Question Title | Posted By | Question Date |
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Salvation & Catholicism | Len | Monday, September 13, 2004 |
Question: I ran across this quote on a message board and I was curious (and I won't be judgemental whatever you say) what your opinion of it is. It was not known which was the True Cross. She therefore touched each cross to a blind and crippled man. When the True Cross touched this man, he was healed. |
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Question Answered by Bro. Ignatius Mary, OLSM+
Dear Len: As for the True Cross story, I am not familiar with that story. On the other, it is true, as Jesus taught, that the ark of salvation is ONLY in His Church built upon Peter. All who are saved, are saved through the Catholic Church whether they know it or not and whether they like it or not. This is not to say that a person must be a card-carrying member of the Catholic Church. Those who are not Catholic may too be saved according to the knowledge they have of God an a sincere heart to find Him. Non-Catholic Christians are already an imperfert member of the Catholic Church by virtue of their Baptism. They are "saved" according to those baptismal promises and their desire to follow God. Yet that salvation STILL comes through the Catholic Church. Even non-Christians can be saved by God who saves whomever He pleases. But when these non-Christians are saved by God, they are not saved through their various religions, but are saved by Christ through His Church, the Catholic Church in a mysterious way that we do not understand. Thus, the quote you gave is accurate. Here are some excerpts from the Catholic Catehecism:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it. Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.
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