The purpose of this article is not to show that Carmelite saints believed in the dogma outside the Church there is no salvation in the same sense that Father Leonard Feeney believed it. That would be too easy, and this website already contains a plethora of quotes from saints from all the major orders demonstrating a belief in the strict necessity of Church membership.
Rather, the purpose of this article is to focus on a wise insight from a holy Carmelite priest which illustrates why, out of all the dogmas being undermined by the modernists, the one Father Feeney courageously emphasized is, in the practical order, the most important to defend if we want to see a restoration of holiness in the Church.
The great Carmelite author of Divine Intimacy, Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen, identified the apostolic ideal to convert souls as one of the principal generators of holiness. Father Gabriel’s elaboration as to why the apostolic ideal is so foundational to holiness is very easy to follow, but also worthy of serious meditation in that the teachings contained therein provide the solution to the root evils behind the current crisis. Father Gabriel writes:
The interior life is the vital principle, the force, and the flame of the apostolate, but on the other hand, the apostolate brings its contribution to the interior life, helping to make it more generous and intense. When a soul is fired with zeal for the apostolic life, its very desire to win other souls for God impels it to devote itself with greater generosity to prayer, mortification, and the practice of the virtues, with the intention of making itself more capable of a fruitful apostolate.
Thus, while the interior life is the soul of the apostolate, the apostolate in its turn is a very powerful mainspring urging the soul on to union with God, to perfection, to sanctity. The apostolic ideal is of its very nature a generator of spiritual energy and a spur to a generous, holy life.1
Father Gabriel then uses Saint Teresa of Avila as a concrete example of how apostolic zeal spurred her to sanctity. Her holy reform, after all, was born out of her zeal to save souls that were being lost as a result of the Protestant heresy.
The apostolic concern for the salvation of souls leads Catholics to pray and sacrifice more – it is, as Father Gabriel wrote, “a generator of spiritual energy and a spur to a generous, holy life.” How many Communions have been offered, Masses said, novenas and rosaries prayed, sacrifices made, all out of the apostolic ideal to participate in the work of the conversion and salvation of souls? How many of these beautiful things are neglected wherever the apostolic ideal is not present?
If the apostolic ideal is one of the principal generators of holiness, we can see how anything which undermines it must necessarily lead to a decline in holiness. This is why Father Feeney was absolutely correct to emphasize extra ecclesiam nulla salus in our era. The modernist weakening of this one dogma has done more to destroy the apostolic ideal than anything else. And with the destruction of the apostolic ideal we are all witnessing the concomitant destruction of holiness. Most Catholics no longer believe that there is a need to convert our neighbors, and we consequently are missing out on one of the biggest incentives to work on converting ourselves. What Father Gabriel wrote about the apostolic ideal impelling the Catholic to, “devote itself with greater generosity to prayer, mortification, and the practice of the virtues, with the intention of making itself more capable of a fruitful apostolate,” no longer resonates with modern Catholics who have allowed themselves to be robbed of any desire to have a supernatural apostolate.
Father Feeney’s statement in his foreword to the 1974 reprint of Bread of Life is just as true today as it was then: “The sad situation of the Faith in America and in the whole world is breaking the hearts of true Catholics. The gates of hell have all but prevailed against the Church. It is because Catholics have let go of the Church’s doctrine on salvation that all else is being taken away from us. This is what is causing the sickness of the world.”
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1. Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen, O.C.D. Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Every Day of the Liturgical Year. Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, 1996, pp. 971-973.
Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.
