Post by homeschooldad on Feb 18, 2024 14:46:24 GMT
www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3447
Another dense read, but much food for thought here. As Mr Akin well notes, many Protestant fundamentalists also believe in extra ecclesiam nulla salus just as strenuously as "Feeneyites" do, they just define "the Church" differently.
But at the end of the day, after you've stripped away all of the "absolute" and "normative" hair-splitting, the only way we can be totally, infallibly sure that anyone is saved, is if they are a visible member of the Catholic Church, subject to the Roman Pontiff (this does not exclude resisting a pontiff who is destroying the Church or endangering souls by malfeasance of his office), in the state of grace at the moment of death. Anything less than this is just pious hope and wishful thinking. As I always say, I'm not Feeneyite, I'm "Feeney-lite".
None of this vitiates the need for all of us, by our missionary activity in daily life, as our personal charisms and circumstances allow --- one reason I don't do podcasts is because I'm told my speaking voice is extremely annoying (thank God for online forums such as this one!) --- to reach as many people as we can with the truth of the Catholic Faith. When my mother was gravely ill and required caregivers both in hospital and in the home, I freely shared the Faith with anyone I could, giving a copy of Life In Christ (the 1950s edition) to the hospice chaplain (who was utterly clueless about Catholicism), inviting them to come and check out the TLM, in short, finding fertile ground and sowing it. (I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but one of my mother's therapists was Filipino, and was very interested to know about the TLM, which, mirabile dictu, some Filipinos attend at our diocesan church where the TLM is offered every Sunday.)
I once knew Jimmy Akin in passing, through correspondence and telephone, and promised to send him a pack of Norse Gold pipe tobacco after I discovered that we were both pipe aficionados, a promise which almost 30 years later, I have yet to make good on. I'd better get cracking.
Another dense read, but much food for thought here. As Mr Akin well notes, many Protestant fundamentalists also believe in extra ecclesiam nulla salus just as strenuously as "Feeneyites" do, they just define "the Church" differently.
But at the end of the day, after you've stripped away all of the "absolute" and "normative" hair-splitting, the only way we can be totally, infallibly sure that anyone is saved, is if they are a visible member of the Catholic Church, subject to the Roman Pontiff (this does not exclude resisting a pontiff who is destroying the Church or endangering souls by malfeasance of his office), in the state of grace at the moment of death. Anything less than this is just pious hope and wishful thinking. As I always say, I'm not Feeneyite, I'm "Feeney-lite".
None of this vitiates the need for all of us, by our missionary activity in daily life, as our personal charisms and circumstances allow --- one reason I don't do podcasts is because I'm told my speaking voice is extremely annoying (thank God for online forums such as this one!) --- to reach as many people as we can with the truth of the Catholic Faith. When my mother was gravely ill and required caregivers both in hospital and in the home, I freely shared the Faith with anyone I could, giving a copy of Life In Christ (the 1950s edition) to the hospice chaplain (who was utterly clueless about Catholicism), inviting them to come and check out the TLM, in short, finding fertile ground and sowing it. (I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but one of my mother's therapists was Filipino, and was very interested to know about the TLM, which, mirabile dictu, some Filipinos attend at our diocesan church where the TLM is offered every Sunday.)
I once knew Jimmy Akin in passing, through correspondence and telephone, and promised to send him a pack of Norse Gold pipe tobacco after I discovered that we were both pipe aficionados, a promise which almost 30 years later, I have yet to make good on. I'd better get cracking.