📖The Way, the Truth, and the Life in the Mystical Body
The exclusivity of Christ for salvation is inseparable from the exclusivity of His Church. For, just as salvation and the remission of sins cannot be obtained outside of Christ, neither can they be found outside the society which is His Body and His Spouse (Fenton, 1958, p. 20-21). The Church is not an accidental or merely convenient organization; it is the continuation of Christ's presence and salvific work in the world. Therefore, the statement that no one comes to the Father except through Christ is theologically equivalent to stating that no one attains eternal salvation if, at the moment of death, he is "outside" the Catholic Church. It is a perfectly well known Catholic dogma that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church (Fenton, 1958, p. 58).
⚓The Radical Incompatibility between Light and Darkness
The apostolic warning about the impossibility of union between justice and iniquity, or between Christ and Belial, directly refutes the pernicious notion of religious indifferentism. This error holds that the way of eternal salvation can be found in any religion, an opinion described as "impious and deadly" by the Church's magisterium (Fenton, 1958, p. 43). Non-Catholic religions are not alternative paths or incomplete participations of the same truth; they are, objectively, systems of error from which souls must be rescued. There is no possible "community" between the fullness of revealed truth, guarded by the Catholic Church, and the doctrines that oppose it. Any attempt to explain the Church's necessity for salvation by claiming that it is only the "ordinary" means, or by imagining that it is requisite only for those who are aware of its dignity and position, is completely false and unacceptable (Fenton, 1958, p. 12). The necessity of the Church is absolute.
❤️Authentic Charity and the Duty to Separate from Error
The prohibition against receiving or greeting those who "do not bring this doctrine" is not a precept of hostility but a logical consequence of authentic charity. True charity toward one's neighbor consists in desiring and working for his supreme good: eternal salvation. Given that salvation can only be achieved within the Church, the work of Catholic charity is lamentably incomplete unless every reasonable effort has been made to persuade non-Catholics to enter this society (Fenton, 1958, p. 59). To participate in the "evil works" of false teachers is to cooperate with the perdition of souls, offering them a false security outside the one Ark of Salvation. The work of Catholic charity, therefore, is definitely not complete unless every effort has been expended to free men from the errors that keep them from the eternal possession of God (Fenton, 1958, p. 59). Separation from doctrinal error is thus a safeguard for the faithful and an act of mercy toward those outside, as it refuses to confirm them in their state of spiritual peril. Ultimately, the revealed truths about the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of eternal salvation belong to the order of the great supernatural mysteries, along with the doctrine about grace, the Redemption, and the Blessed Trinity (Fenton, 1958, p. x). To neglect them or reduce them to an empty formula is to betray the Gospel itself.
References
Fenton, Joseph Clifford. The Catholic Church and salvation: in the light of recent pronouncements by the Holy See. Westminster: The Newman Press, 1958.