"Outside the Traditional Church, No Salvation," Extra Ecclesiam Traditionalem Nulla Salus

  This is not a short essay, nor is it intended to be. The topic of salvation and the means to achieve it has been an especially controversial topic since the death of the now-famous, Jesuit priest, Fr. Leonard Feeney, S.J., who died in Boston, Massachusetts, 1978, at the age of 80.  We will not recount the life of Fr. Feeney, as several authors have already done so; and the reader is able to judge for himself Fr. Feeney’s writings and the strength of his arguments. Fr. Feeney was well-known for his stance on the dogma, Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, meaning “Outside the Church there is no salvation.”  And by the term “Church,” it is meant the Catholic Church. Today it seems as though there are two churches, the one, the Church of pagan, heretical Rome, and the other, the Church of those traditional Roman Catholics, who stand fast to the traditional liturgy and doctrines of the Church. There is and can be only one Church, and the bishops today are like those Jewish priests of the old Synagogue, those priests who decided to crucify their Master. The majority of Catholic bishops today crucify their Mystical Master, the Church.

The Council of Florence (1438-45) defined, “The Church believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life but will depart ‘into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matt. 25:41), unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock.” Any Catholic who denies this truth, rather asserting the contrary, that Jews, Moslems, and pagans, acting and dying as such, can enter heaven, is a heretic.  There is no nice way of stating this truth.  There is a rather large contingent of Catholics who will liberalize and sugarcoat this terrible doctrine, making every attempt to convince others that this phrase does not mean what it says, that the “good-willed people who did not know any better” will be alright in the end.  The Council of Florence is rather direct and unambiguous.  The importance of the doctrine Extra Ecclesiam cannot be overstated.  The late Fr. Wathen (d. 2006) in his first volume of Who Shall Ascend, said:

There is no Catholic doctrine (Extra Ecclesiam) which the Devil and his minions hate and dread more.  Unless the Church teach this doctrine in all its absoluteness, its truths will be taken no more seriously than any other religious or philosophical postulates, proof of which we are seeing in this post-Vatican II era…the pope and all other Catholics, high and low, have nothing better nor more important to do than to believe them and broadcast them to the four corners of the earth. (pgs. 90, 91)¹

    The formula Extra Ecclesiam has been slightly modified to read, “Ecclesiam Tradionalem,” the traditional Church.  Since the emergence of the New Mass (Novus Ordo) in 1969, certain traditional Catholics have been forced to defend themselves against it. Fr Champagne, a sedevacantist priest born in 1933, knew and spoke with Fr. Feeney. Fr. Feeney told him, “The New Mass is a Protestant imitation of the True Mass, and anyone who says it is betraying the Catholic Faith.” This essay concerns itself with the necessity of water baptism for salvation. The issue of the morality of the New Mass is for another essay.

Over twenty-five years ago, in 1997, I left St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, a traditional Catholic seminary which was, at the time, located in Winona, Minnesota.  Upon my return home, I corresponded with a traditional priest who considered me a heretic for being a devotee of Fr. Feeney.  Despite my supposed “heresy,” he would give me Holy Communion, maintaining that I was only a material heretic, and “a little confused about my theology.”  I sent this earnest priest an eleven-page letter about the necessity of sacramental baptism for salvation.  We reproduce the letter here, with a few slight modifications:

“Dear Fr…..”

“When God wants to save a soul,” writes the late, renowned Thomist, Dr. Etienne Gilson (d. 1978), “He has but to choose either some external circumstances with which the soul is to find itself surrounded, or graces to which its will is to find itself submissive.”  Water baptism is that “necessary external circumstance” which a man must encounter if he is to be saved, and as Professor Gilson implied, God “will arrange these circumstances according to His will.”

The late Catholic author, Mike Malone, years ago gave a talk at a Catholic conference (circa 2000) on the topic of his forthcoming book, The Only-Begotten (The book contains 1,000 footnotes and is a work of scholarship). Malone related a story about Fr. Feeney:

‘An old man a number of years ago was walking down the sidewalk in New York City. He had a heart attack and crashed to the pavement, prompting Fr. Feeney, who happened to be riding in a taxicab, to order the driver to stop immediately. Fr. Feeney approached and asked the man if he wished to become a Catholic, just as a fireman came running out of the firehouse with a glass of water. Fr Feeney baptized him, only to find out that he was a Jew.’

*We give the talk here, parts one and two: Mike Malone Talk Part 2

On that glorious day our Jewish friend became a true Jew; he became a Jew true to his race, true to the Messianic promises. God provided this man with an obedient cab driver, a priest, a fireman, and a simple glass of water, the only things necessary for his salvation. The fact that all of these coincidences occurred in the same instant, we think all will admit, was not an accident. We repeat to the liberals, ‘there are no accidents with God.’

In the 1950’s a group of French theologians was commissioned to produce a work on the subject of baptism. Their work was titled Baptism in the New Testament. They say:

‘There is no salvation without faith, and no salvation without Baptism. So it would be surprising if we could not somewhere find these two elements co-ordinated or juxtaposed in the same passage. The classic text, and the one which is most explicit, is that at the conclusion of Mark: He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned’ (Mk 16:16; Mt. 28:19) The second part of this passage omits the phrase ‘and is not baptized.’ The reason for this, and we shall see, is that since faith is the condition for the reception of baptism its absence necessarily implies the absence of baptism as well.’²

These theologians could not make the point any clearer than to say that faith and baptism are intrinsically united, like marriage, which must necessarily involve two people, man and wife; a man believes, because Faith “cometh by hearing,” as St. Paul says, but a man is not plunged into the Church until the water is poured upon his person. If a man believes all that the Church teaches, but remains unbaptized, he is still outside the Church. These theologians continue:

‘At this point in our research, then, we know that both faith and baptism, whether considered in isolation or together, are necessary for salvation…Since it is man who believes and man who is baptized, they seem to be the two essential elements in salvation.’³

In all fairness to Fr. Feeney, if he is to be faulted for maintaining that both things are necessary for salvation -the belief and the water- then so too are these eight French theologians who authored the book. They are: A. George, S.M., J. Delorme, D. Mollat, S.J., J. Guillet, S.J., M.E. Boismard, O.P., J. Duplacy, J. Giblet, and Y.B. Tremel.

“We know that all in fact are not saved,” says St. Augustine, “in fact the greater number are lost. When we ask how this happens, the usual answer is that men do not wish to accept salvation.” (Ench. 24.97) A certain Jesuit theologian, Patout Burns, S.J., comments on Augustine’s letter to Simplicianus:

‘The Church has a constitutive role in both faith and charity. The faith which Augustine describes responds to the Church’s preaching of the gospel. Only those who are reborn of water and the Spirit can enter the kingdom of God. Finally, charity can be received and maintained only within the communion of the Church.’⁴

The Gospel of St. John is preoccupied with baptism and the topic of water. St. John, more so than any of the apostles, had to deal with those later heretics who specifically were denying the necessity of the sacraments, mainly baptism. We look at several quotes:

John 2:7 ‘Jesus saith to them: Fill the water pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.’

John 3:7 ‘Wonder not, that I said to thee, you must be born again.’

John 4:7 ‘There cometh a woman of Samaria, to draw water. Jesus saith to her: Give me to drink.’

John 5:7 ‘The inform man answered him: Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool. For whilst I am coming, another goeth down before me.’

1 John 5:8 ‘And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three are one.’

Apoc. 7:17 ‘For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes.’

The classic text in Holy Scripture concerning water baptism is the dialogue between Nicodemus and Christ. St. John Chrysostom says of Nicodemus, “his mind is darkened, and he does not stand firm, but he reels like one on the point of falling away from the faith. Therefore, he objects to the doctrine as being impossible, in order to call forth a fuller explanation.”⁵ Another Scriptural text which is commonly cited is the conversion of Cornelius. Fr. Garriogou-Lagrange, called by some the 19th century St. Thomas, says:

‘All persons, even those who have not had the Gospel preached to them, receive graces sufficient for them to save their souls. Certainly, they are helped far less than those born in the Catholic Church, but they receive help sufficient for salvation. If they correspond to the graces received, if they act according to the dictates of conscience, as they are prompted to do by actual grace, then by a series of graces and by constant fidelity to inspirations, they finally receive the light of faith and acquire that life of charity, by means known to God, even if He has to send an angel or a preacher of the faith to them, as He sent the Apostle St. Peter to Cornelius the centurion.’ (Act 10)

St. Augustine informs us that Cornelius, although receiving the Holy Ghost prior to his baptism (Acts 10), was nonetheless unjustified until he received the sacrament which Christ ordained (St. Aug, sup. Levit. q. 84. T. 4).

St. Thomas (d.1274), wrote the Explanation of the Seven Sacraments, a work predating his Summa, and written almost immediately following his Summa Contra Gentiles. He says:

‘There have been certain errors concerning this sacrament. The first was that of the Solentiani, who received a baptism not of water but of the spirit. Against them the Lord says: Unless a man be born of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’

In 1273, the year before his death, the Angelic Doctor gave a series of sermons on the Apostles’ Creed, and he clearly established that faith is necessary for any Christian, and that baptism is the first of the sacraments of faith, and moreover, that no good work is accepted by God without faith. He quotes St. Augustine: ‘Where acknowledgement of the truth is lacking, there is counterfeit virtue even in the best behavior.’ Concerning his commentary on the 11th Article, “The Communion of Saints,” he says that spiritual life cannot be had unless one is reborn spiritually, and this rebirth comes about through baptism; and as evidence of this he quotes John 3:5 and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed: ‘I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.’ Concerning the 10th Article, “the Holy Catholic Church,” he says:

‘The Church is anointed. Similarly, the faithful are anointed by a spiritual anointing that they become holy; otherwise they would not be Christians. Indeed, the word Christus means anointed. This anointing, however, is the grace of the holy Spirit: (It is God) who confirms us with you in Christ and who anoints us (2 Cor. 1:21).⁶

Sanctifying Grace, because it is participation in the life of God, is a mystery. Consider the Mother of God: her Immaculate Conception was an extraordinary grace; the Incarnation was undoubtedly an extraordinary grace; and her baptism and confirmation were great graces too. But even the learned theologian Tanquerey says that the Blessed Virgin needed baptism:

‘This learned and accurate theologian (Tanquerey), who taught dogmatic theology in the Catholic Institute of Paris in the last decade of the nineteenth century, shows that the sacrament of Baptism was useful to the soul of the Blessed Virgin, not indeed in order to purify her from the stain of original sin, or from any sin of any kind, but in order to incorporate her externally and officially into the mystical body of Christ which is the Church; also in order to bestow on her an increase of sanctifying grace, and, above all, in order to imprint on her soul the indelible character of Baptism which is, according to St. Thomas, a potentia passiva enabling a Christian to receive validly the other sacraments. If Mary had not been baptized, she would have been deprived (when later on she received Holy Communion at the hands of the Apostles) of the special fruits which sacramental Communion produces ex opere operato only in a baptized person, according to the well-known axion: Baptismus est janua aliorum sacramentorum, baptism is the gate of the other sacraments.’ (Rev. J.B. Terrien, La Mere de Dieu et la Mere des Hommes, pp. 238-239)

The late Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton (d.1969) was an enemy of liberalism. He was editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review (AER), the largest Jesuit publication in America. It is said that in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council he would walk the grounds at Catholic University of America and hang his head, exclaiming “the Vatican Council II has opened the door to liberalism.” Msgr. Fenton has written several articles for the AER on the topic of salvation and membership in the Church: “The Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Church,” “Two Recent Explanations of the Church’s Necessity for Salvation,” “The Parish Census-List and Membership in the True Church,” “The Baptismal Character and Membership in the Catholic Church,” “The Use of the Terms Body and Soul with Reference to the Catholic Church,” “Membership in the Church,” “The Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body,” “Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus,” and “A Reply to Fr. Harnett” (Fr. Feeney issue)

He comments on the canon from the Council of Trent, which says:

‘If anyone shall say that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary for salvation, but are superfluous, and that, and that, although all are not necessary for every individual, without them or without the desire of them through faith alone men obtain from God the grace of justification; let him be anathema’ (Denz. 847)

Msgr. Fenton gives a rather long but forceful reply to the meaning of “in voto,” in desire:

‘Part of this confusion has come from an amateurish and unscientific use of technical theological terminology. The great ecclesiologists frequently spoke of men being saved either through being in the Church, or through being members of the Church, in voto. Later and less brilliant writers tended to imagine that there were two ways of being members of the Church, in re and in voto. As a matter of fact, a man who is a member of the Church in re is really and actually a part of the true Church. He is one of the persons who compose the society. The man who is a member in voto is one who is in the Church in desire. The thing desired is always an absent good. The man who desires to be a member of the Church is precisely one who does not, at the moment, enjoy this privilege. By making it appear that membership in the Church and desire of attaining membership were two ways of being within the Church as parts of this society, the proponents of the theory which Dr. Jalland has employed have been of little service to the cause of Catholic theology.’ (American Ecclesiastical Review: “Membership in the Church”)

Dr. Jalland, like many before and after him, misunderstood the encyclical Mystici Corporis of Pius XII (1943). ‘According to Pope Pius XII,’ writes Fenton, ‘only those are really to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and have not unhappily withdrawn from the Body-unity or for grave faults been excluded by legitimate authority.’ The good Msgr. made clear the meaning of Pope Pius, ‘The Holy Father makes it clear that even those who desire to enter the Church are not members until such time as they enter its visible unity.’⁷

The liberal Catholics who condemn Fr. Feeney tend to promote an idea which is heterodox, an idea which would be expected of a modern-day thinker. Fr. Congar comes to mind, who said, ‘that our separated brethren and the saved condition of the good heathen are in some way members of the Church.’ Or Otto Karrer, who states in Religions of Mankind, ‘an invisible Church of good men and women in a state of grace even outside the communion of the visible Church.’

St. Robert Bellarmine

The Roman Catechism defines Baptism as the “sacrament of regeneration by means of water in the word of life.”⁸ The Church father, St. Robert Bellarmine, the Doctor of Controversy, commented on this definition by saying that the words per aquam means an ‘external sign sanctifying through the pouring of water,’ whereas the words in verbo vitae, in the word of life, constitute the form of the sacrament, which is a particular part of the essence of the sacrament.’ Calvinism asserts that baptism is a sign of initiation by which Christians work together in the society of the Church. Bellarmine condemns this system by pointing out that the effect of the sacrament is twofold, ‘to justify and to regenerate,’ (justificare et regenerare). It was the heretic Pelagius who maintained that baptism is not necessary for the remission of original sin, but only for the attainment of heaven.⁹ Even Pelagian heretics conceded the necessity of baptism, their error is that man is able to justify himself without the assistance of divine grace. The heretic Zwingli, like Calvin, taught that baptism was not necessary for salvation, that it is nothing other than an external symbol.¹⁰ Calvin believed that children born of the faithful were saints and members of the Church, even without baptism, and should they die, they would be saved. Bellarmine opposes these errors by quoting the Council of Trent, session seven, canon 2, and the gospel of St. John 3:5. Bellarmine clearly says that the words expressed in John 3:5 do not sound a precept, but a medium (non sonant praeceptum, sed medium), as St. Augustine also affirms. Bellarmine concludes his argument by stating that all men are born carnal, and sinners, and therefore the servants of sin, and moreover, a necessary remedy (remedium) is needed against these evils. This remedy is Baptism.¹¹

He commented specifically on the words from St. John, ex aqua et Spiritu, “from water and the Spirit.” He says:

‘Because in the first place, the confession of the mouth and the faith of the heart are not referred to the same end or effect; indeed, faith of the heart is necessary for acquiring justice; confession of the mouth for salvation is not to be lost. As in Baptism, the Spirit and the water pertain to the same regeneration.’

It is clear that Bellarmine affirms the necessity of Baptism, but Msgr. Fenton makes a distinction by stating,

‘St. Robert offers catechumens and excommunicated persons as examples of those who are not of the body of the Church, but who may be of the soul. He teaches explicitly that such people are not members of the Catholic Church.’¹²

It is important to note that Msgr. Fenton departs from the theology of St. Robert on the topic of the baptismal character:

‘Obviously, St. Robert’s teaching that the character is not requisite for membership in the Church has no serious standing in current theological teaching. No man can be a member or a part of our Lord’s kingdom on earth without that God-given capacity for the Church’s Eucharistic worship which we designate as the sacramental character of baptism.’¹³

And lastly, we concluded this letter with a quote by the late Jesuit, Fr. Robert Gleason, concerning the relationship of the Holy Spirit to baptism:

‘This is the position taken by the Fathers in their insistence that the Holy Spirit is given at baptism, and that only those are just who maintain the unity with the Holy Spirit brought about by that sacrament. Baptism, which justifies man for the first time, is identified with the transmission of the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is not given and is not present to the unbaptized soul.’¹⁴

Sincerely, Bryan S”

Thus ends this long letter to a traditional priest on the subject of Baptism.

1. Who Shall Ascend. Fr James Wathen. James Wathen Traditional Catholic Foundation. 2013. Originally published in 1993. vol. 1 of 2, pg. 90.

2. Baptism in the New Testament. trans. by David Askew. Helicon Press. 1956.

3. ibid.

4. Studies in Early Christianity. Everett Ferguson. Garland Pub, New York. 1993.

5. Catena Aurea: A Commentary on the Four Gospels by St. Thomas. Saint Augustin Press. 1997. Pg. 105.

6. The Sermon-Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed. trans. Nicholas Ayo, C.S.C. Notre Dame Press. 127.

7. “Membership in the Church,” American Ecclesiastical Review, vol. 112. 1945.

8. Baptismus est sacramentum regenerationis per aquam in verbo vitae.

9. De prima quaesione fuit olim haeresis Pelagianorum, Baptismum no esse neccesarium ad remissionem peccati originalis, sed solum ad assecutionem regni coelorum, teste Augustino lib. de haeresibus cap. 69.

10. Deinde Zwinglius libro de vera, et falsa religione satis aperte negat, Baptismum esse necessarium ad salutem; quod nihil sit nisi externum symbolum.

11. Indicat enim Dominus homines nasci carnales, et peccatores, atque adeo servos peccati; et proinde necessarium esse remedium contra haec mala, quod remedium deinceps erit Baptismus.

12. “The Use of the Terms Body and Soul with Reference to the Catholic Church” Msgr. Joseph Fenton, AER, vol. 110, 1944.

13. “The Parish Census-List and Membership in the True Church” Msgr. Joseph Fenton, AER, vol. 122, 1950.

14. Grace. Rev. Robert W. Gleason, S.J. Sheed and Ward, New York. 1962. pg. 162.