It Didn't Go Out With Vatican II

by Mark P. Shea

My pal Dave is a convert like me. When he first began looking at the Church, he often asked questions of confident, relaxed, and well-meaning lay Catholics who gave him the same answer.

"How about those doily thingamabobs on women's heads?" he'd ask.

"Oh, that went out with Vatican II," they'd reply.

"Latin?"

"Oh, that went out with Vatican II."

"The Immaculate Conception?"

"Oh, that went out with Vatican II."

"The doctrine of the Trinity?"

"Oh, that went out with Vatican II."

Now even Dave, as little as he knew about Catholicism, was reasonably sure that the doctrine of the Trinity had not gone out with Vatican II." To find out what was really going on he was going to have to look further than hearsay from Catholics catechized by Fr. Groovy and Sr. Issues.

Many of us have been in a similar position. It-Went-Out-with-Vatican-II disease causes many Catholics to talk as though the Church before the Council was a completely different animal than the Church after the Council and not, as is the case, a divinely guided continuation of the same Church.

Funny thing is, both arch-conservative dissenters and arch-liberal dissenters from the Catholic Church talk this way. For the arch-traditionalist dissenter, the post-conciliar Church is bad because it is no longer the Catholic Church, and the goal is to climb into a Wayback Machine and return to some Golden Age. For the arch-liberal, the post-conciliar Church is supposedly NewChurch or WomynChurch or AmChurch or McChurch — a faboo new Church having nothing whatever to do with that old "pre-Vatican II Church."

It is only on the somewhat minor matter of whether the old or new Church is good that conservative and liberal dissenters disagree. On the central question of whether there are two Churches, pre- and post-Vatican II, they are in happy agreement. How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity!

But if you ask the Church itself, you get a different answer. It goes on insisting that there is one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

"Well, yes," say our progressive and traditionalist dissenting friends in unison. "They have to say that for propaganda purposes. But the fact remains it's really two different Churches before and after the Council. Because before the Council the Church taught extra ecclesiam nulla salus or 'outside the Church there is no salvation.' But Vatican II taught that Protestants and other non-Catholics — heck, even non-Christians — could be saved. That's a total reversal and it's wonderful / terrible!" (Here the progressive and traditionalist dissenters fall on each other shouting, "It's wonderful!" "It's terrible!" and roll away in the dust.)

Leaving our friends to work out their differences in this productive manner, we need to stop and think about this notion, since it is so common. Did the Church reverse itself at Vatican II and declare that outside the Church there is salvation? Did the Church before Vatican II teach that only Catholics could be saved?

The answer to this riddle is to be found in an ancient and arcane Catholic book: the New Testament. In that book we find two sayings that have to be held as true and cannot be explained away.

The first is a saying by Jesus of Nazareth that reflects rather remarkably the "pre-Vatican II" teaching that outside the Church there is no salvation. For Jesus tells us, "He who is not with me is against me" (Matt. 12:30) in a manner that is more reminiscent of George W. Bush talking to states that sponsor terrorism than of a Rogerian counselor affirming us in our okayness. It's exactly the sort of sentiment that makes the arch-progressive dissenter squirm and complain about the exclusiveness of the pre-Vatican II Church. And yet there it is on the lips of Christ himself.

Worse yet, there it is still on the lips of the post-Vatican II Church in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 846 of which tells us (in a large, bold-type heading no less) "'Outside the Church there is no salvation.'

"How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the head through the Church which is his body."

The Catechism goes on to quote from the great Vatican II document Lumen Gentium: "'Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: The one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it' (LG 14; cf. Mark 16:16, John 3:5)."

How about that — the Church still teaches dogmatically! It says that "outside the Church there is no salvation." And it does so for the simple reason stated by Jesus: "He who is not with me is against me."

"So you say," grumbles the disgruntled arch-traditionalist dissenter. "But the Vatican II Church offers with the right hand only to take away with the left. For it immediately turns around in the very next paragraph of the Catechism to write, 'This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience — those too may achieve eternal salvation" (LG 16).

"'Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men' [CCC 847-848]. This," says the arch-traditionalist dissenter, "leaves the door wide open for the indifferentist notion that everybody from everywhere is going to be saved whether he is a member of the Church or not."

That's a serious charge and would be a serious argument that the Second Vatican Council was wrong — if it were true. The problem is, neither the Catechism nor Lumen Gentium teaches that "everybody from everywhere is going to be saved whether he is a member of the Church or not." On the contrary, the Church teaches that anybody from anywhere, if he is saved, will indeed find (perhaps to his surprise) that he is, in fact, in some form of union with the Catholic Church.

The Church teaches this because of another passage in Scripture: "John said to him, 'Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us"' (Mark 9:38-40).

John assumes precisely what our arch-traditionalist dissenter assumes: If you are not in visible union with the Church — if you are not "following us" (by which he means "following the apostolic college") — then you can't possibly be under the influence of Jesus Christ. But Jesus corrects him: "He that is not against us is for us."

This saying is the complement to the first saying we considered, "He who is not with me is against me." It makes the commonsense point that there is no salvation outside the Church, yet some folks are linked with the Church in ways they didn't realize — as if they're in the same building but hanging mostly out the window.

Jesus re-emphasizes this point in the parable of the sheep and the goats, which deals specifically with the judgment of "the nations." The strong suggestion of the parable is that those under judgment, both goats and sheep, are people who have no idea that in their acts of obedience and disobedience to conscience they were in fact responding to Jesus Christ: "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?"' (Matt. 25:37-39).

The saved sheep speak as non-Christians, as people who thought only that they were doing the right thing and had no idea that they were, in fact, acting by the secret grace of the Holy Spirit.

It is because of this that the Church has always insisted on the necessity of being in union with the Church while it simultaneously refused to make any ultimate judgment about who is unlinked to the Church. In other words, the Church has never declared any "anti-saints" who are certainly in hell to parallel its definite declarations about saints who are in heaven.

In heaven there is sufficient light to see who's there. But at the mysterious periphery of the communion of saints, it's difficult to see what God is up to, so the Church doesn't presume to judge. It simply bears in mind the tradition summed up in the Catechism's paragraph 1257: "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments."

Mark P. Shea is a popular writer and lecturer. His latest book, Making Senses Out of Scripture, is available from Catholic Answers. He writes from Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

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