Ratzinger on Salvation Outside the Church

Here is an excerpt from a sermon that Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, gave in 1964. It contains a number of interesting points, and leads in well into our next topic. I have commented on various parts of it; my comments are in blue.

"...Everything we believe about God, and everything we know about man, prevents us from accepting that beyond the limits of the Church there is no more salvation, that up to the time of Christ all men were subject to the fate of eternal damnation. [Ratzinger references the idea, held by some extremists, that all men before the coming of Christ were damned. This position was raised as an objection against the claims of the early Christians that Christ was necessary for salvation. The majority of the fathers hold that men before Christ were able to be saved by following the natural law on their hearts.] We are no longer ready and able to think that our neighbor, who is a decent and respectable man and in many ways better than we are, should be eternally damned simply because he is not a Catholic. We are no longer ready, no longer willing, to think that eternal corruption should be inflicted on people in Asia, in Africa, or wherever it may be, merely on account of their not having "Catholic" marked in their passport. [This echoes the statement of Pius IX, that God will not allow a man to suffer eternal fire who has not committed a deliberate sin, i.e., a man will not be damned merely for not being a Catholic.]

Actually, a great deal of thought had been devoted in theology, both before and after Ignatius, to the question of how people, without even knowing it, in some way belonged to the Church and to Christ and could thus be saved nevertheless. And still today, a great deal of perspicacity is used in such reflections.

Yet if we are honest, we will have to admit that this is not our problem at all. The question we have to face is not that of whether other people can be saved and how. We are convinced that God is able to do this with or without our theories, with or without our perspicacity, and that we do not need to help him do it with our cogitations. The question that really troubles us is not in the least concerned with whether and how God manages to save others. [Ratzinger makes the point, well taken, that all our cogitating about whether God saves unbelievers, and how, is irrelevant to the action of God in saving those who do not know the Church. All our deliberating does not affect how God deals with the man who is ignorant of the Gospel. Why then do we even bother to deliberate? Because while our knowledge of the question does not affect God's action as such, nevertheless the manner in which we evangelize, and the kind of things we can say to another is determined by the truth of this question. For example, it would be wrong to tell a Protestant, "unless you join the Church before you die, you will be damned." Aside from the likelihood of turning him away from conversion by such a statement, the statement in its plain signification is false. Namely, because such a statement would be taken to mean, "unless you come to the realization that Protestantism if false and have a positive will to join the Catholic Church, you will be damned." This statement is false, and it would be an offense against truth to say it. Thus, we must choose a statement which accords with the truth of the matter, while at the same time being most suited to conversion. The greater our knowledge on the question of "extra ecclesiam nulla salus", the better we can interact with others, particularly in missionary work.]

The question that torments us is, much rather, that of why it is still actually necessary for us to carry out the whole ministry of the Christian faith—why, if there are so many other ways to heaven and to salvation, should it still be demanded of us that we bear, day by day, the whole burden of ecclesiastical dogma and ecclesiastical ethics? And with that, we are once more confronted, though from a different approach, with the same question we raised yesterday in conversation with God and with which we parted: What actually is the Christian reality, the real substance of Christianity that goes beyond mere moralism? What is that special thing in Christianity that not only justifies but compels us to be and live as Christians? [Ratzinger enunciates the basic question which follows naturally upon the conclusion that people can indeed be saved outside the visible boundaries of the Church. Why be Catholic? Why do we have to bear the load of laws and dogma, if someone who lacks both of these can be saved? And of course, then we must ask, why must we evangelize? Why not just encourage everyone to live out their own religion well? This is the next question that I intend to take up.]

It became clear enough to us, yesterday, that there is no answer to this that will resolve every contradiction into incontrovertible, unambivalent truth with scientific clarity. Assent to the hiddenness of God is an essential part of the movement of the spirit that we call "faith." And one more preliminary consideration is requisite. If we are raising the question of the basis and meaning of our life as Christians, as it emerged for us just now, then this can easily conceal a sidelong glance at what we suppose to be the easier and more comfortable life of other people, who will "also" get to heaven. We are too much like the workers taken on in the first hour whom the Lord talks about in his parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20:1-6). When they realized that the day's wage of one denarius could be much more easily earned, they could no longer see why they had sweated all day. [Why do we have to struggle with all the laws and rules that go along with being a Catholic (i.e., work all day in the vineyard), when someone else can earn salvation without these? (i.e., work only the last hour)] Yet how could they really have been certain that it was so much more comfortable to be out of work than to work? [i.e., merely to consider the question under the light of: both I and he obtain eternal salvation is misleading. Perhaps there is a real benefit in the working all day, as opposed to one hour.] How And why was it that they were happy with their wages only on the condition that other people were worse off than they were? But the parable is not there on account of those workers at that time; it is there for our sake. For in our raising questions about the "why" of Christianity, we are doing just what those workers did. We are assuming that spiritual "unemployment"—a life without faith or prayer—is more pleasant than spiritual service. Yet how do we know that?

We are staring at the trials of everyday Christianity and forgetting on that account that faith is not just a burden that weighs us down; it is at the same time a light that brings us counsel, gives us a path to follow, and gives us meaning. We are seeing in the Church only the exterior order that limits our freedom and thereby overlooking the fact that she is our spiritual home, which shields us, keeps us safe in life and in death. We are seeing only our own burden and forgetting that other people also have burdens, even if we know nothing of them. [All these things will have to be expanded upon, but this is a good summary of the principles involved in the value of being Catholic] And above all, what a strange attitude that actually is, when we no longer find Christian service worthwhile if the denarius of salvation may be obtained even without it! It seems as if we want to be rewarded, not just with our own salvation, but most especially with other people's damnation—just like the workers hired in the first hour. [This should make one think: someone who wants to divide all those who are saved and not-saved into those who are visibly in the Church, and those who are not, are implicitly at the same time making God into the master of the vineyard who only gives the denarius of salvation to those who worked the full day.] That is very human, but the Lord's parable is particularly meant to make us quite aware of how profoundly un-Christian it is at the same time. Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because that kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God." [Ratzinger has raised the fundamental questions, and answered them in principle. I will expand on these points later, in the light of magisterial documents on evangelization and the need for the Church]