Friday, December 22, 2017

Get a new perspective on Vatican Council II only on the blog Eucharist and Mission(Lionel's blog)






DECEMBER 22, 2017

Mark Shea continues to reject the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus :hypothetical cases mentioned in Vatican Council II are real people saved outside the Church for him. Possibilities are known exceptions to EENS
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/mark-shea-continues-to-reject-dogma.html


 

DECEMBER 22, 2017

Cardinal Kasper uses specious reasoning to further ecumenism and reject the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/cardinal-kasper-uses-specious-reasoning.html



DECEMBER 22, 2017
'Rome must come back to the Faith' : it does not have to be either the baptism of desire or extra ecclesiam nulla salus
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/rome-must-come-back-to-faith-it-does.html


DECEMBER 21, 2017


Franciscans of the Immaculate, SSPX, SBC can have their situation regularised : the doctrinal puzzle has been solved

http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/franciscans-of-immaculate-sspx-sbc-can.html

DECEMBER 21, 2017


It does not have to be either the baptism of desire or extra ecclesiam nulla salus : Just one Religious Superior is needed to understand and affirm this and we will have changed the Church

http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/it-does-not-have-to-be-either-baptism_92.html




DECEMBER 16, 2017

Repost : Pope Benedict made an objective mistake in 2016 he supports inter faith marriages and adultery(graphics)

http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/repost-pope-benedict-made-objective.html


DECEMBER 15, 2017


Faithful to true doctrine, not to erring pastors

Pledge of Fidelity signatories reject de fide teachings of the Catholic Church and support a new irrational theology

http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/pledge-of-fidelity-faithful-to-true.html


DECEMBER 16, 2017

Repost : Fr.Chad Ripperger and FSSP priests not permitted by the Vatican to affirm the traditional teaching on salvation

http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/12/repost-frchad-ripperger-and-fssp.html

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Mark Shea continues to reject the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus :hypothetical cases mentioned in Vatican Council II are real people saved outside the Church for him. Possibilities are known exceptions to EENS





A reader has a question about Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus Read




http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2017/03/reader-question-extra-ecclesiam-nulla-salus.html#1Zgswv1AfiggdRhj.99
by Mark Shea March 14,2017
He writes:
how would you define the doctrine of Extra Eccelsiam Nulla Salus and what that means for non-Catholics or those who have left the Church?
I respond this way:
Unam Sanctam is the sort of document that gives our Protestant brothers and sisters a real jolt, primarily because it looks at first blush as though it teaches that Catholics cannot have Protestant brothers and sisters. Written by Pope Boniface VIII in 1302, this papal bull concludes with this shocking dogmatic definition:
“We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
The average modern reader concludes these words mean: “We know exactly where the Church both is and is not. It’s in the visible Catholic communion and only members of the visible Catholic Church go to Heaven.” After this basic assumption has been made, most people go on to assume it is simply a matter of deciding what you think about that proposition. Generally, people fall into one of the following groups:
1. Those nice people who say hopefully, “That statement was not dogma, but just Boniface’s opinion.”
2. Those Progressive Dissenting Catholics who say, “That statement used to be narrow-minded Catholic dogma but Vatican II thankfully contradicts all that. How the Church has grown!”
3. Those anti-Catholics say derisively, “That statement used to be unbiblical Catholic dogma but Vatican II reversed all that. How the supposedly infallible Church has flatly contradicted the Bible and itself!”
4. Those Reactionary Dissenting Catholics who say, “That statement used to be glorious Catholic dogma but Vatican II betrayed all that. How the Second Vatican Council has corrupted the One True Faith!”
5. Those orthodox Catholics who say, “Unam Sanctam‘s definition is still dogma and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council does not contradict it or the Bible. Rather, the Council develops the Faith of the Church infallibly taught since the apostles, a faith which has never demanded we believe that “The Church is found solely in the visible Catholic communion, nor that only members of the visible Catholic Church can go to Heaven.”
Let’s look at these five views of Unam Sanctam.
First things first, I must disappoint Group #1 by making clear that the Faith does not allow us the easy out of denying the dogmatic nature of Unam Sanctam any more than it allowed Arius to fudge the difficult and seemingly contradictory proposition that God is One, yet Three. As John Hardon, S.J. points out in his Catholic Catechism, the passage cited above was “solemnly defined and represents traditional Catholic dogma on the Church’s necessity for salvation.” When a Pope declares, pronounces and defines, he is using the formula to make crystal clear that he is delivering, not his personal opinion, but the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. The fact is then, Pope Boniface VIII committed the Church to this proposition for the rest of her history. We cannot dodge this with a convenient “that was then, this is now.” If it was dogma once, it still is.
Lionel: Agreed.
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However, neither can we dodge another fact of Catholic history: the Second Vatican Council. At that Council, the Church formulated Lumen Gentium in which, 660 years after Unam Sanctam, she declared, “The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter.”
Lionel: Lumen Gentium no where states that there is known salvation outside the Church and so the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus is contradicted.
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To Groups 2, 3, and 4, this sounds like a flat contradiction. For all these folk make the fatal error of placing one or other of the Church’s teachings in opposition to (and superiority over) the other. Thus, Progressive Dissenting Catholics, Anti-Catholics, and Reactionary Dissenting Catholics all assume that Unam Sanctam was simply vetoed by a newly-coined doctrine in Lumen Gentium which essentially declared that our relationship to the successor of Peter doesn’t matter one iota. If we agree about this, all that remains for us to do is to decide whether to cheer along with Progressive Dissenters (for the Church’s “deepened maturity”) to gloat along with anti-Catholics (over the alleged collapse of the Church’s infallibility) or to grumble along with Reactionary Dissenters (about those damned modernists who hijacked the Church at Vatican II).
The problem with this assumption is simply this: it’s not true. First, the Church, centuries before Vatican II, regarded Orthodox sacraments as valid, which is awfully hard to do if you don’t think Christ can be found anywhere but in the Catholic Church. Similarly, it has always regarded the Baptism of non-Catholics as valid–and a valid Baptism means you are, in some sense, in union with Christ. Still more recently and most plainly, (but still well before the Council) Fr. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for insisting that only people in visible communion with the Catholic Church could be saved.
Lionel: So the Holy Office 1949 made a mistake, the Church made a mistake. How can unknown cases of the baptism of desire etc be known exceptions to the dogma EENS according to Fr. Leonard Feeney or Unam Sanctam ?
They continued with the mistake in reasoning   at Vatican Council II(1960-65).Once again the magisterium made a mistake and violated the Principle of Non Contradiction.
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 So this simplistic “We’re in, you’re out” reading of Unam Sanctam (and the corollary that Lumen Gentium “cancelled” it) doesn’t fly.
Lionel: There  is no contradiction with Unam Sanctam if hypothetical cases mentioned in Lumen Gentium (8,14,16) are not considered hypothetical. Then they cannot be mistaken to be explicit exceptions to Feeneyite EENS and Unam Sanctam.
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So is there a more balanced picture that reverences both Unam Sanctam and Lumen Gentium as authentic magisterial teaching? Yes. To find it, let’s begin with an imperfect analogy.
There is a priest I know (call him Fr. Smith) whom I have come to regard as a second father. I came to do so because, as an Evangelical, I first loved Christ and the things of Christ and was doing so for years before I met this man. As I sought to draw closer to the things of Christ, I then happened to meet Fr. Smith and to discover that he loved and understood far more deeply than me the things that I myself sought, for he is a disciple of our Lord too. When I recognized this, I realized our Lord had put into my life a man who could disciple me and to whom my life was inextricably linked in Christ and by Christ. In short, I had been a disciple of Fr. Smith for years before I met him–because I was first a disciple of Jesus.
Thus, in spirit, Fr. Smith became my father and I am, so to speak, subject to him in Christ precisely because I desire what he desires–union with Christ.
If this seems difficult to grasp, it should be noted that it’s a concept as old as the New Testament. For when we look there we discover Jesus saying exactly the same thing:
John said to him, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us. (Mark 9:38-40)
Jesus’ point is that, in following Him, both the man casting out demons and the apostles were, whether the man or the apostles realized it or not, brought into some kind of union with one another through Him. It didn’t matter whether the apostles or the man were conscious of it. Their mutual obedience to Him put them in relationship to each other, just as the right alignment of spokes to a hub necessarily put the spokes in right alignment to one another. The fact is, it is His Spirit, not us, who is the principle of unity holding His Body together and drawing its members into ever more perfect union with each other. But that does not mean (as I had long believed as an Evangelical) that unity with the Body of Christ doesn’t matter so long as one is “spiritual”. For to be brought into union with the Body of Christ at all is to brought into the order that Christ has established for that Body since
his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13).
Or, to put it into the simplest form, if A=B, then B=A. That is, if one is a Christian at all, one is, as Lumen Gentium says, in some kind of union with the Church, the Body of Christ. This is why the Church teaches and has always taught that “outside the Church, there is no salvation”. For the Church is the company of the saved. To talk about salvation “outside the Church” is like talking about swimming outside the water. It is the logical consequence of Jesus’ statement, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30).
It therefore follows that to be subject to the gospel to any degree is to be in union, to that degree, with the office of Peter since the office of Peter was created by Christ for one purpose only, to help bring people into subjection to Christ. It is therefore impossible to accept Christ without accepting the authority of Peter’s office to some degree or other. If you say to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” you are submitting to the judgment of Peter, who said it first (Matthew 16:16). If you declare that salvation is by grace through Christ, you are again subjecting yourself to Peter, who was the first to say that by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:11). If you teach that Jesus is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, God from God, light from Light, true God from true God, you are simply agreeing with what the Church in council and in union with the office of Peter has always taught. If you acknowledge the canonicity of the New Testament books, you are likewise submitting to the judgment of the Petrine office, which made that call in the fourth century and ratified it in the sixteenth. In short, it is not possible to be a Christian at all without already submitting (whether you realize it or not and whether you like it or not) to Peter in precisely the sense that Unam Sanctam speaks of.
Naturally, it will be noted that such union with the Roman Pontiff is, for Protestants and Orthodox, imperfect. Just so. But the point nonetheless holds that such union is real. And the reason it is real is precisely because the Pope is not the principle of unity, but merely the sign of unity.
Lionel: Protestants and Orthodox Christians are outside the Church and on the way to Hell according to Unam Sanctam and Vatican Council II(Ad Gentes 7).
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 The principle of unity is the Spirit of Christ Himself. It is He who binds together the apostolic Church with those who appear (like the exorcist in Mark) to be “outside” the Church yet who are, in a real but imperfect way, in communion with her. That’s because it is simply not possible for there to be more than one Body. This is true, not because the power-hungry Roman pontiff must have absolute control over all Christians, but because Christ cannot ultimately be divided. What Paul said in Ephesians remains just as true today:
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
So it is simply impossible for there to be, in any ultimate sense, more than one Body. And since that Body is, by Christ’s solemn word, founded on Peter the Rock, it is not possible to belong to it without, in some way, being subject to the office of the one who was given the charge to “feed my sheep” (John 21:15-19).
I say the office, mind you, not the person of the Pope. As a person, a Pope can be a perfect jerk and some have been. In the same way, the office of the Davidic monarch (also founded by God) was often filled by extremely sub-optimal men. But the office never went away nor lost its God-ordained authority.
Dante, a contemporary of the man who wrote Unam Sanctam, makes precisely this point in his famous Divine Comedy. In an age of Da Vinci Code illiteracy and ignorance of the Catholic faith, it comes as a surprise to many modern readers to discover that so far from running a police state, the medieval Church was, in fact, full of critics who had lots of tart things to say about, among other things, the Pope and other clergy of the time. Dante was chief among these critics in his day and, in particular, was chief among the critics of Pope Boniface VIII, the author of Unam Sanctam. Dante, in fact, places Boniface in his Inferno, damned forever. But note this: Dante does not damn him for the teaching of Unam Sanctam, which he takes for granted. He damns him for his moral corruption yet, like a typical Catholic, honors his office. That’s why Boniface is buried upside down in hell: as Pope he is oriented toward Heaven even when, as a sinner, he is worthy of Hell, for the way out of Dante’s Hell is not up but down, through the center of the earth, then up Mt. Purgatory, and into Paradise.
So is this partial and imperfect unity enough? Depends on what you mean by “enough”. If you mean “enough to be saved” then I submit this is Minimum Daily Adult Requirement thinking. No lover asks “What’s the absolute bare minimum amount of contact with my Beloved I can get away with?” Similarly, if, as the Church claims, the fullness of revelation subsists in the Catholic communion, then “How little contact with the fullness of revelation can I get away with?” is the exact wrong question for somebody who is serious about discipleship to Christ. Our goal, according to Scripture, is not to achieve bare minimums of love, fellowship and discipleship with Christ and His Bride, but to “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;… we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love” (Ephesians 4:13-16). When people tell us “I’ll be there in spirit!” we know they mean “I won’t be there.” Similarly, a merely partial spiritual unity, while a good start, is a bad finish. That is why we must all continue to work toward full unity in Christ, neither denying our commonalities nor papering over our differences.
At this point, members of groups 3 and 4 (who tend to take Heaven more seriously as something that is, like, there and not simply–as members of group 2 are wont to say–a “concept” or a “beautiful myth”) are likely to ask, “So does all this boil down to saying the Church thinks Catholics are going to Heaven and non-Catholics aren’t? Or does it really mean the Church is now saying that everybody is saved?
Again, both of these are the wrong questions: which is to say they are nonsense questions. The Church makes no comments on infernal population statistics. Rather, the Church teaches that because validly baptized non-Catholics are real members of the Body of Christ, they share in the life of the Blessed Trinity and therefore share with Catholics the Hope of salvation.
Lionel: Validly baptised non-Catholics who are real members of the Body of Christ and who are saved are unknown to us on earth.Possibilities are not known exceptions to Unam Sanctam.
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That said, mark that it is Hope, not certainty, they share with Catholics. For it is important to remember that Catholics don’t even assume that even Catholics are automatically going to Heaven. The whole point, as Paul says, is that Hope means we have not yet, in this life, attained what we hope for.
For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:24-25)
Catholics don’t believe in “once saved, always saved” any more than in salvation by demographics. So the mere fact that somebody says they are a Christian, whether non-Catholic or Catholic, doesn’t mean we assume they are going to Heaven. Till we die, we retain the radical freedom to reject the grace of God and end up among the damned. So Catholics leave God to judge all that.
But by the same token, Catholics also don’t assume that anybody (even a non-Christian and indeed even an atheist) is going to Hell.
Lionel: The Catholic Church teaches that a non Catholic and an atheist is going to Hell. This is taught in Unam Sanctam, Vatican Council II(AG 7) and other magisterial documents.
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 The Church has always believed that those who do not know Christ by name may yet respond to the promptings of His Spirit and so ultimately be saved by Him.
Lionel: These are hypothetical cases and so they cannot be exceptions to Unam Sanctam. They are not relevant to the dogma EENS.Mark Shea assumes these are references to known people saved outside the Church and so he mentions them here.
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 She believes this because it was taught by Jesus Christ in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which describes the judgment of people who had no idea they were serving (or rejecting) Jesus as they answered (or refused) the demands of conscience with respect to “the least of these”. That is why both the saved and the damned in the parable reply with astonishment to the King, “Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?” (Matthew 25:37-39). Some of the saved, says our Lord, are going to be astonished at their salvation. They just thought they were doing the right thing and had no idea they were, in fact, answering the prompting of the Holy Spirit to obey the will of Christ. As Paul says, “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Romans 2:14-16). In short, what matters incomparably more than calling Jesus “Lord, Lord” is obeying Him. Or as St. John of the Cross put it more sweetly, “At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.”
But,again, that doesn’t mean, “It doesn’t matter if you are Catholic or not.” We live in a fallen world and are fallen creatures who need every bit of help we can get from the grace of God to become the glorious love-filled creatures God calls us to be. And even with that help, history demonstrates our genius for being schleps and sinners. We are like patients in a hospital requiring intensive care, but with the hope and promise that the full panoply of modern medicine could give us back our life if we cooperate with the Divine Physician and let Him use all the treatments He has tucked away in His little black bag. That little black bag is called “the fullness of Christ’s revelation in the Catholic communion”. It includes the common life, common worship, and common teaching of the Church, including the seven sacraments, the accumulated wisdom of the Tradition both in Scripture and in the life of the Church, the Magisterium (including the Papacy), and the “riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). Other Churches and ecclesial bodies like to use various items out of that black bag (say, the Bible, or Baptism, or the doctrine of the Trinity, or some particular moral teaching like the indissolubility of marriage, or predestination, or free will) in various combinations and to varying degrees and believers do well to avail themselves of as much of God’s treasury in the Church’s Tradition as they can lay hold of.
But if you are mortally ill (and the whole human race is mortally ill with sin), it’s kind of crazy to say “I find that I’m most comfortable when the Doctor prescribes aspirin, and I do like his penicillin now and then, but I don’t want his other prescriptions and treatments and I won’t allow him to send other hospital staff to treat me.” If we were mortally ill, we’d want whatever the Doctor has available to heal us.
Likewise, though the Catholic Church rejoices that real elements of the saving gospel are present and working in other churches and ecclesial bodies, though she even rejoices that the semina verbi or “seeds of the Word” can even be found in the various non-Christian religious and philosophical traditions of the world, she nonetheless points out that the best thing of all is to lay hold of the fullness of His gifts. So the Church, of course, encourages anyone who can do so to become Catholic. It doesn’t presume to judge those who do not, for we mortals cannot know the reasons why others make the choices they do.
Lionel: It judges those outside the Church as being on the way to Hell. Of course we mortals cannot judge in our individual capacity.But the Church guided by the Holy  Spirit tells us that all non Catholics are on the way to Hell.
This could be contested by the present two living popes who assume invisible cases of the baptism of desire etc are visible examples of known salvation outside the Church. In reality there are no such people known to us.There is no known salvation outside the Church.
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 People may refuse the Church out of ignorance, or woundedness, or some other cause that renders them inculpable for rejecting her. However, it is only sensible to point out that, everything else being equal, if we say we want God, but refuse the fullness of His gifts, then it is worth asking ourselves if we really want God after all or are, in fact, seeking something else.
Lionel: Culpability is always decided by God we cannot say that certain situations or people are exceptions to Unam Sanctam.
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As an Evangelical who discovered how much truth was in the Catholic faith and how much I agreed with it, I came to the realization that it was not enough for me to say “I share the same goals as Peter, so I am ‘spiritually subject’ to him already and do not need to be sacramentally and ecclesially subject as well.” I realized that the very essence of what Peter proclaims is that the Word became Flesh. Moreover, I came to realize that there was, in fact, nothing in the Church’s deposit of Faith that was either opposed to reason, nor anti-biblical. So I eventually concluded that it was therefore my duty, in obedience to Christ’s prayer for unity in John 17, to enflesh my faith by becoming really, tangibly, physically, sacramentally joined to the visible Church our Lord commended to Peter’s care and feeding. For myself, I could no longer say “I’ll be with you in spirit” to the Pope if I was not also willing to really be with him in body as well.
Catholics do not say, and never have said, that they are the sole possessors of revelation.
Lionel: Jesus founded only one Church, Catholics are the new people of God(NA 4), the Chosen People, outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, there are only Catholics in Heaven.Which other church shares revelation with the Catholic Church for Mark Shea?
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 Indeed, the Church does not “possess” revelation at all. Revelation possesses her and that revelation, who is Christ, has (she teaches) committed Himself fully to her. “God,” said the great Protestant writer George MacDonald, “is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.” On the one hand, God is delighted when the most miserable sinner takes the smallest serious step toward the love of God and neighbor. On the other hand, He will not be completely happy until every last person He came to save is completely perfected in the image of Christ and overflowing with perfect love for God and neighbor. This same pattern is supremely evident in the Catholic Church’s understanding of her relationship with her members, whether in full or very imperfect communion. For the Church is happy to recognize even the smallest commonalities she may share, not only with other Christians, but even with non-Christian religious traditions and the great philosophical traditions of paganism. The Church can even find things to affirm in virtuous atheists. But at the same time, the Church is acutely aware that there is a real difference between imperfect and perfect unity and so she too–easy to please, but hard to satisfy–labors toward that Day when all the members of the Body of Christ will be perfected in faith, hope and love.
Till That Day, we know where the Church is; we do not know where it is not.
Lionel: Mark Shea continues to reject the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus and assumes hypothetical cases mentioned in Vatican Council II are real people saved outside the Church. So for him possibilities are known exceptions, in the present times , to the dogma EENS. He mixes up what is hypothetical as being physically visible and known and then rejects the traditional interpretation of the dogma EENS.-Lionel Andrades




Msgr. Fenton had it wrong on Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus

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Msgr. Fenton - Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus



Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton

It is a dogma of divine faith that the Catholic Church is requisite for salvation. It is also perfectly certain that a man who dies as a non-member of the Church can attain to the beatific vision. Theologians have had to keep both these facts in mind in explaining the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. We can distinguish four basically different explanations offered in modern times.
Lionel: It  has to be kept in mind that ' a non-member of the Church' can attain to the beatific vision in theory, hypothetical.So this should not be posited as relevant or an exception to traditional extra ecclesiam nulla salus(EENS).Monsgr.Fenton also did not clarify that there are no known cases of the baptism of desire, blood and being saved in invincible ignorance and so the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 made a mistake. 
He did not support Fr.Leonard Feeney and correct Pope Pius XII and Archbishop Lefebvre who assumed invisible cases of the baptism of desire etc were physically visible exceptions to Feeneyite EENS.
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The first interpretation would state the necessity of the Church for salvation merely in function of our Lord’s command that all men should enter the society which He established. If this explanation should be accurate, then the proposition extra Ecclesiam nulla salus would be restricted to mean: “No one who is culpably outside of the Catholic Church can be saved.”
Lionel:“No one who is culpably outside of the Catholic Church can be saved.”Again this is a  speculative statement and does not refer to a known person saved outside the Church.
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 Actually the Catholic teaching on the necessity of the Church for salvation goes far beyond the truth that a person who is outside the Church through his own fault is not in a position to enter heaven. The Fourth Council of the Lateran teaches that: “There is one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved.”1 The Decree for the Jacobites formulated by the Council of Florence “firmly believes, professes and teaches that none of those not existing within the Catholic Church, neither pagans nor Jews, heretics and schismatics, can become partakers of eternal life; but that they are going to go into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels unless they become attached to it [the Catholic Church] before the end of life.”2
Those statements would not be true were the Church necessary for salvation merely with the necessity of precept. The necessity of precept concerns only those who are or who should be aware that a commandment exists. The Councils, on the other hand, describe the Church as requisite for all men without exception. Thus, while the Church is really necessary with the necessity of precept, the actual teaching of the Councils shows that it is requisite for salvation in still another way.
Lionel: The necessity of precept is a precept only.It is not a known person saved outside the Church.Without the existence of an actual person there is no exception to EENS.
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A second interpretation of the dogma on the necessity of the Catholic Church would tell us that extra Ecclesiam nulla salusmeans merely that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation. Like its predecessor, this explanation falls afoul on the Conciliar pronouncements on the necessity of the Church. The Councils and the other organs of Catholic teaching which have stated the necessity of the Church insist that in some way every person must be connected with or attached to the Church of Jesus Christ in order to achieve salvation. The statement that the Church is the ordinary vehicle of salvation merely takes account of the fact that men who die without being members of the true Church of Jesus Christ may be saved. The fact is unquestioned, but it is not an explanation of the dogma as it appears in the pronouncements of the Church.
Lionel: Correct.
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The third interpretation is much more common. It asserts that, in order to be saved, a man must belong at least to the soul of the Catholic Church. This explanation is preferable to its two predecessors in that it takes account at least of the universal meaning attached to the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. According to the proponents of this interpretation no man whatsoever can be saved unless he belongs in some way at least to the soul of the Catholic Church.
Lionel: 'It asserts that, in order to be saved, a man must belong at least to the soul of the Catholic Church. ' Again it should have been clarified that this is a hypothetical reference.
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There are sharply different ways of understanding what the term soul of the Church means when it is used to explain the truth extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Some use this term to designate the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. Those who would “belong to the Soul of the Church” or be “members of the Soul of the Church” in this way would be those who live the life of sanctifying grace which comes to men in the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
As far as these theologians are concerned, the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means that there is no salvation for the man who is not at least in the state of grace. Looked on in this way, the axiom would insist upon the necessity of sanctifying grace rather than on that of the Catholic Church. It is difficult to see how this explanation could stand as a fully adequate interpretation of the doctrine set forth by the Fourth Lateran and Florence.
Lionel: There is confusion when Msgr.Fenton does not specify if he is refers to explicit and objective cases or when it is a reference to a hypothetical and theoretical case.
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We must remember however that it is by no means totally adequate. The faith, hope and charity which are the primary expressions of the life of grace are themselves the inward principles of unity within the Catholic Church. The life of sanctifying grace finds its corporate or social functioning only in the activity of the Catholic Church. Since every person who is saved must possess sanctifying grace at the time of death, he must possess a reality which properly belongs to the Catholic Church, and thus, to this extent at least, be connected with the institution which our Lord founded as the necessary vehicle of salvation.
On the other hand, when a man tries to explain the necessity of the Church for salvation by stressing the connection of the life of grace with the Church, he does not take into account any immediate adherence of the person who is to be saved with the Church as such. The Conciliar pronouncements insist that no man can be saved outside the Church. The theologian who relies on the concept of the soul of the Church simply insists that not only the person who is saved, but the very life of grace itself are sometimes to be found in non-members of the Church. This is perfectly correct, but it is no adequate explanation of the teaching proposed in the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
Lionel: 'The Conciliar pronouncements insist that no man can be saved outside the Church.Agreed.
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Moreover this explanation is subject to disapproval on the grounds of terminology. If we take the soul of the Church to mean either God or the Holy Ghost or the life of grace which exists within men as the result of the inhabitation of the Blessed Trinity in their souls, then certainly the expressions “member of the soul of the Church” and “belonging to the soul of the Church are quite inadmissable. The term “soul of the Church” is metaphorical, and there is an inexcusable mixing of metaphors when a person is described as a “member” of the Holy Ghost, or as “belonging to” the state of grace.
Lionel: The term “soul of the Church” is metaphorical.Correct. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus refers to being an actual membership, which is physically visible.
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No such difficulty exists of course when another, and an unfortunately all-too-prevalent notion of the soul of the Church is used in explaining the statement extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Theoretically there could be members of a society composed exclusively of persons of good will and in the state of grace, as the soul of the Church is sometimes understood. The persons who utilize this concept interpret the teaching on the necessity of the Church by stating that, in order to be saved, a man must belong either to the body of the Church, which they understand as the actually existing and visible society founded by our Lord, or to the soul of the Church, which is the invisible and spiritual society composed exclusively of those who have the virtue of charity.
Lionel: This is a criticism of the use of this phrase 'soul of the Church' in the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 to the Archbishop of Boston.
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No such society, however, exists in this earth. As a result any explanation of the axiom in terms of such a gathering cannot be other than inaccurate. Thus, taken as a whole, the attempt to explain the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation in the light of the soul of the Church is either unsatisfactory or downright incorrect.
Lionel: Again this is a criticism of the Letter of the Holy Office 1949.
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The fourth and traditional manner of explaining the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus uses the terms in re and in voto or some of the manifold variations of these expressions. It states that, in order to be saved, a man either be a member of the Catholic Church or intend to become a member. Alone among the procedures used to explain the necessity of the Church, this one is perfectly consonant with all the Pontifical and Conciliar pronouncements on the subject. No man whatsoever can be saved without actually willing to live and to die within the Church of Jesus Christ.
Seen in its proper perspective then the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is a powerful and profound statement of the fact that the charity which is absolutely requisite for eternal life involves a sincere desire to dwell within the Catholic Church which is the House of the Lord. No man can be said to love God with the affection of benevolence or friendship unless he actually wishes to do what God has commanded. Now God wills that men should worship Him, not as scattered and unorganized individuals, but as members of a society which is the Kingdom of God. No man can be said to have charity unless he intends to enter this Kingdom.
Lionel: Agreed.
-Lionel Andrades
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Text continues.
Strictly speaking, it is not necessary that the person who has charity should be fully informed about the identity of the true Church of Jesus Christ in this world. Thus it is perfectly possible that a man should intend to live within the Sheepfold of Christ and at the same time not be aware that the Roman Catholic Church is the society he seeks. The error which beclouds his mind does not change his vital orientation. He lives as one possessed of that amor fraternitatis which the great Francis Sylvius depicted as the essential factor in the Catholic Church’s inward bond of unity.3 He truly intends to be a member of Christ’s Mystical Body.
On the other hand charity is absolutely incompatible with an unwillingness to live and die in the communion of the Church of Jesus Christ. There can be no charity without the amor fraternitatis although this latter can and does exist apart from the virtue of charity. Thus every man who has charity, every man in the state of grace, every man who is saved, is necessarily one who is or who intends to become a member of the Roman Catholic Church. There can be no exceptions. This is the only interpretation fully consonant with the Fourth Lateran declaration that outside the Church no one at all is saved. It accords fully with the Florentine pronouncement that members of non-Catholic religious communions and those of no religious affiliation whatsoever cannot be saved and are going into everlasting fire unless they attach themselves to the Roman Church before they die.
Furthermore it explains the assertion of Pope Boniface VIII in his Unam Sanctam to the effect that outside the Catholic Church “there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins”.4 Both the beatific vision and the forgiveness of sins are quite impossible apart from charity. Evidently, according to the Magisterium of the Church, that dynamic factor which enters into the process of justification and into the achievement of the Beatific Vision is something which tends inexorably to bring a man within the actual unity of the Catholic Church. That union is vital and voluntary. On the part of the man who is already within the communion of the Catholic Church, the amor fraternitatis demands a willingness to live and die within his own religious society. In the man who is not enrolled among the members of the Church, it produces a real desire to enter and to remain in the true Church. The man who has charity belongs to the Church, at least by intention.
There have been, and unfortunately there still are tendencies to regard the extra Ecclesiam nulla salus as a doctrine in some way offensive to those outside the Catholic Church. Thus Doctor Karl Adam sees this teaching as “aimed at” non-Catholic religious communions though not directed against the individual members of these societies.5 These tendencies distort the very meaning of the dogma. Actually the teaching on the necessity of the Catholic Church is the recognition of a divinely revealed truth, to the effect that the love of God which our Lord commanded in His disciples demands the unity of the Catholic Church. In telling men that the Catholic Church is requisite for salvation, God has simply made clear the social and corporate aspect of divine charity.
The thesis extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is a basic motive principle in Catholic missiology. The Church labors in this world for the very purpose which her divine Founder worked to achieve. The Church acts so that men may have life, and have it more abundantly. For this reason the central and essential activity of the Catholic Church consist in an effort to bring men those factors which are absolutely essential for the attainment of everlasting happiness. So it is that the Church works to bring men to believe our Lord’s teaching, and to love the Triune God and their fellow men with the true love of charity.
But this very charity, towards which the missionary activity of the Church is necessarily orientated, is a factor which demands the Church itself. The love of charity is as it were out of place in any gathering apart from the Sheepfold of Jesus Christ which is the Roman Catholic Church, since the man who has charity must necessarily intend to live and die within the Church. So it is that, even from the point of view of those who benefit from the missionary activity of the Church, the insistence upon the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is essentially a recognition of the exigencies of charity.
The missionary who offers his life to carry the faith and the Church to those places where the Church has not as yet been properly established labors to bring men more than the “ordinary means of salvation.” He works to bring men to love God, and to offer them the very society which their love for God will demand that they should join. He brings them the society which alone holds authentically and infallibly the doctrine of Christ. He gives his people the opportunity to enter the institution which our Lord wills they should enter.
The missionary works in order that men may possess the only ultimate end eternal happiness available to them. Thus he is motivated by divine charity, seeking the glory of God and the perfect good of men. In exactly the same way he labors to fulfil the exigencies of charity in those among whom he works. He strives to bring them the society which the true love for God demands.
The Holy Father’s Encyclical Mystici Corporis supports the theologians who have explained the dogma on the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation by stating that, in order to be saved a man must either be a member of the Church or intend to become a member. “It follows” says Pope Pius XII, “that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in one Body such as this, and cannot be living the life of its one divine Spirit.”6 In other words the life of grace, expressed in the perfective act of charity precludes any unwillingness to dwell in the House of God.
According to this traditional interpretation, which first appears in Scholastic theology with the writings of Thomas Stapleton7, the Catholic Church is requisite for salvation because charity itself is necessary. The sheep of Christ belong within the Sheepfold. It is the will of our Lord that they should really intend to enter the Church, and that their intention should neither be frustrated nor neglected. “And other sheep I have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”]fn]John 10:16
Washington, D.C. - Joseph Clifford Fenton
https://tradidi.com/church/msgr-fenton-eens