Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus

Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus: "There is no salvation outside the Church."

AS THE ORDINARY MEANS to salvation, our Holy Mother Church, the Roman Catholic Church affirms that there is no salvation outside her communion. The fullness of the truth that subsists within our Holy Mother Church is indeed our necessary means to attain our hope in Jesus Christ.

This is not however, in my own humble view, written as a distinction that we should enjoy as Catholics, it is not something that sets us apart from the rest of the body of suffering humanity. For Christian charity compels us to live in peace among our fellow human beings.

Indeed, the love of Jesus Christ compels us to share with others the everlasting glory of the Father and the Son that have brought, through the action of the Holy Spirit, the promise of new life into our hearts. Charity itself compels us to share with others our knowledge of Christ in His Sacred Humanity as well as in His Eternal Divinity as the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity being requisite to an understanding the of mystery of the Incarnation, the central mystery that underpins our Christian hope in the Salvation of Jesus Christ.

I firmly believe that Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus is an infallible statement completely affirming the missionary hope of the entire Mystical Body of Christ, that all nations may come to a knowledge of life eternal through Jesus Christ and the Father Who sent Him.

I believe that this infallible statement is primarily meant to instill from among the ranks of our Mother Church a salutary form of holy fear and to a lesser extent to convince others who have not yet entered into the Church to consider the promise they stand to gain from professing
their faith in Jesus Christ and joining the communion of Christ's Church, our Holy Mother Church.

It was never a statement directed against believers of other religions. For it is not a statement directed against hope, it is a statement in fact of our own Christian hope in the great commission of Jesus Christ.

Rather than excluding others from the communion of the Church, this missionary hope when informed by the spirit of Christian charity, far from condemning ways alien to our own limited understanding, seek include to our own hopes the hopes of others, giving us as Catholic laity a wider sense of mission that encourages us as human beings to build the necessary bridges and to tear down the dividing walls of hostility and indifference that exclude from the Church those souls who are called by our Father to the one flock of Jesus Christ.

It is an active inducement toward higher Christian piety; a more profound prayer life, a deeper sacramental life through better understanding of the sacraments of the Church, our adequate support for our missions and our clergy and greater participation within our home parishes. It is a means toward greater intensity in the service of God, true self and others in God.

But when taken outside the context of Christian charity, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, becomes a definite condemnation of the one same missionary hope that our Holy Mother Church means to propose to our faith. A hope meant to establish in common charity, a greater regard for our Christian election as a responsibility that we hold in Christ to serve and to love others as He has served and loved us, to serve all souls without distinction with a love that believes in all things, hopes in all things and endures all things.

Those who are outside the Church are not by any means excluded from the beneficence and the mercy of God and we must never forget that we are each an instrument of that loving-kindness and mercy, we are servants to the very least of men and the hope of our Lord's poor, we are what keeps others from desparing in the darkness and the love broken for others and not an angelic Throne upon which is issued the judgments of our Lord in the hypocrisy of those who are eager to send whoever agrees with them to the everlasting beatitude of heaven and whoever disagrees with them to the everlsating damnation of hell.

It is my Christian sensibility that require that I take nothing outside the bounds of the reality of God's Love, a reality that underpins all that is real in our world.

Therefore, extra ecclesiam nulla salus being a positive sum of Christian missionary hope may not be it's negative form which is the reduction or elimination of the same hope that we hold in Christian faith as a hope that is also possessed by other souls shaped by their particular lineage of sacred revelation supported by the particular faith sustained within their own honorable religious tradition.

Far from condemnation, in fact, we are to build on these same hopes and the existing sacred truths that already serve the same purposes as Divine charity and fulfill them all in the Name of Jesus Christ and the glory of our Father in heaven.

In fact, our own Roman Catholic Church as we exist as a whole is a unity of diverse local Churches in full communion with our Holy Father through the bishops in full communion with him, not as identical liturgical rites but as traditionally diverse and distinct Christian traditions, diverse in all things but sacred Dogma and the doctrinal truths that unify our New Covenant Christian Communion of the Holy Roman Catholic Church through the authentic marks of unity, sanctity, apostolicity, and catholicity.

To sum, the infallible statement, extra eccelsiam nulla salus, in my own humble understanding, far from giving us an opportunity to prove other hopes wrong, should lead us to greater love for the souls of others and greater appreciation for our own souls for the merits that we receive as unworthy children growing up in the bosom of our Holy Mother Church.

Let us be grateful children then, thankful for this certain supernatural dignity and the benefits of being included by our baptism into the great family of God knowing that all of this is a grace received from the one Author of human salvation Who is our one Lord and Savior of all humankind, Jesus Christ, our capital grace and our All, the same, yesterday, today and forever.

Let us then do everything for Christ Jesus Who has loved us even before we knew what true freedom there is to love as we are loved by Him.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.