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As far as I see it, too many people give the "invincible ignorance" clause a little too much elasticity. When one starts going down the slippery slope, one inevitably arrives at a heresy called universal salvation.

Surprise! I agree. But that is different from saying that there is no one who was ever saved through invincible ignorance. And that even one person who was saved though not a formal member of the "Church" was nonetheless a member of the mystical Church.

So the idea that the two are equivalent goes "poof!" The true Church must subsist in the Catholic Church.

It is quite obvious from his words, the words of Vatican II, and his actions that the unity they are pursuing is a sort of mega-religion, not founded on Divine Truth, but on what people decide will be truth.

It takes an incredible ideological filter to read the Papacy of Dominus Iesus the way you do. This Pope has affirmed the unicity and universality of the Catholic Church, made care to distinguish other "churches" from mere "ecclesial communions" and addressed the absolute need for Jesus and the Catholic Church as the instrument of salvation.

So the idea that the two are equivalent goes "poof!" The true Church must subsist in the Catholic Church.

Can't accept that either. The problem is with the word "subsist", and the context that it is in.

Let me use terminology familiar to all. The Catholic Church is composed of the following: the Church Militant (the visible Church on earth), the Church Suffering (purgatory), and the Church Triumphant (heaven). If there is a person who is in the Church, (s)he must be one in of those three.

One who gets saved even though invincibly ignorant (and although these instances are God's province, we would have to say these occurences are rare because they are exceptions which prove the rule, otherwise why we do we have a Church?) would have to be either in purgatory or heaven, so they've been brought into the Church.

The word "subsist" implies that there are other churches which make up what Vatican II calls the Church of Christ. But that's the idea which has been condemned by no fewer than three popes, not to mention every Doctor of the Church. Let's call this "subsist" for what it is: a subtle move to cloak heresy in what sounds like truth (but really isn't).