Necessity of the Church

NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH. - According to Catholic doctrine it is necessary to belong to the Church in order to attain eternal life. In negative terms this truth is expressed by the celebrated adage: "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus": outside the Church there is no salvation. The interpretation of this axiom is much debated, and therefore one must determine the precise sense of the necessity that is attributed to the Church.

Jesus Christ is the one and only source of supernatural life. "In no other is there salvation; there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4, 13). It is impossible to become a friend of God except through the Son, who became man in order to communicate to his brothers the life of the heavenly Father. Sanctifying Grace is, in the soul of the just, the anticipated but real participation in the divine nature. The beatific vision will not be a simple replacement of Grace, but will be its natural efflorescence, as soon as the soul has reached the fatherland. Such interior justice, produced in men by God through Christ dead and risen, is, as the Council of Trent says (Denz-U, 799), the sole formal cause of justification and salvation. It is therefore necessary by "necessity of means" and it is impossible to replace it with any other element. Those who have not been regenerated by the Grace of Christ cannot contemplate the face of the heavenly Father. Consequently this "necessity of means" is to be held as absolute.

In order to spread among men the Grace, of which he has the fullness, the Incarnate Word instituted the mystery of his Eucharistic Body and of his Mystical Body, which is its prolongation and the organ of divine communications: "If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and do not drink his blood, you will not have life in you" (Jn 6, 54). Now, it is precisely the Church that exercises and applies, through the very power of Christ, this indispensable sacramental activity. The Church is not the formal cause of human salvation, but rather the instrumental cause with respect to God and his Christ. To depend on it is therefore necessary by "necessity of means": a necessity established by the positive will of the Founder, not absolutely for itself, therefore, of a relative and "institutional" character.

Without doubt, the intrinsic vital reality that animates the Church is absolutely necessary for all; but the concrete means that the Church uses to communicate supernatural life are not always within the reach of all men; it is therefore legitimate to think that God's universal salvific will has provided for such a deficiency of external means by other ways. In fact, Tradition teaches that martyrdom (Baptism of blood), the act of charity or of perfect contrition (Baptism of desire)

convey with every certainty the treasures granted to other men by the Sacraments. The normal means, then, for entering heaven is actual and perfect incorporation into the Church. But there are other ways of entering into its interior mystery, besides that of the sacramental rite. The catechumens killed for their fidelity to Christ and also the children subjected to martyrdom (like the innocents of Bethlehem) were always considered by the Church to be in a state of salvation, indeed honored as saints. A man, by this way, submits himself generously and without limitations of any sort to what Christ has established. He is sincerely disposed to respect all the institutions willed by him, but in the hypothesis of an impossibility or of invincible ignorance, one could not think of inflicting a condemnation on him because he has not made use of those means. He belongs in some way to the Mystical Body and this is sufficient for salvation. It is always the Church, the continuation of Christ, that saves these "scattered children."

One cannot therefore speak of contradiction if, on the one hand, God wills that all be saved and, on the other, institutes a means of salvation that, under its visible form, is not accessible to all. The bond with the Church is always possible, imperfect but nonetheless efficacious, which comes to the aid of these distant ones (v. BAPTISM; CONTRITION; MARTYRDOM AND MARTYR; MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH).

The necessity of belonging to the Church cannot, however, be reduced to a simple "necessity of precept." Certainly, such obligatoriness imposes itself on all those who know the means instituted by Providence for salvation: they have the moral obligation to enter the visible Christian society. Only then will they be "marked" with the character of Baptism and elevated to the dignity of perfect members. Nonetheless, the Church remains a cause of salvation and not merely a condition. Attending Sunday Mass or abstaining on Friday are obligations proper to Catholics: these are not acts that produce eternal life, but only precepts to be observed in order not to lose or in order to develop that same eternal life. The Church, as a salvific organism, is superior to these prescriptions: belonging to it is not merely an obligation, but the principle of Grace is in it itself. Protestantism does not understand such a character and dignity of the Church; one would say that it belittles the divine transcendence of the Church, which is truly the City of God, come down from heaven to earth, the Spouse of the Lamb who generates her children to eternal life.

For Protestants, it is nothing but the place in which believers in Christ gather, the society constituted by the juxtaposition of all the faithful, imperfect and sinful, not the organ through which God himself forms his elect. According to the "reformers," it is Christians who form the Church; for Catholics, on the other hand, it is the Church that forms Christians. It is evident therefore that the one and the other cannot have the same concept of the n. of the C. The "mystery" of the Church is nothing other than the Revelation and the communication of God himself, infinite source of truth and of life, diffused by Christ through time and space. In Protestantism this mystery vanishes in part. Protestants, while on the one hand they are tormented by the longing for return, on the other cry out at the "scandal" of the Church, instead of looking only at the weaknesses of the members of the Church.

As a conclusion of the doctrine set forth, certain attempts at theological explanation must be excluded which, if they are not entirely erroneous, are nonetheless superficial or inexact. Mention has already been made of the theory of "necessity of precept" alone. According to this doctrine, the famous adage "outside the Church there is no salvation" is explained thus: whoever remains outside the Church through his own fault cannot attain heaven. Undoubtedly, God deprives no one of the reward except the one who is guilty of sin. But there will always be sin in the one who refuses even spiritual aggregation to the organism of salvation, which is necessary for all, because it constitutes the Body

Mystical Body, which is the sole source of supernatural life. The precept could not be in itself a cause of resurrection (one need only think of the Jewish Law in the light of Pauline thought), but it could still be an occasion of falling. Now the Church is not the prolongation of the Law, but rather its abrogation. Another theory, which goes beyond a Pauline image while somewhat materializing it, distinguishes between the Body and the Soul of the Church: belonging to the Soul would be a "necessity of means," while being part of the Body would be required only by a "necessity of precept." Such a distinction, however, is fallacious and would reduce the Church to the type and regime of the Law. The ecclesiastical society, organized and hierarchically administered, does not in reality differ from the Church-as-mystery or the Church-as-spirit. By attaching oneself to the one, one thereby attaches oneself to the other. But belonging to the one and to the other can be, as has already been explained, more or less perfect. Sometimes such belonging is realized solely through the Baptism of desire, but this, at least implicitly, has as its purpose also the aggregation to the "body" and not only to the "soul." The Holy Spirit, says St. Augustine, gives life only to the members that are in the body, of which he is the soul. One must add, however, that in certain cases one can be "incorporated" through a simple desire and interior dispositions. This is what matters above all. Purely material incorporation, in fact, which did not exclude sin, would bring no benefit whatsoever. Sincere desire, on the contrary, will lead to social affiliation as soon as it becomes realizable. The Scholastics, after St. Augustine, elaborated their thought with the system of the "implicit vow." This doctrine has the advantage of being traditional, adhering to the expressions and the spirit of the Scriptures, and full of balance. The Church thus remains in her mysterious dignity as the sole means instituted for salvation and, while she is apostolically urged to facilitate, through her expansion, the entry of all men into the one little boat, at the same time, through spiritual belonging, every appearance of rigidity and inflexibility is excluded, which would be in contrast with the universal love of God and of the Redeemer of the world (v. CHIESA; MEMBRI DELLA CHIESA).

Gerardo Philips