The Church’s Most Controversial Dogma That Even Good Catholics Question

The Catholic Church has always been controversial; in every era she’s challenged the world with teachings hard to accept. In today’s age, the teachings that surround the “pelvic” issues—contraception, abortion, homosexuality—generate the most controversy. But I’d argue that one doctrine in particular tests the faithfulness of today’s most ardent Catholics, because it’s the one that most contradicts today’s zeitgeist, a zeitgeist that infects the Church as much as the world. What’s this most controversial of Catholic teachings?

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. 

Outside the Church there is no salvation.

First coined in the early Church (its first known written instance is from St. Cyprian of Carthage in the third century), few Catholic doctrines are better attested and supported than EENS. No Church Father challenged it, and many proclaimed it widely. St. Augustine wrote, “No man can find salvation except in the Catholic Church.” The sixth century Athanasian Creed states, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith.” The Fathers—including St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine—often compared the Church to Noah’s Ark, outside of which one cannot be saved.

The doctrine was eventually enshrined as binding on the faithful in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, which proclaimed, “There is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved.” The Council of Florence in 1442 reiterated the importance of this teaching. Saints, popes, and theologians continued to emphasize this core belief of Catholics throughout the centuries. In fact, of all the teachings of the Catholic Church, few have been taught more consistently throughout her history than extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.

Yet today if you ask the typical Catholic—even a practicing, “orthodox” Catholic—if he agrees with the statement “Outside the Church there is no salvation,” at best you get a lot of hemming and hawing, and more than likely an outright rejection.

Not long ago I gave a presentation to a group of conservative Catholics on the themes of my book Deadly Indifference, which revolve around this teaching. Afterward, during the question-and-answer period, an older woman in the audience was clearly distressed. She regretted my use of what she called “scare tactics,” threatening non-Catholics with hell. I didn’t actually say anything of the sort, but I did say that Catholics must accept EENS as Catholic teaching, and this should drive our missionary and evangelistic endeavors. 

Another audience member said that what “outside the Church” means today is very different than what it meant back in the Middle Ages, implying that being Catholic was no longer that important when it comes to salvation. 

Again, this was an audience of conservative Catholics—not a Fr. James Martin fan club or a bunch of Cardinal Cupich disciples. Yet at least some of them balked at the suggestion that outside the Church there is no salvation.

Now, one might think such a cavalier attitude toward EENS is restricted to Catholics who aren’t well-formed or educated in the Faith. Yet in just the past week I’ve seen two more examples, this time extremely knowledgeable Catholics who also seem to be troubled by the doctrine.

The first is George Weigel, the well-known Catholic commentator and official biographer of Pope John Paul II. His most recent column addresses the “Declaration of Catholic Faith” made by the Society of St. Pius X. Weigel writes,

The Declaration goes on to claim that “every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul, and there is but one baptism as a means of being incorporated into her. This necessity concerns the whole of humanity without exception and embraces without distinction Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists.” SSPX hell is thus quite well populated, and includes your Lutheran, Anglican, Jewish, Muslim, and non-believing friends and relatives. This, however, is precisely the extreme distortion of the old maxim extra ecclesiam nulla salus (no salvation outside the Church) for which Father Leonard Feeney was excommunicated in 1953, the theological ground for that sanction being laid by a 1949 statement of the Holy Office approved by Pope Pius XII. 

Weigel seeks to undermine EENS by equating any robust acceptance of it with the views of Fr. Feeney. Weigel is correct that Fr. Feeney’s absolutist view of salvation—that only a water-baptized Catholic could be saved—was rejected by the Vatican. Yet Weigel goes to the other extreme and strips EENS of any meaning, making it a dead letter. Vatican II itself states that “In explicit terms [Christ] Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church” (Lumen Gentium 14). 

Now, whatever your views of the controversial SSPX, the statement “every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul, and there is but one baptism as a means of being incorporated into her. This necessity concerns the whole of humanity without exception and embraces without distinction Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists” is one that would not be controversial in any age of the Church except today’s. While one could interpret the SSPX statement in an absolutist fashion that goes too far, the same could be said of “outside the Church there is no salvation.” Yet to hand-wave the doctrine away as Weigel does is far more common today, and far more dangerous, frankly, for it makes EENS meaningless.

Weigel’s not the only well-known conservative Catholic who undermines EENS. In a recent book, Peter Kreeft—whom I consider one of our era’s best and smartest Catholic apologists, to whom many Catholics, myself included, are indebted—also seemed to call the teaching into question. In The Two Greatest Novels Ever Written (Word on Fire Publishing), he writes, 

This idea of St. Justin [Martyr’s], that good pagans are “anonymous Christians,” is more than speculative philosophy; it is divine revelation. For John 1:9 identifies Christ as one who “enlightens everyone.” Even more specifically, in the New Testament, it is the pagans, the Gentiles—who do not have God’s special revelation to the Jews—who Christ often says have the most faith, even if this faith is “anonymous”: the Roman centurion (Matt. 8:5-10), the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), the Gentile leper who returned thanks (Luke 17:16-19), and the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30). 

Here Kreeft is referring to St. Justin Martyr’s teaching about the “Logos Spermatikos” (seeds of the Word), in which pagans like Socrates who lived before Christ taught truths through their philosophy and so could in some way be considered “Christian.” Yet Kreeft’s application (and apparent endorsement) of the phrase “anonymous Christians” to the teaching of St. Justin Martyr is incredibly unfortunate, for that is the concept popularized in the 1960’s by Jesuit priest Karl Rahner. Here’s how Rahner described it:

“Anonymous Christianity” means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christiainity…a Buddhist monk (or anyone else I might suppose) who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian. (Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews, 1965-1982, 135)

Note that, contrary to Kreeft’s unfortunate juxtaposition, St. Justin Martyr’s “seeds of the Word” is not the same as Rahner’s “anonymous Christian.” The first is explaining to pagan Rome that many of the philosophical truths they already accept actually find their ultimate origin in the Logos, Jesus Christ. The latter is simply granting salvation to any and all asunder, regardless of their attachment to the Catholic Church.

So why do so many Catholics today—including many otherwise well-formed Catholics—want to run far away from EENS? I can think of a few reasons.

First, EENS on its face contradicts our modern portrait of God as a loving grandpa who would never say a mean word to anyone. We can’t underestimate how this impression permeates everyone’s concept of God, even those most committed to the Catholic Faith. We’ve overemphasized God’s mercy to the exclusion of His justice, and so any suggestion that a “good person” might not be saved is anathema to that widespread conception of God’s love.

I’ve also noticed that the rejection of EENS, whether explicit or implicit, is very common among older folk, and many of them likely have loved ones—including adult children—who have fallen away from the practice of the Catholic Faith. So they take it personally and perhaps emotionally when someone states that “outside the Church there is no salvation.” To their ears, you are literally consigning a beloved child or friend to an eternity of hell.

Finally, ecumenism is the subreligion within today’s Catholic religion, and nothing is more anti-ecumenical than EENS. Especially here in America we are surrounded by non-Catholics, and so to bring up EENS—or even worse, robustly defend it—throws a stink bomb into a cocktail party. 

To be sure, there are some nuances to EENS, subtleties that the Church has particularly developed in recent centuries, but these nuances have been so overemphasized in the past few decades that they’ve turned EENS into a gelding in comparison to how it was understood until the 1960’s. If everyone who isn’t a complete monster is an “anonymous Christian,” then there’s no point in trying to convert anyone to actual practicing Christianity. This, of course, flies in the face of Christ’s explicit command and the testimony of the Church’s great missionaries, starting with St. Peter and St. Paul.

Ours is an age that acts on feelings more than facts, and nothing demonstrates this more than the common Catholic repudiation of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. We need to recover a more robust understanding of this doctrine—an understanding held by all Catholics until about 70 years ago—so that we can fulfill Christ’s mandate to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). We can’t let our uncomfortableness with this doctrine hold us back, for it can have eternal consequences for those around us.

For a book-length exploration of this important topic, I recommend my book Deadly Indifference: How the Church Lost Her Mission and How We Can Reclaim It.