THE 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 in the celebrated adage: “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”: outside the Church there is no salvation. The interpretation of this axiom has been much debated, and it is therefore necessary to determine the precise meaning of the necessity attributed to the Church.
Jesus Christ is the sole and only source of supernatural life. “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). It is impossible to become a friend of God except through the Son, Who became man to communicate to His brethren the life of the heavenly Father. Sanctifying grace is, in the soul of the just, the real though anticipatory participation in the divine nature. The beatific vision will not be a mere substitution of grace, but its natural flowering, once the soul has reached its heavenly home. Such interior justice, produced in men by God through Christ crucified and risen, is, as the Council of Trent teaches (Denz.-U., 799), the sole formal cause of justification and salvation. It is therefore necessary by “necessity of means,” and cannot be replaced by any other element. Those who have not been regenerated by the grace of Christ cannot behold the face of the heavenly Father. This “necessity of means” must therefore be considered absolute.
To diffuse among men the grace of which He is the fullness, the Incarnate Word has established the mystery of His Eucharistic Body and of His Mystical Body, which is its prolongation and the organ of divine communications: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you” (John 6:54). Now it is precisely the Church that exercises and applies, by 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 to Christ. To depend upon it is therefore necessary by “necessity of means”: a necessity established by the positive will of the Founder, and not absolutely in itself, hence of a relative and institutional character.
Without doubt, the intrinsic vital reality that animates the Church is absolutely necessary for all; yet the concrete means by which the Church communicates supernatural life are not always within the reach of all men. It is therefore permissible to think that the universal salvific will of God has provided for this deficiency of external means by other paths. Indeed, Tradition teaches that martyrdom (baptism of blood), an act of charity or of perfect contrition (baptism of desire) communicate with absolute certainty the treasures granted to others by the Sacraments. The normal means, then, of entering heaven is actual and perfect incorporation into the Church. Yet there are other ways of entering into its inner mystery besides that of sacramental rite. Catechumens slain for their fidelity to Christ, and even children subjected to martyrdom (such as the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem), have always been considered by the Church to be in a state of salvation, indeed honored as saints. A man who, by this path, generously and without reservation submits himself to what Christ has established, and is sincerely disposed to respect all the institutions willed by Him, cannot, in the hypothesis of an impossibility or invincible ignorance, be condemned for not having 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 men be saved, and on the other, institutes a means of salvation which, in its visible form, is not accessible to all. A bond with the Church, imperfect but nonetheless effective, is always possible to aid 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 mere “necessity of precept.” Certainly, this obligation is binding upon all who know the means instituted by Providence for salvation: they have the moral duty 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. Nevertheless, the Church remains the cause of salvation and not merely a condition. Attending Sunday Mass or abstaining on Fridays are obligations proper to Catholics: these are not acts that produce eternal life, but merely precepts to be observed so as not to lose or to develop the same eternal life. The Church, as a saving organism, is above these prescriptions: it is not merely an obligation to belong to it, but in it resides the principle of grace. Protestantism does not comprehend this character and dignity of the Church; one might say that it diminishes the divine transcendence of the Church, which is truly the City of God, descended from heaven to earth, the Bride of the Lamb who gives birth to her children unto eternal life.
For Protestants, the Church is but the place where 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 contrary, it is the Church that forms Christians. It is evident, therefore, that the two cannot have the same concept of the necessity of the Church. The “mystery” of the Church is none other than the revelation and communication of God Himself, the infinite source of truth and life, diffused by Christ in time and space. In Protestantism this mystery is partly obscured. Protestants, while on the one hand are tormented by a nostalgia for return, on the other cry out at the “scandal” of the Church, instead of looking solely at the weaknesses of its members.
In conclusion of the doctrine expounded, certain attempts at theological explanation must be excluded which, if not entirely erroneous, are nonetheless superficial or inexact. Reference has already been made to the theory of mere “necessity of precept.” 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 reach heaven. Undoubtedly, God does not withhold the reward except from him who is guilty of sin. Yet there will always be sin in him who refuses even the spiritual aggregation to the organism of salvation, which is necessary for all, since it constitutes the Body
Mystical Body, which is the sole source of supernatural life. The precept could not in itself be the cause of resurrection (one need only think of the Jewish Law in the light of Pauline thought), yet it could also be an occasion of falling. Now the Church is not an extension of the Law, but rather its abrogation. Another theory, which somewhat materializes a Pauline image, distinguishes between the Body and the Soul of the Church: belonging to the Soul would be a necessity of means, while belonging to the Body would be required only as 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 clinging to one, one clings therefore to the other. Yet membership in both can, as has already been explained, be more or less perfect. At times such membership is realized solely through the Baptism of desire, but this, at least implicitly, aims also at incorporation into the “body” and not merely into the “soul.” The Holy Spirit, says St. Augustine, gives life only to those members who are in the body, of which He is the soul. He adds, however, that one can be “incorporated,” in certain cases, by a simple desire and interior dispositions. This is what is most important. Purely material incorporation, in fact, which did not exclude sin, would be of no benefit. Sincere desire, on the other hand, will lead to social affiliation as soon as it becomes feasible. The Scholastics, following St. Augustine, developed their thought through the system of the “implicit vow.” This doctrine has the advantage of being traditional, in accord with the expressions and spirit of Scripture, and full of balance. Thus the Church remains in its mysterious dignity as the sole means instituted for salvation, and while it is urged apostolically to facilitate, through its expansion, the entry of all men into the one ark, at the same time, through spiritual membership, every appearance of rigidity and inflexibility is excluded—qualities which would be at odds with the universal love of God and the Redeemer of the world (v. CHURCH; MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH).