The Catholic Church is Necessary for Salvation

Ecumenism consists of heretics and infidels joining the Catholic Church, NOT in meeting with some woman playing dress-up as a bishop.

From One PeterFive

By Robert Lazu Kmita, PhD

Pope Leo met with a female "Archbishop" in the Vatican. What is the central dogma at stake?

In an interesting article entitled “Baptism, salvation, and the necessity of the Church,” Dr. Larry Chapp discusses a challenging issue raised by Pope Benedict XVI in a 2015 interview (originally in Italian) recently translated and published on Catholic World Report:

There is no doubt that on this point we are faced with a profound evolution of dogma (una profonda evoluzione del dogma). While the fathers and theologians of the Middle Ages could still be of the opinion that, essentially, the whole human race had become Catholic and that paganism existed now only on the margins, the discovery of the New World at the beginning of the modern era radically changed perspectives. In the second half of the last century it has been fully affirmed the understanding that God cannot let go to perdition all the unbaptized and that even a purely natural happiness for them does not represent a real answer to the question of human existence. If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were still convinced that those who are not baptized are forever lost – and this explains their missionary commitment – in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was finally abandoned (definitivamente abbandonata)…

To say the least, these words can be scandalous for any Christian who believes in the unique salvific, soteriological mission and function of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Please note, first of all, that one can use the word “evolution” to justify any possible heresy. Second, observe that neither in the excerpt from the Supreme Pontiff’s interview, nor in Dr. Chapp’s text, is the grave error of religious indifferentism named. In fact, I cannot recall any hierarch of the Catholic Church who has mentioned in the past 25 years the danger of indifferentism and its poisonous consequences.

Likewise, a passage such as the one from the interview granted by Pope Benedict XVI to Father Jacques Servais, SJ, clearly shows what the profound motivation was behind the reaction of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in the face of the new tendencies promoted and supported both during and after the Second Vatican Council. A missionary both by vocation and through the offices he held during the pontificate of Pius XII, no one could have understood better than he the consequences of disguising the heresy of religious indifferentism under the appearance of an “evolution.”

What is most shocking, however, is the fact that Benedict XVI—like other pontiffs such as John XXIII or John Paul II—sometimes seems to fully understand the consequences of such “evolutions.” And yet, like Paul VI, who demonstrated to Archbishop Lefebvre during their famous meeting at Castel Gandolfo in 1976 that he was aware of the numerous liturgical abuses following the Council, they did nothing to repair the damage and to profess the true faith by denouncing the grave errors promoted and perpetuated during and after the Second Vatican Council. Among these, one of the most serious, with numerous consequences, is precisely the heresy of indifferentism promoted under the mask of ecumenism.

For those who are confused or hesitant, like Dr. Larry Chapp, the question they must answer is the following: is the abandonment of the biblical faith that outside the Church there is no salvation merely a dogmatic “evolution,” or a disguised heresy made to appear as such?

Heresies have always been the “parasites” of divine teachings. Therefore, we must begin with the dogma that the heresy of indifferentism accompanies like a shadow. The work of Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, shows us what the dogma is (de fide):

“Membership in the Church is necessary for all men for salvation.”

This has been constantly affirmed from the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) up to Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943), Lumen Gentium 14, the Credo of Paul VI and Dominus Iesus (2000).[1] The vast majority of the Church Fathers and Doctors believed that belonging to the Church through the reception of Holy Baptism is necessary for salvation. It is based on the words our Lord Jesus Christ spoke to Nicodemus:

“Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).

I ask rhetorically: can these words of God be interpreted in such a way as to reject and deny the soteriological exclusivity they imply? Can they, therefore, be interpreted so that the Holy Sacrament of Baptism becomes merely optional—or, if you prefer, facultative? I do not know of any saint, any Doctor of the Church, any Council, or any pope who has dared to propose any teaching that would suggest (let alone affirm) such an interpretation. There is no need to provide here dozens, hundreds, or thousands of citations; it is sufficient to return to Dr. Ott, who quotes an allocution from 1854 by Pope Pius IX:

It must be held by faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church, no one can be saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not have entered therein will perish in the flood; but, on the other hand, it is necessary to hold for certain that they who labor in ignorance of the true religion, if this ignorance is invincible, are not stained by any guilt in this matter in the eyes of God (Denzinger, 1647).[2]

From the words of Blessed Pope Pius IX, we retain the two key ideas of the dogma: first, that salvation is impossible outside the Catholic Church; second, that those who are in a state of invincible ignorance may be saved. It is clear that in the past the Church taught that no one can be saved without being baptized. Only exceptionally, it was admitted that God can save those who are invincibly ignorant. The “mutation”—as I call it—or “evolution”—as Pope Benedict XVI calls it, followed by Dr. Chapp, consists in excluding the first part of the traditional axiom, while the second part becomes, from an exception, the rule. Assisi and Abu Dhabi are concrete examples of this “mutation.”

For the hierarchs and pontiffs of the past, just as for the majority of the faithful, Holy Baptism—through which one becomes a member of the mystical body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Church—was absolutely obligatory. This was the essential motivation for which thousands of missionaries and believers were martyrized across the globe. Today, this motivation no longer exists. Pope Benedict XVI states this clearly, while Dr. Larry Chapp seeks alternative explanations—probably in order to avoid the crisis of confidence in the current ecclesiastical authority that such a mutation could cause. Yet the most significant fact is that he seems not to notice the heresy of indifferentism.

One of the most widespread versions of this heresy claims that “all religions are paths to God.” The record of such statements has already been presented in many articles and books. Of course, some have tried to “excuse” John Paul II and Francis for such statements and attitudes, while others, on the contrary, have strongly criticized both the doctrinal confusion and their practical consequences. As for me, in my capacity as an “intellectual” convert (through study and personal reading) from Eastern schismatic and heretical Christianity to the one true Church, I can tell you what the consequences were that I personally experienced in the year 2000 when I requested to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church.

First of all, no priest, no bishop invited me to make a public and ritual profession of faith. Some told me that ecumenical relations with the “Orthodox brethren” would have been compromised. Likewise, I have observed that almost no priest today has a formation that involves active militancy for the conversion of members of other (pseudo-)Christian denominations. Whereas saints such as John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, Francis de Sales, Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, and others wrote treatises and manuals in which they described various heresies and explained how they should be combated, today such things are no longer studied in seminaries—just as apologetics and mystical theology are no longer studied.

Everything has been replaced by ecumenism and dialogue. “Values” such as pluralism, dialogue, diversity, openness, and so on have become axiomatic. And the most recent popes “educate” the faithful by engaging in dialogue and meeting with women who claim to be bishops and priests.Should we be surprised, then, that most of the Catholic faithful whom I met during the courses and catecheses I held for twelveuninterrupted years asked me dozens of times: “Why did you convert? Is there any difference?” This is the concrete, naïve form of religious indifferentism.

The truth is that I became Catholic only because I strongly believe that the Church founded by Christ the Savior is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” How could it have been otherwise? What else can motivate an Eastern Christian to convert to Catholicism? Consequently, I also believe that “outside the Church (i.e., Catholic Church) there is no salvation” (extra Ecclesiamnullasalus). Can we openly and clearly still profess this “abandoned” teaching? I am curious what Father Mike Schmitz, for example, thinks about this.[3]In any case, if Dr. Chapp’s answer is negative, I ask him to tell me whether I was wrong to convert precisely because of this conviction. Unfortunately, I can no longer ask Pope Benedict XVI this question.

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[1] Even Dominus Iesus affirms that ‘Above all else, it must be firmly believed 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 (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door.”‌’

[2] Denziger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Translated by Roy J. Deferrari from the Thirtieth Edition of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum (Preserving Christian Publications, New York, 2009), p.416.

[3] He addressed this issue in a recent video titled Is Heaven ONLY for Catholics?: https://youtu.be/UMFFBrptJv0?si=xb1boTuXmui2b6_L [Accessed: 29 March 2026]. By the way, his argument is based solely on the Second Vatican Council—a fact that always makes me deeply suspicious. That is why I ought to respectfully remind him that the Church was not “invented” in 1965.