May 2022 Print

Pauper Peregrinus

To go to heaven, we need the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. To get on well with our neighbour, on the other hand, lesser qualities will do: friendliness, sympathy, basic honesty and decency. But since we see our neighbour, and we don’t see heaven, people easily imagine that these lesser qualities are “what really counts.” From there it’s a small step to supposing that everyone who is not an obvious scoundrel will probably get to heaven in the end.

That kind of thinking is death to evangelization. If our non-Catholic, and even our non-Christian neighbor is probably alright as he is, who will go the trouble of trying to bring him into the Church? Might it not even be kinder to leave him alone, since if he becomes Catholic, he’ll discover that he has all sorts of obligations to believe and do and not do things, none of which he knew about before? Surely, it would be cruel to enlighten him!

Of course, such thinking is nonsensical. Truth sets us free: error imprisons us. The gospel is not a burden which we should want to spare our neighbors; it is the grace of God, and life eternal. And Jesus Christ is not one way among others, not even a “privileged way,” as a certain American bishop recently said: He is the way to the Father, and we cannot walk that way unless we know Him.

Unfortunately, “indifferentism,” despite having been condemned in round terms by various 19th century popes, seeped into the Catholic Church in the 20th, and made itself intellectually respectable. One of those who reacted most strongly against it was the Jesuit priest, Fr Leonard Feeney (1897-1978). The outline of his story is quite well known: insisting on the literal truth of the axiom, “Outside the Church there is no salvation,” he became a successful chaplain to students at Harvard University. Protestant parents were annoyed to find their children going over to Rome. Cardinal Cushing, archbishop of Boston, was induced to feel that Fr Feeney and his followers were expressing themselves too strongly, and he solicited a letter from the Holy Office to that effect.

The letter duly arrived, dated August 8th, 1949. It expressed surprise at Father Feeney’s teachings, and said that in certain circumstances, a person could be sufficiently joined to the Catholic Church by an “implicit desire” of belonging to it. Father Feeney himself was summoned to Rome: before going he asked, reasonably enough, whether he was being called to trial and if so, for what offence. Eventually, in 1953, he received his answer: a decree of excommunication. It was issued not for a fault against the faith, but for refusing the summons to Rome. Frank Sheed, a friend of the excommunicated priest and the founder of Sheed & Ward publishers, would later comment: “Fr Feeney was silenced but not answered.”

This rather tragic tale turned into farce in November of 1972. A bishop, acting as envoy of the Holy See, came to see the priest, now an old and infirm man, to seek a reconciliation. Someone suggested that Fr Feeney and his community chant the Athanasian Creed. This, of course, is the creed that begins: “Whosoever wishes to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith.” When they had finished the chant, he was told that he was now once more reconciled with the Church. He died on 30th January, 1977.

It is hard not to feel a good deal of sympathy for Leonard Feeney. No Protestant or other non-Catholic was ever converted by being told that he might very well be in invincible ignorance. It is the business of priests to tell men the whole of the divine message, which includes the duty to believe this message and to enter the Catholic Church if they want to save their souls. “We renounce the hidden things of dishonesty,” said St. Paul, “not adulterating the word of God.”

There are, though, three distinct questions that should not be confused, though they often are, even by some theologians. (1) Is anyone saved without baptism by water? (2) Is anyone saved without being a Catholic or at least without the explicit intention of becoming one? (3) Is anyone saved without explicit belief in Christ? In what follows, I shall consider the questions in themselves, leaving the precise positions of Father Feeney to his biographers.

(1) If we leave aside the special case of martyrdom, which the Fathers of the Church extol for its power to blot out sin, we can say that there is some evidence for belief in “baptism of desire” in the early Church, but that no one considered this a point of faith. The two Fathers most often quoted in this connexion are St. Augustine and St. Ambrose. The emperor Valentinian II, who had bravely resisted the demands of pagan senators to restore their religion, had wanted to be baptized a Catholic but died by violence while still a catechumen. St. Ambrose said of him in a funeral oration that he had been washed by his desire, as the martyrs are by their blood. Yet elsewhere, the same saint lays down, at least as a general rule, that though catechumens may already believe in the power of the Cross, their sins are not forgiven without the washing in water.

St. Augustine, in a work on baptism, says that after careful consideration, it seems to him that faith and conversion of heart may supply the want of baptism if some sudden crisis makes it impossible to celebrate the sacrament before death. Yet elsewhere, like St. Ambrose, he lays down the general rule that however much a catechumen may have advanced, he cannot be freed from the load of his sins without baptism. He did not retract either opinion at the end of his life, in the book that he wrote to correct errors that had slipped into his voluminous writings.

This nuanced position came to be generally accepted in the West. St. Bernard, in the 12th century, is surprised when he hears of people absolutely denying the possibility of salvation for catechumens, and St. Thomas Aquinas followed him. Yet this “baptism of desire” is apparently not mentioned by the Eastern fathers, and its existence has not been defined by the Church. Catholics are free to believe if they will that God will ensure that all those predestined to life will be washed in baptism before they die; though they should not insist on this as if it were part of the faith.

(2) All these saints, however, were speaking about Catholic catechumens. Can we find anything in their writings to suggest that baptized people in non-Catholic bodies might be saved? Barely. St. Augustine does remark in passing that we should think very differently of those brought up in such bodies than of those who have left the Church to join or found them. But how should we think of them? If people born into these groups are validly baptized and taught rightly about the Trinity and Incarnation, and especially if they have the sacraments of penance and Holy Eucharist to help them keep the commandments, we cannot rule out the possibility that some at least are in a state of grace, and hence that their souls, though not their bodies, are already within the Church. They would be like irregular soldiers, fighting on the right side, unaware of their proper commanders.

Yet any such people, having the Holy Ghost, will respond well, sooner or later, to the preaching of the Church, of whom He is the soul. All the more reason for the Church’s pastors to invite them home! It is impossible to approve of the modern custom of Catholic priests and bishops preaching to groups of non-Catholics, and failing to issue this invitation.

(3) When, though, it comes to those who do not know Christ, we cannot have even this guarded and uncertain hope. He who has the Son, has life. He who has not the Son, has not life. We cannot become friends of God except by accepting His offer of forgiveness. Before Good Friday, mankind was invited to accept a redemption that would come one day. Since Good Friday, mankind is invited to accept the redemption that has already come: but no one can do this unless he has been told about the Redeemer. How shall they believe him of whom they have not heard, asks St. Paul. Even Pope John Paul II, despite those misguided gatherings in Assisi, declared in his official teaching: “The distinction between theological faith and the sort of believing found in the other religions must be firmly held” (Dominus Iesus, 17). And as the Council of Trent taught, echoing St. Paul, theological faith is necessary for man to be justified and made pleasing to God.

Outside the Church there is no salvation. Theologians may offer a precision here or there about these glorious words. But preachers, like Noah, should just invite men to enter before it is too late.

 

Image: “The Good Thief,” in Crucifixion by I. Moskos (1711).