. 15 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Fordham University Libraries. 3 Dec. 2009.
{13} Ibid.
{14} Ibid.
{15} Ibid.
{16} Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Thurston & Attwater Edition, Vol. III (July-Sept), pp. 639-640.
{17} See the Roman Martyrology for September 25.
{18} From the 8/15/1832 Encyclical “Mirari vos arbitramur” of Pope Gregory XVI of Rome:

Now we examine another prolific cause of evils by which, we lament, the Church is at present afflicted, namely indifferentism, or that base opinion which has become prevalent everywhere through the deceit of wicked men, that eternal salvation of the soul can be acquired by any profession of faith whatsoever, if morals are conformed to the standard of the just and the honest. … And so from this most rotten source of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous opinion, or rather insanity, that liberty of conscience must be claimed and defended for anyone.

{19} Eminyan, loc. cit.
{20} Ibid.
{21} Ibid.
{22} Ibid.

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