Is The Catholic Church Still Necessary for Salvation?

Editor’s note: in light of yesterday’s news, pictured above, we publish this article from Dr. Kmita addressing the central dogma at stake.

In an interesting article entitled “Baptism, salvation, and the necessity of the Church,” Dr. Larry Chapp discusses a challenging issue raised by Pope Benedict XVI in a 2015 interview (originally in Italian) recently translated and published on Catholic World Report:

There is no doubt that on this point we are faced with a profound evolution of dogma (una profonda evoluzione del dogma). While the fathers and theologians of the Middle Ages could still be of the opinion that, essentially, the whole human race had become Catholic and that paganism existed now only on the margins, the discovery of the New World at the beginning of the modern era radically changed perspectives. In the second half of the last century it has been fully affirmed the understanding that God cannot let go to perdition all the unbaptized and that even a purely natural happiness for them does not represent a real answer to the question of human existence. If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were still convinced that those who are not baptized are forever lost – and this explains their missionary commitment – in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was finally abandoned (definitivamente abbandonata)…

Continue reading at One Peter Five

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