Friday, August 19, 2016

BonifaceVIII: There Is No Church of Christ Outside of the Catholic Church

There Is No Church of Christ
Outside of the Catholic Church

traditioninaction

We have already transcribed many texts of Popes from the 19th and 20th centuries that forbid ecumenism. To show the unity that exists in the papal teachings against ecumenism through the centuries, nothing is more opportune than to quote the Bull Unam Sanctam by Pope Boniface VIII issued on November 18, 1302.

In it, he is categorical in affirming that no one outside of the Catholic Church can attain eternal salvation. He is also unequivocal in identifying the Catholic Church with the Church of Christ, putting to rest the conciliar sophism that the Church of Christ supposedly is larger than the Catholic Church and also encompasses some false religions.

Pope Boniface VIII
Urged by Faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her, there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles proclaims: ‘One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,’ and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God. In her, then, is one Lord, one Faith, one baptism.

There was at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, and this ark …. had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed. We venerate this Church as one, the Lord having said by the mouth of the prophet: ‘Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword and my only one from the hand of the dog.’ He has prayed for His soul, that is for Himself, heart and body; and this body is the Church. This is the tunic of the Lord, the seamless tunic, which was not rent.

(Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam,
in Giorgio Pallieri - Giulio Vismara, Acta Pontificia Juris Gentium,
Milan: Società Editrice Vita e Pensiero, 1946, p. 8, n. 27)