“841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”
Is this really a correct quotation? I find it hard to believe anyone could read the new testament and believe there is even an argument you can make with a straight face that Muslims, who deny the crucifixion and the resurrection, will be saved.
Try the link, and see for yourself.
It's not making any assertion that they are, merely allowing for the possibility that some might be. After all, God can save anyone he wishes, can't he?
Catholics don't believe in an blanket assurance of salvation no-matter-what for Catholics, to say nothing of anyone else.
>> Is this really a correct quotation? I find it hard to believe anyone could read the new testament and believe there is even an argument you can make with a straight face that Muslims, who deny the crucifixion and the resurrection, will be saved <<
The quotation is correct. And taken out of context, I can see how the phrase, “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator” could cause confusion. But I could see how, out of context, one might think it means, “God includes Muslims among those he plans to save.
So what is the context? The next subsection on the same page is entitled, “OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, THERE IS NO SALVATION”
It explains,:
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: 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.337
848. Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”
So, what it really means is that IF a muslim devoutly seeks God, but has not heard that the Church is the source through which salvation flows, he may nonetheless, possess faith in a Christ whose name he does not know, and thus be saved.
I might further add this comment about Islam:
Living in a society that was once the heart of Christianity, the people of the Islamic Middle East frequently possess many Christian beliefs as a sort of “folk religion,” which has been maintained through tradition, despite the fundamentalists who seek to purge such tradition from their faith because they believe that only their holy sacred scriptures possess any essential truths.
These folk-religion muslims can’t properly be called crypto-Christian because they certainly have adopted heretical notions about the nature of Christ from the dominant culture around them. On the other hand, they cling to whatever Christian faith they can wedge between the oppressive doctrines of Islam. The iconoclasm of the fundamentalists is aimed largely at erasing their faith.
Those who know firsthand of such people’s faith can can simultaneously hold that a merciful God could recognize their love for Him, and also the statements of that 14th-century patriarch of Constantinople, that there is nothing new in Islam that is good.