www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Is there salvation outside the Catholic Church? Yes and no.

Ebed Melech,

I do want to clarify something lest I give the wrong inpression about what I said. I do believe that the Orthodox are a part of the One Church of Christ but that there is an irregular standing. Fullness of Faith and Truth are found by being in communion with the Church of Rome. That is why the status of The Eastern Catholic Churches is important because they fully express this reality.
Stephanos I

Father Stephanos,

Christ is Risen!

As a Catholic Christian whose ecclesial, liturgical and theological heritage is now Antiochian Orthodoxy,
In ICXC,

Gordo

Mary,

Sorry! Let me clarify: I am now gratefully a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church whose heritage is Antiochian Orthodox. (This is also the Church of my spiritual father for the past 12 years.)

My apologies for the confusion!

In ICXC,

Gordo

Mary,
I dont't think you perceived my statement fully.
That is the point, if they are saved they are not "outside" the Church, although to the visible senses they appear to be, in reality they are not. They are saved in, with and through the Church. There are two facets to the Church at once it is visible, you can see it, experience it, know its address, and also it is invisible, its members known only to God.
So I dont see the difference.
Stephanos I

It is not possible to make a dicotomy between Christ and the Church. Where Christ is there is his body the Church. And I believe that is the point that "Domine Jesu " was making, salvation without Christ is impossible.
"And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
Acts 4:12

Oh. Darn. I have been interested in what is required, by the various Orthodox jurisdictions, of someone coming into Orthodoxy from the Catholic Church.

Some help you are!!

Mary

Sorry to disappoint, Mary!

No, I've been down that path before many years ago. I love the Orthodox Church, but do not believe that I could ever leave Catholic communion. (Not that I do not have it within me to do so, but I just believe too strongly in some of the pivotal issues like the ones mentioned above...)

God bless!

Gordo

Oh. Darn. I have been interested in what is required, by the various Orthodox jurisdictions, of someone coming into Orthodoxy from the Catholic Church.

Some help you are!!

Mary

Unam Sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII:
Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_bo08us.htm

This same "Pope" Boniface VII also has stated:

* The Christian religion is a human invention like the faith of the Jews and the Arabs;
* The dead will rise just as little as my horse which died yesterday;
* Mary, when she bore Christ, was just as little a virgin as my own mother when she gave birth to me;
* Sex and the satisfaction of natural drives is as little a sin as hand washing;
* Paradise and hell only exist on earth; the healthy, rich and happy people live in the earthly paradise, the poor and the sick are in the earthly hell;
* The world will exist forever, only we do not;
* Any religion and especially Christianity does not only contain some truth, but also many errors. The long list of Christian untruth includes trinity, the virgin birth, the godly nature of Jesus, the eucharistic transformation of bread and wine into the body of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Boniface_VIII

Vicar of Christ speaking, huh?

Alexandr

The memory of Boniface, curiously enough, has suffered most from two great poets, mouthpieces of an ultra-spiritual and impossible Catholicism, Fra Jacopone da Todi and Dante. The former was the "sublime fool" of spiritual love, author of the "Stabat Mater", and chief singer of the "Spirituals", or extreme Franciscans, kept in prison by Boniface, whom he therefore satirized in the popular and musical vernacular of the peninsula. The latter was a Ghibelline, i.e., a political antagonist of the Guelph pope, to whom, moreover, he attributed all his personal misfortunes, and whom he therefore pilloried before the bar of his own justice, but in quivering lines of immortal invective whose malignant beauty will always trouble the reader's judgment. Catholic historians like Hergenr�ther-Kirsch (4th ed., II, 597-98) praise the uprightness of the pope's motives and that courage of his convictions which almost on the eve of his death made him count as straws all earthly rulers, if only he had truth and justice on his side (op. cit., II, 597, note 4). They admit, however, the explosive violence and offensive phraseology of some of his public documents, and the occasional imprudence of his political measures; he walked in the footsteps of his immediate predecessors, but the new enemies were more fierce and logical than the extirpated Hohenstaufen, and were quicker to pervert and utilize the public opinion of young and proud nationalities. A contemporary and eyewitness, Giovanni Villani, has left in his Florentine chronicle (Muratori, XIII, 348 sqq.) a portrait of Boniface which the judicious Von Reumont seems to consider quite reliable. According to it Boniface, the most clever canonist of his time, was a great-hearted and generous man and a lover of magnificence, but also arrogant, proud, and stern in manner, more feared than loved, too worldly-minded for his high office and too fond of money both for the Church and for his family. His nepotism was open. He founded the Roman house of the Gaetani, and in the process of exalting his family drew down upon himself the effective hatred of the Colonna and their strong clansmen. Gr�ne, a German Catholic historian of the popes, says of Boniface (II, 164) that while his utterances equal in importance those of Gregory VII and Innocent III, the latter were always more ready to act, Boniface to discourse; they relied on the Divine strength of their office, Boniface on the cleverness of his canonical deductions. For the process against his memory see CLEMENT V.

PROCESS OF BONIFACE VIII
Almost at once King Philip demanded from the new pope a formal condemnation of the memory of Boniface VIII; only thus could the royal hate be placated. The king wished the name of Boniface stricken from the list of popes as a heretic, his bones disinterred, burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds. This odious and disgraceful step Clement sought to avert, partly by delay, partly by new favours to the king; he renewed the absolution granted the king by Benedict XI, created nine French cardinals out of a group of ten, restored to the Colonna cardinals their places in the Sacred College, and accorded the king titles of church property for five years. Finally, he withdrew the Bull "Clericis Laicos", though not the earlier legislation on which it was based, and declared that the doctrinal Bull "Unam Sanctam" affected in no disadvantageous manner the meritorious French king, and implied for him and his kingdom no greater degree of subjection to the papal see than formerly existed. The pope was also helpful to Charles of Valois, the king's brother, and pretender to the imperial throne of Constantinople, by granting him a two years' tithe of church revenues; Clement hoped that a crusade operating from a reconquered Constantinople would be successful. In May, 1307, at Poitiers, where peace was made between England and France, Philip again insisted on a canonical process for condemnation of the memory of Boniface VIII, as a heretic, a blasphemer, an immoral priest, etc. Eventually, the pope made answer that so grave a matter could not be settled outside of a general council, and the king for a while seemed satisfied with this solution. Nevertheless, he returned frequently and urgently to his proposition. It was in vain that the pope exhibited a willingness to sacrifice the Templars (see below); the merciless king, sure of his power, pressed for the opening of this unique trial, unheard of since the time of Pope Formosus. Clement had to yield, and designated 2 February, 1309, as the date, and Avignon as the place for the trial of his dead predecessor on the shameful charges so long colported about Europe by the Colonna cardinals and their faction. In the document (citation) that called (13 September, 1309) for the witnesses, Clement expressed his personal conviction of the innocence of Boniface, at the same time his resolution to satisfy the king. Though the pope had soon (2 February, 1310) to protest against a false interpretation of his own words, the process was really begun in a consistory of 16 March, 1310, at Avignon. Much delay followed, on one side and the other, apropos chiefly of methods of procedure. Early in 1311, witnesses were examined outside of Avignon, in France, and in Italy, but by French commissaries and mostly on the above-mentioned charges of the Colonna (see BONIFACE VIII). Finally, in February, 1311, the king wrote to Clement abandoning the process to the future council (of Vienne) or to the pope's own action, and promising to cause the withdrawal of the charges; at the same time he protested that his intentions had been pure. One price of these welcome concessions was a formal declaration by Pope Clement (27 April, 1311) of the king's innocence and that of his friends; these representatives of France, the "Israel of the New Alliance", had acted, said the pope, in good faith and with a pure zeal, nor should they fear in the future any canonical detriment from the events of Anagni. William Nogaret was excepted, but on his protestation of innocence, and at the intercession of Philip, a penance was imposed on him and he too received absolution. Only those who detained ecclesiastical property were finally excluded from pardon. The religious zeal of Philip was again acknowledged; all papal acts detrimental to him and his kingdom since November, 1302, were rescinded; the erasures are yet visible in the "Regesta" of Boniface VIII, in the Vatican Archives (see Tosti, "Storia di Bonifazio VIII", Rome, 1886, II, 343-44). This painful situation was closed for Clement V by the Council of Vienne (16 October, 1311), most of whose members were personally favourable to Boniface. It is not certain that the council took up formally the question of the guilt or innocence of Boniface. In their present shape the official Acts of the council are silent, nor do all contemporary writers mention it as a fact. It is true that Giovanni Villani describes Philip and his counsellors as urgent for the condemnation of Boniface by the council, but, he says, the memory of the pope was formally purged from all adverse charges by three cardinals and several jurists; moreover, three Catalonian knights offered to defend with their swords the good name of the Gaetani pope against all comers, whereupon the king yielded, and demanded only that he be declared guiltless of any responsibility for the turn affairs had taken. With the death of his personal enemies, opposition to Boniface diminished, and his legitimacy was no longer denied even in France (Balan, "Il processo di Bonifazio VIII", Rome, 1881).