Salvation is through Jesus Christ alone and it is the Catholic Church that He founded which provides the fullness of the truth and the most certain means to be saved.
Jesus gave his authority to his Church which is his visible presence on Earth. The Catholic Church teaches all that is essential for salvation.
Through his Church, Catholics accept Jesus as their savior, repent from their sins and live as his disciples, and receive Baptism and the other sacraments. These are the terms of salvation established by God and the ordinary means of salvation.
The doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, or Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, means that anyone who willfully denies the truth taught by the Catholic Church denies Christ and therefore, cannot be saved.
Because God is merciful and wants all men to be saved, salvation is possible for indivduals who do not call themselves Catholic only because they have not been given the opportunity to learn and accept the Church’s teaching.
Salvation is available to all men through Christ:
Salvation is difficult or impossible outside the Church:
The ordinary means of salvation:
Jesus said, “Whoever listens to you listens to Me. Whoever rejects you rejects Me. And whoever rejects Me rejects the one who sent Me.” The seventy[-two] returned rejoicing, and said, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.”
Luke 10: 16-17
Salvation in the name of Jesus:
Jesus gave his authority to the Church:
This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and Baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through Baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.
Pope Paul VI, Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964
The context and circumstances of the claim:
Jesus working through his Church:
To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son’s Church. the Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. the Church is “the world reconciled.” She is that bark which “in the full sail of the Lord’s Cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world.” According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah’s ark, which alone saves from the flood.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 845
Leaving the Catholic Church is a grave matter:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Discovering the truth about Mary through art:
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