Edit: This will expand gradually throughout the day, with citations concerning the Assisi Meeting from various sources concerning reactions to it.
[From kreuz.net] The Axiom >>No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church<<, which will be quoted eternally valid is not a doctrine in its historical origin, rather its a warning against division. The statement, which was also used as a missionary appeal to the >>heathen<<, had a multi-faceted historical impact, before it was formulated into dogma at the Council of Florence in 1442. In any case it is balanced out by other expressions of the teaching office of the Church. So it was that Pope Clemens IX. considered the statement >>outside of the Church there is no Grace<< in 1713 in the context of the controversy with the Jansenists as erroneous, which said that definitively calculated the possibility of salvation for heterodox and non-believers. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) adopted an expressly universalist perspective and opted for a dialogical opening toward the non-Christian religions, without weakening the truth claims of the Christian religion."
From an article by Viennese dogmatic theologian, Jan-Heiner Tück (41)in the Swiss paper ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’.
"No Salvation outside the Catholic Church" is an axiom? That's an interesting way to define a definition. I presume, ergo, based on this theologian's thinking, that the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption are also "axioms"?
ReplyDeleteCan a mere axiom motivate a missionary to face death - sometimes certain death - to bring Catholic truth to the unbaptized? Granted the English translation of this article is a little sketchy and ungrammatical but if the gist of what he said is what we are reading then this theologian has some explaining to do....to Isaac Jogues, for starters.
I would add to my post above that this theologian tries to compare Clement's denunciation of "outside the Church there is no grace", which was a Jansenist heresy, with the Church's thrice-defined (not once, as the theologian would have us believe) dogma of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. This is a false comparison. God extends his graces to all men - precisely so that these graces will help them to seek out the Catholic Church where, alone, they will find forgiveness of sins, the Eucharist and eternal life.
ReplyDeleteThose who defend Extra Ecclesiam would certainly not deny that God offers graces to all, but grace is not salvation.