For Further Study
The Early Church Fathers on Salvation Outside the Church (Free)
Books - Salvation Outside the Church
For Further Study
The Early Church Fathers on Salvation Outside the Church (Free)
Books - Salvation Outside the Church
Please read this CAREFULLY all the way through before making your comments.
So they really don’t need Jesus? Hmmmm
John 14:2 springs to mind, as does Matthew 7:7. (Hey, I can use bible verses, just not very good at it!)
Our Lord is one of love and compassion. One who loves and trusts Him and walks in his path will not be denied, even if he knows not the Lord the way we of the Church know him.
I cannot know the mind of God. Heck, I cannot know the mind of the person right next to me. I expect a lot of confused and lost people on Judgement Day, who say “I went to church every Sunday!” yet who were not filled with His grace and light during the week.
As much as I love, respect and admire our Church, our Holy Fathers, the martyrs and the Blessed Vigin and our long history, this is one “heresy” I will not recant. I cannot. It is a question that was settled in my mind a long time ago after much prayer and contemplation.
It seems LG 16 speaks more to the unchurched than to the Protestants that the replies take up.
(Lumen Gentium),” “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do His will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation” (no. 16).
What about LG 14:
Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.
This does not seem to get the broad reading of “Catholic Church” Fama implies when it follows:
They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops.
As is normal on these pages, it is not invincible ignorance, nor the un-evangelized, but fellow Christians that get poked in the eye.
The subject is hotter than one about prophecy.
God’s the judge, won’t it be a surprise who made it to
Heaven.
Everyone is saved through or by the Catholic Church. The
Catholic Church is the source for Christ’s teachings, come down from the Apostles.
This is the New Covenant.