the great apostasy

[Contrition]

Are big changes coming to the Catholic Church? Pope Francis finally wraps up anticipated document on controversial family issues

“The Holy Father has, at last, finalized his "one-and-a-half years in the making" Apostolic Post-Synod Exhortation. The highly anticipated educational document on the family's role in the church, to be published in the upcoming days, is expected to cause some major waves.”

http://www.catholic.org/news/hf/fait...y.php?id=68147

[mort]

Originally Posted by Ron Conte

I thought we might talk a little about the great apostasy in my eschatology.

I believe that Pope Francis will initiate the great apostasy by teaching truths that are contrary to the views of many conservative Catholics:

1. the Church has the authority to ordain women (solely) to the deaconate

2. non-Catholic Christians, non-Christian believers, and non-believers can be saved without converting

Number 2 is impossible as there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. This is the constant and perennial teaching of our holy religion. Our Lord even said He is the only way to the Father, and His Church is His Mystical Body. Those who die outside of the Church are left to the mercy of God, a positive assertion of their salvation would be beyond the Magisterium's scope of competence and pastorally dangerous. If anything emphasis on becoming members in our Lord's Church needs to be done than suggesting an "alternative path" to our Lord.

[mort]

Furthermore, Ron seems to be supporting an ultramontane view of the Papacy. The Pope is not an absolute monarch. He can not create doctrines as Vatican I states, rather he is the preserver and guardian of the deposit of faith our Lord left. He is bound to sacred tradition and previously established dogmatta.

[Ron Conte]

Originally Posted by mort

Number 2 is impossible as there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. This is the constant and perennial teaching of our holy religion. Our Lord even said He is the only way to the Father, and His Church is His Mystical Body. Those who die outside of the Church are left to the mercy of God, a positive assertion of their salvation would be beyond the Magisterium's scope of competence and pastorally dangerous. If anything emphasis on becoming members in our Lord's Church needs to be done than suggesting an "alternative path" to our Lord.

You have misunderstood what the Church teaches on salvation. The Magisterium has taught that a baptism of desire can be implicit, and that a person can be a member of the Church, implicitly, without explicit conversion to Christianity and formal baptism.

JP2: "It is a mysterious relationship. It is mysterious for those who receive the grace, because they do not know the Church and sometimes even outwardly reject her. It is also mysterious in itself, because it is linked to the saving mystery of grace, which includes an essential reference to the Church the Savior founded."

JP2: "The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church. Since salvation is offered to all, it must be made concretely available to all."

Pope Pius IX: "There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments."