Part Five: Prof. Felix Otten, O.P. and C.F. Pauwels, O.P.

Editor’s Note: This article continues the series of straightforward responses to frequently-encountered questions and objections concerning the Catholic Faith. The questions and answers are adapted from Professor Felix Otten, O.P. and C.F. Pauwels, O.P.’s The Most Frequently Encountered Difficulties, published originally in Dutch in 1939.

Why are Catholics arrogant in their pretense that their Church is the true means of salvation and that no one outside the Church can be saved?

In order to be able to judge this claim properly, one must first properly understand the expression: “there is no salvation outside the Church.” In the Catholic Church, a distinction is made between the soul and the body of the Church. To the body of the Church, that is, to the visible organization, belong those who have been baptized Catholic, profess the Catholic Faith, and live according to the laws of the Catholic Church. In other words, those who have not openly separated themselves from the Church or been banned by the Church herself can be saved. At the same time, all who live in the love of God belong to the soul of the Church, that is to say to the inner spiritual community. We’ll touch on this in our answer to the next question.

Catholics call their Church the all-saving Church because no other confession or sect purporting to be the Church is willed and founded by God, and in no way can be a means of attaining salvation. No one outside the body of the Catholic Church can belong to the Church’s soul as such just because he is a member of another religious association. In that way, someone may be instructed in the true Faith and receive the means of grace established by God, namely the sacraments. It is the safe and secure way of attaining salvation. As such, if one has the opportunity to be part of the body of the Church, one must do so.

This seems to say that there is no chance of salvation for those who are not Catholics. What about those who are outside the true Church and yet, in good faith? Is there no way for them to obtain salvation?

It is not lack of knowledge or ignorance as such which can save someone, but good faith and fidelity to divine grace and the “baptism of desire” does bring about salvation. According to Catholic doctrine, however, God’s infinite love and mercy opens a “roundabout” way to the goal of salvation, albeit only for those who do not know or do not have available the straight and narrow path of being a formal member of the Catholic Church. Nobody thinks that their non-Catholic neighbor who wishes to come to the truth, and then in faith and love performs his duties to God as his conscience prescribes and who, if he has sinned, returns to God in sincere repentance, cannot be saved.

Here is the way Pius XII presents the case of souls outside the Church, in his encyclical on the Mystical Body. When most affectionately inviting to unity those who do not belong to the body of the Catholic Church, he mentions those who “are related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain unconscious yearning and desire,” and these he by no means excludes from eternal salvation, but on the other hand states that they are in a condition “in which they cannot be sure of their salvation” since “they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church.” With these wise words he reproves both those who exclude from eternal salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire, and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally well in every religion.

In conclusion, the Catholic principle, “there is no salvation outside the Church” is thus nothing but a necessary and inevitable consequence of the doctrine that Christ founded only one Church. And, in their explanation of the possibilities of salvation, Catholics are far wider and more generous than many others who purport that there is a wider path to Heaven. While upholding the truth of the Catholic Church, Catholics always keep a close eye on the unfathomable mercy of God and His love for the entire human race.

Many Catholics like to call their church the Roman Catholic Church. But the use of that name is incorrect: they only speak then of a localized Roman Church. Because Catholic means universal, then they cannot be speaking of the one, true, universal Church.

To this objection we could say: What is in a name? Anyone using the word Catholic right now is almost always referring to Roman Catholics; and that parlance will not change anytime soon. And when Catholics are called Romans, they are not ashamed of that name. After all, Rome is the center of Western ecclesiastical life, because that is where the successors of St. Peter reside and keep their ecclesiastical see.

There are dangerous misconceptions that can arise, namely that to be part of the Church, one must be “Roman,” or that is, follow the rites and customs of the Roman Church. This is untrue. The Catholic Church is a room with many mansions. This is attested to in part by the numerous Eastern churches in communion with Rome. Catholics believe that Christ founded one church, but within this body there is diversity across time, languages, and culture. That has never been a problem, even in the earliest centuries of the Church where peoples across disparate cultures were brought into the Church with their own unique rites and customs.

At the same time, Catholics reject the notion that there is an “invisible church” that exists alongside the Catholic Church. In other words, there is not a “hidden church” encompassing all sects that profess to be Catholic. The Catholic Church has always had a concrete existence in time and space, open and available to all who hear the Gospel and accept the Faith. That the Catholic Church may manifest herself in various ways in accordance with venerable traditions of local peoples is nothing new; but all Catholics profess the same faith in fullness, which is what unites them regardless of liturgical rites or spiritual disciplines.

Every good Christian must long for the restoration of unity among all Christians. At the moment, this is being done in all kinds of ways. Why does traditional Catholic doctrine call for the Catholic Church to be aloof from that enterprise? Why have Catholics historically been told to reject ecumenical societies and other similar enterprises?

Catholics long no less than dissenters from the Faith for unity among all Christians. But by virtue of their beliefs, they have their own conception of the nature of the Church and nature of this unity. Further, Catholics have their own understanding of how this unity should be achieved. And so, they cannot cooperate with various attempts by non-Catholics to attain that unity, because those efforts must end in the wrong kind of unity.

In the first place, Catholics believe that the unity of the Church herself is already there and has always existed unabated. This is true despite how divided those who call themselves Christians may be. For the true Church, the Catholic Church, has a perfect unity. So, Catholics do not assume that unity is yet to be established, much less that a new, one Church should be established; but Catholics believe that all Christians must be brought into that existing one Church, and only thus can the division end. 

Then Catholics believe that there must be unity in all that Christ has willed and instituted: in doctrine, the means of grace, and ecclesiastical organization. In other words, three things converge to produce the unity of the Church: the same faith, the same sacraments and the same submission to the Pope as Vicar of Christ. A more or less vague unity of feeling is not enough. So, Catholics do not believe that unity can be achieved through some kind of compromise, through a give and take, by covering up differences. Christians can only truly become one if they all accept the truth.

However, the Catholic Church maintains that for the sake of unity it can yield to everything that is established and arranged by custom, history, and local culture. Thus, for example, it leaves Eastern Christians free to preserve their own ancient rites and their traditional customs, which are not based on error but rooted in their acceptance of the Faith; but it cannot compromise with that which she regards as ordained and taught by God. The Church cannot be blamed for that.

The Church would therefore be in a skewed position if it participated in today’s reunification efforts and congresses, because there is generally a more liberal spirit there and these groups seek to achieve rapprochement between varying confessions while preserving each individual’s character. But the Church rejoices in the existing desire for unity, because this can be the beginning of the search for true unity.