This past January 17 was the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. For that occasion, the members of our houses here in Richmond, New Hampshire, were in Still River, Massachusetts for a gathering that started at Saint Ann’s House and then moved to Saint Benedict Abbey next door, where a delightful evening of feasting and fellowship was bookended by the offices of Vespers and Compline. Down the road a bit, the double community also known as Saint Benedict Center, whose houses are under the leadership of Brother Thomas Augustine and Sister Katherine Maria respectively, had their own gathering. The next evening, that community’s Brother Matthew gave an excellent talk on Father Feeney and the Story of Saint Benedict Center that was recorded and made available on YouTube.
In light of this recent landmark, here are some reflections on the grace of a vocation to the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These considerations do not concern our Marian consecration, something integral but not unique to our congregation; they concern the important doctrinal issue to which we are so very committed: extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
The Blessed Trinity, who has revealed to us that the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation, is the God of wisdom, concerning which, Holy Scripture says that, “She reacheth therefore from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly” (Wisdom 8:1). Since this is the case, the revealed dogma we are considering — this irreformable doctrine of the one, true religion — must make an awful lot of sense, to put the case in somewhat child-like terms. It must fit in perfectly with the harmonious whole that is divine revelation.
It is my contention that when one not only accepts this dogma without reservation — as one is obliged to accept all the teachings of Holy Mother Church — but also meditates on it and on other sacred and profane realities in light of it, one is, as it were, armed against the errors of the day (many of which concern the nature of the Church herself) and is given powerful incentives to do good for the glory of God and the salvation of souls in our troubled times. Moreover, this dogma, rightly understood and appreciated, stands as the foundation of a broad supernatural outlook that helps to put all other realities in bold relief. Along with the doctrines concerning Our Lady, the Holy Mass, Purgatory, the Papacy, and other teachings that set Catholics off sharply from everyone else, this teaching is not a matter of embarrassment or grudging admission, but an important truth that forms the basis of deeply rooted apostolic action.
What follows are seven points which this doctrine helps to put in bolder relief.
What salvation is. Contrary to Marxist “liberation theology,” salvation is no mere temporal liberation from oppression. (Oppression itself — while it and other injustices should be vigorously combated — can occasion our living out the eighth Beatitude.) Contrary to the gnostics, ancient and new, salvation is not something achieved by the arcane practices of a secret religion known only to elite initiates. Salvation, while it necessarily begins in this life by faith, hope, and charity, participation in the sacraments, and perseverance in sanctifying grace, it is not complete until the next.
Salvation is a free gift bestowed upon us by a beneficent Father, who uses His chosen means — in short, the Incarnational economy, which includes the Mystical Body of Christ — in order to save men. It is not something we merit on our own, and it is not something to which we are entitled when we are born into this world as children of wrath. Only those who receive Jesus by grace are given the power to be made the sons and daughters of God, “…born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).
Salvation is “the one thing necessary” (Luke 10:42), and it cannot be taken for granted. A life that terminates in beatitude is a successful life. A life that does not end in the Beatific Vision is a life wasted.
Which brings us to the fact that salvation is a Heavenly beatitude, not a Mormon or Muslim pleasure palace. It is the direct, supernatural intuition of the divine Essence Itself — the very vision of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
That salvation has requirements, that it cannot be taken for granted, and that it can be lost and remain a potency never put into act — all these are truths that belief in extra ecclesiam nulla salus helps us to preserve whole and intact.
What the Church is. The Church is a divinely instituted supernatural and supranational entity that is intended for all men: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; because thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God, in thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Apoc. 9:5). It is not a club for people of a certain class, social status, or ethnicity. It is absolutely singular and unique. The same pope who infallibly defined, “Indeed we declare, say, pronounce, and define that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff,” also said in the first sentence of that great papal bull, Unam Sanctam, that, “there is one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins; her Spouse proclaiming it in the canticles, ‘My dove, my undefiled is but one, she is the choice one of her that bore her’; which represents one mystical body, of which body the head is Christ, but of Christ, God.’”
Jesus is a chaste Lover, a faithful Bridegroom to His Bride, the Church. He does not keep company with strange women — those alien sects that broke off from His Mystical Body or were never part of it. It is Saint Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephesians (5:22-33), who speaks of the Church as both Christ’s spouse and His body, which, in Baptism, He has sanctified, “cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life” (v. 26). The union of man and woman in holy Matrimony is a reflection of this greater of union of Christ and the Church. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Catholic Church remains alone in defending the indissolubility of Matrimony. Those who divorced Christ are all for divorce.
The three solemn definitions of extra ecclesiam nulla salus assure us, if only implicitly, that there is indeed an “inside” and an “outside” to this supernatural organism, no matter how much the Modernists care to abuse language in order to render Christ’s body into an amorphous blob whose borders are as porous as the one separating Tijuana from San Diego.
The Church is missionary by her very nature, but the collective amnesia regarding extra ecclesiam nulla salus has all but destroyed the missions in recent decades. While charity — both as love of God and love of neighbor — is the highest motive to evangelize, that greatest theological virtue (of which more later) is founded on the firm basis of faith. What greater incentive can there be to the mission ad gentes than that article of faith which tells us that the Church is necessary for salvation? Hence the burning zeal of Saint Francis Xavier as expressed in his “Prayer for Unbelievers” found in the Novena of Grace.
Ecumenism is a disaster. We owe a debt of gratitude to Abbé Claude Barthe for pointing out that ecumenism, the tail that wags the dog of modern ecclesiastical life, is something never officially defined, and never given a specific scope. When will the Church return to the sanity given her by Pope Pius XI, who condemned the ecumenism of the World Council of Churches and forbade Catholics to participate in it? I will tell you when — as soon as we return to the motive that pontiff gave for condemning it in Mortalium Animos: “If anyone does not enter it [the Catholic Church], or if anyone departs from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation.” Hence Pope Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti cut through all the nonsense of ecumenism with a single sentence: “The unity of Christians cannot be otherwise obtained than by securing the return of the separated to the one true Church of Christ from which they once unhappily withdrew.” (See Pope Pius XI on False Ecumenism and No Salvation outside the Church.)
The great Marian Franciscan apostle, Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, put the case against ecumenism even more bluntly: “There is no greater enemy of the Immaculata and her Knighthood than today’s ecumenism, which every Knight must not only fight against, but also neutralize through diametrically opposed action and ultimately destroy.”
What about the Liturgy? If we have a clear supernatural perspective on the nature of the Church, we see the patent absurdity of “reforms” — or deformations — of our Holy Mass, Divine Office, Sacramental Rites, and other sacred ceremonies in order to appease non-Catholic sectarians. So much of the liturgical wreckage committed after Vatican II was done in the name of ecumenism. Moreover, if liturgical reforms done to please non-Catholics are incompatible with a profession of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, the complementarity works the other way round; liturgical tradition protects the integrity of the Faith. (To see this illustrated, go to The Contradiction of Core and scroll down to the heading, “the law of believing.”)
Divine Providence. According to Blessed Severinus Boethius, who is quoted by Saint Thomas in the Summa Theologiae, “Providence is the divine plan itself, seated in the Supreme Ruler, which disposes all things.” According to Saint John Damascene, providence is “the will of God by which all things are ruled according to right reason.” Providence is primarily and in a more restricted sense the plan that exists in the Divine Intellect by which creation will achieve its end, namely, His glory. Secondarily, and in a looser sense, Providence is God’s actual implementation of that plan. This secondary sense is more properly called God’s “governance” of creation. (Read more here.)
Those who accept extra ecclesiam nulla salus simply as children also believe in God’s particular Providence for all of His elect, in keeping with the principle laid down by Saint Thomas Aquinas: “For it pertains to Divine Providence to furnish everyone with what is necessary for salvation, provided that on his part there is no hindrance.” How God Almighty chooses to exercise His omnipotence in “difficult cases” is not ours to say. Some place must be left to mystery in the economy of salvation! That said, there are many accounts from Holy Scripture and the lives of the saints that reveal to us God’s extraordinary providential interventions to bring faith and Baptism to His elect.
In short, the flip side of the coin of believing firmly in the necessity of the Church is a deep trust in God to keep His promises and bring the requirements of salvation to those who will avail themselves of them. Such trust ought to penetrate every facet of our lives.
True Charity. The theological virtue of charity is “the greatest of these” (1 Cor.13:13). The first and greatest commandment is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind” (Matt. 22:37). As regards our neighbor, we are to love him as we love ourselves (Matt. 22:39). We are to love our neighbor for the love of God, or, rather, we love God in him. As Saint Thomas put it, “Now the love of one’s neighbor is not meritorious, except by reason of his being loved for God’s sake.” Loving our neighbor efficaciously means not only having affection for him but also willing his true good, which is why we call it “love of benevolence.” Our neighbor’s true good is secured by his knowing, loving, and serving God. If we truly love our neighbor, we will desire that he obtain his greatest good — that of everlasting life. As we do not really will the end unless we will the means to that end, true charity must also include the desire that our neighbor enter Catholic unity in order to obtain salvation.
The Social Kingship of Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not only the King of our hearts but also the king of all societies — from the home to the smallest hamlet to the largest empire. This is the doctrine of Christ the King, or the social Kingship of Christ. What has this to do with extra ecclesiam nulla salus, and why would one who clearly sees the importance of the latter also treasure the former? The connection is that of the body to the soul. If the Church is the soul of human society, the State is its body. This reality we call Christendom. It existed once and will again. It is within societies, not merely as atomized individuals, that we men work out our salvation. The temporal order of things ought to be sanctified for God’s glory first, but also for the salvation of men. A society in which Christ Jesus is recognized as King by the people and their government is a society in which saving one’s soul is more likely because the work of the Church is not hindered but facilitated by laws and customs.
To be sure, other teachings of the Church will be put into greater relief when one both accepts and meditates on this one particular teaching. The above catalog is by no means complete, but it is adequate for my present purposes.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary have been given the grace to witness to the Church’s irreformable doctrine on her own necessity for salvation. And for this we are grateful, even if it does not help us to win ecclesiastical popularity contests. We make no inflated or arrogant claim of being the saviors of the Church. We are simply living out our baptismal vocation and adding to the commandments that bind all Christians the counsels of the consecrated life — the vows of religion. With that modest status in mind, we strive both to fulfill the obligation and to avail ourselves of the right explicitly stated in the Code of Canon Law:
Can. 225 §1 Since lay people, like all Christ’s faithful, are deputed to the apostolate by baptism and confirmation, they are bound by the general obligation and they have the right, whether as individuals or in associations, to strive so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all people throughout the world. This obligation is all the more insistent in circumstances in which only through them are people able to hear the Gospel and to know Christ.
We do not pretend to speak as official representatives of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the ecclesia docens (teaching Church). In that sense, we cannot “represent the Church” — nor do we pretend to do so. But we can and do speak as members of the ecclesia discens (the learning Church) of which we are indisputably a part. As I have just shown, the Church concedes to such Christians the general obligation and the right to make known and accepted “the divine message of salvation” — which message certainly includes where precisely salvation may be found!
