What's the correct understanding of "no salvation outside the Church"?

What's the correct understanding of "no salvation outside the Church"?

Full Question

I am confused about a statement made by the ecumenical council of Florence in 1442. In its Decree for the Jacobites it stated "that no one, whatever almsgivings he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church." Does this mean we must have a rigorist view on the subject of salvation outside the Church?

Answer

Florence's decree that no one outside the Catholic Church is saved is absolutely true in the sense that those who lack any and all connection to the Church are damned. But it is possible to have an invisible link to the Church. Being in the Church does not require full, formal communion.

This was the understanding of St. Thomas Aquinas, who spoke of being in the Church in voto (in desire) rather than in re (in reality), and of the Council of Trent, which taught that we can be justified and consequently saved by water baptism or a desire for it.

In the last few centuries has come a refinement of the Church's understanding of what constitutes the votum (desire) needed for in voto membership. An implicit desire is sufficient. A person who seeks and tries to conform himself to the truth has an implicit desire or votum for Christ and for the Catholic faith because, by seeking to conform himself to the truth, he is seeking to conform himself to Christ (who calls himself "the way, the truth, and the life") and his Church, even if he doesn't know it.

Florence's statement concerning the inefficacy outside the Church of almsgiving and martyrdom is thus to be understood to refer to those who do these deeds in an external fashion that lacks the votum needed for in voto membership.

Imagine a Jehovah's Witness who ostensibly sheds his blood for Christ. His martyrdom would be ineffective for salvation unless he had the required votum and thus the supernatural love needed to make martyrdom effective for salvation. As Paul says, "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1 Cor 13:3).

Answered by: Catholic Answers Staff

Are there surviving non-Catholic Christian groups that date from the first century A.D.?

Are there surviving non-Catholic Christian groups that date from the first century A.D.?

Full Question

An anti-Catholic I know claims that the Catholic Church cannot, even in principle, admit that there are groups of non-Catholic Christians that have survived from the first century. He claims his church is one of these.

Answer

He's wrong on both counts. First, the Catholic Church could admit the existence of other groups of Christians which had survived from the first century if any still existed, but none do. All of the heretical groups that split off in the first century died out. Anyone who claims that there was a line of doctrinally Protestant people going back through history to Jesus doesn't know Church history.

Second, while some groups, such as the Baptists, sometimes make this claim, they claim descent from heretical groups such as the Montanists (a false-prophecy movement that said the New Jerusalem would descend in Phrygia, on Montanus's home town), the Donatists (who said sacraments are efficacious only if they are administered by someone in a state of grace), and the Albigensians (who said there are two gods, a good god who loves us and an evil god who made the world). There is simply no way that these groups were Baptists under a different name.

Also incorrect is the notion, seriously offered by some Baptists, that the Baptists are descended from John the Baptist--otherwise, why else would they sport his title?

(This argument is analogous to the one given by ministers of the Protestant denomination that calls itself the Church of Christ. They say theirs must be the original Church because the name of the Church founded by Christ could be nothing other than "the Church of Christ." Naturally enough, this argument has not found favor with people who do not belong to that denomination.)

The Baptists are a late offshoot of the English Reformation. Their denomination was started in 1609 by a British man named John Smyth, who was living in Holland at the time. He and his congregation of expatriate Englishmen began the first Baptist church, which later relocated to England, which is why all the early Baptist confessions were drawn up in that country.

Incidentally, the original Baptists practiced baptism by pouring (affusion) instead of dunking (immersion), although most of them today vigorously deny the validity of baptism by pouring. The founder of the Baptist Church in America, Roger Williams, finding no one qualified to baptize him, decided to baptize himself in 1639.

Answered by: Catholic Answers Staff

Should we baptize babies, considering they don't know what baptism is?

Should we baptize babies, considering they don't know what baptism is?

Answer

On the contrary, it would be the best thing you could do for a baby. Baptism is a grace from God, not something we do for God. Grace does not depend on our intellectual achievements any more than it depends on any other human achievement. This is one of the many ironies inherent in opposition to the ancient Christian practice of infant baptism. To refuse baptism to a baby on the grounds that "the child isn’t able to understand what is happening" is to presume that God gives grace only to those who are smart or old enough to figure out how to get it. This is an implicit assumption of salvation by intellectual works specifically condemned by Scripture and Catholic teaching.

Is getting baptized more than once a sin against the Holy Spirit?

Is getting baptized more than once a sin against the Holy Spirit?

Full Question

A friend of mine just got re-baptized. He was baptized as an infant and just got re-baptized by another church. I think that he may have sinned against the Holy Spirit.

Answer

Objective, yes, he did commit a sin against the Holy Spirit. By being re-baptized, he implied by his actions that what the Holy Spirit did in his first baptism was not sufficient. Objectively, that is a sin, because it insults the work of the Holy Spirit. But it is not the same thing as the sin against the Holy Spirit—the sin of "blasphemy against the Spirit"—which involves a final refusal to repent.

By trying to be baptized again, your friend was expressing a willingness to repent and be saved, so clearly no final impenitence was involved. Even though your friend’s action was objectively a sin, he may have committed it in innocent ignorance, in which case God won’t hold it against him. The sin of getting re-baptized unconditionally would be a grave one, which means that it would be a mortal sin if the usual conditions were met. But he may have been re-baptized with sufficient ignorance that the sin would not have been mortal. Either way, what he should do is go make a good confession (Jn 20:21-23), and, whether the sin was mortal or venial, he will be forgiven.

Answered by: Jimmy Akin

Outside of Lent, do we have to do anything special on Fridays?

Outside of Lent, do we have to do anything special on Fridays?

Answer

Friday remains a day of penance, even outside of Lent. Here is what the Code of Canon Law has to say:

    All Christ’s faithful are obliged by divine law, each in his or her own way, to do penance. However, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice of penance, days of penance are prescribed. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the fast and abstinence which the following canons prescribe. (CIC 1249)

This is the same as with worship. All the faithful are obliged by divine law to worship God and, so that all may join together in the corporate worship of God, days of worship (Sundays and holy days of obligation) have been instituted. The flip side of this is penance:

    All are obliged to repent, and so that there may be corporate repentance toward God, days of penance have been set up, as in the Old Testament when the Jews proclaimed a national fast to do repent of their sins against God. Today, Friday is the chief day of penance since Christ died because of our sins on Friday, and Sunday is the chief day of worship, since Christ rose for our salvation on Sunday. (CIC 1250)

    The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent. . . . Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the episcopal conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are o be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. . . . The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their 14th year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority [i.e., 18 years; canon 97:1], until the beginning of their 60th year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence are taught the true meaning of penance. . . . The episcopal conference can determine more precisely the ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety. (CIC 1251-1253)

Thus the law of abstinence from meat is still binding unless one’s national bishops’ conference has provided for alternate forms of penance. In the United States, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has obtained permission from the Vatican for such substitution. Catholics are obliged to do some form of penance on Fridays and keep the day as per canon 1249, but now they can choose the form of penance they wish to do.

Answered by: Jimmy Akin

Why does the Church allow images when the Ten Commandments forbids them?

Why does the Church allow images when the Ten Commandments forbids them?

Full Question

The Ten Commandments forbid the use of images but the Catholic Church allows it. Why?

Answer

The Jews were forbidden to have images under the Old Covenant (with a few exceptions). The reason for this was that the temptation to worship the image was strong for them. But, as C. S. Lewis says, it was the destiny of that people to be turned from the thing that resembled God to God himself. When God the Son becomes incarnate and becomes the express image of the invisible God (Heb 1:3), our relationship to images changes. The prohibition of images is discovered to be provisional until the true incarnate Image appears. Images are now permissible since God himself has become a kind of image in Christ. Thus our images of God are now windows into his Incarnation rather than fertility images, figments of our imagination, or idols. We do not worship images. We see through them to the Incarnate God and his saints, who are also images of Christ.

What is the real story about the order of the synoptic gospels?

What is the real story about the order of the synoptic gospels?

Full Question

I hear contradictory things about the order of the synoptic Gospels? What gives?

Answer

The traditional order, sometimes called the Augustinian order, is Matthew, Mark, Luke. The sequence most commonly advocated today in Bible commentaries, both Catholic and Protestant, is Mark, Matthew, Luke, with Matthew and Luke being understood as more or less simultaneous. This sequence, known as "Markan priority," may be nearing collapse as an intellectual construct. To back it, a scholar needs to ignore most external evidence regarding the order of the synoptics—that evidence favors the traditional order—and he needs to believe in the existence of a "sayings source," a first-century document supposedly used by Matthew and Luke to fill in the gaps in Mark’s account. The Gospel by Mark, being the shortest and simplest, leaves out much material that appears in Matthew and Luke (and sometimes in Matthew or Luke). If Matthew and Luke depended on Mark, they also must have depended on some other source for their extra information.

This other source is commonly referred to a "Q," from the German Quelle ("source"). The problem is that no ancient document quotes from or even alludes to Q, and no more recent manuscript claims to be a transmittal of it. Thus Q is entirely an intellectual construct, something posited to shore up the major weakness in the Markan priority theory. Some scholars claim to have discovered not a unified Q, but one made of multiple strands, perhaps as many as four, which means they presume the existence of four documents, even though there is no external evidence for even one of them.

The theory of Markan priority seems to be losing ground rapidly. Prof. William Farmer, one of the world’s top biblical scholars and a fairly recent convert to the Catholic faith, wrote a book examining why so many scholars hold on to a theory that is now seen to have glaring weaknesses. He thinks they won’t be holding on to it for too much longer. Like the Ptolemaic theory, the Markan priority theory eventually will be junked.

Answered by: Karl Keating

Did Jesus break Old Testament Law by telling his followers to drink his blood?

Did Jesus break Old Testament Law by telling his followers to drink his blood?

Full Question

Jews were prohibited from drinking blood by the Old Testament. So if the Catholic idea about the Eucharist as the "Blood of Christ" is correct, didn’t Jesus break the Law of God?

Answer

Nope. He fulfilled it. "The blood is the life," as the Torah taught the Jews, and the life of a creature belongs to God. Hence the Jews were to pour the blood out on the earth, not because it was too vile but because it was too sacred. They were to seek their life, not from any creature, but from God himself. How fitting then that when Jesus (Who is the Life [Jn 14:6]) comes we are commanded to drink his blood (Mt 26:27–28). His is the blood we not only may but must drink if we are to have life in us (Jn 6:53). It is the reality of which all other blood is an image (Heb 9).

How can the saints in heaven hear us?

How can the saints in heaven hear us?

Answer

Jesus said that he is the true vine, and we are the branches. When a Christian (one branch) dies physically and is taken up into heaven (he might have to go through purgatory first, of course), he isn’t broken off the vine. He remains in Christ (Rom 8:38-39). The deceased Christian is still united with the vine (Jesus) and with the other branches (all other Christians, living or dead). This communion of saints makes possible the sharing spiritual things with other Christians—including intercessory prayer.

Answered by: Mario Derksen

Is Mary’s and the saints’ intercession unbiblical?

Is Mary’s and the saints’ intercession unbiblical?

Full Question

According to 1 Timothy 2:5, the only Mediator between God and us is Jesus. So, isn’t Mary’s and the saints’ intercession unbiblical?

Answer

Not at all. Look closely at what 1 Timothy 2:5 really says: Jesus is the only mediator between God and man. Because Jesus was the God-Man, only he can be the Mediator, the one who is between. Between men and the Father, there is the Son. This doesn’t undercut our belief that the saints in heaven intercede for us because these saints, too, are men; they are members of mankind. Thus, we (men) ask them (men, too) to pray to the one Mediator (Jesus) in order to find favor with the Father.

Answered by: Mario Derksen