Again, show us the official teaching of The Catholic Church which is The Catechism, Charlie. It's 'the reliable source'.
Magazine
No Salvation Outside the Church
Fr. Ray Ryland • 12/1/2005
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Why does the Catholic Church teach that there is “no salvation outside the Church”? Doesn’t this contradict Scripture? God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Peter proclaimed to the Sanhedrin, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Since God intends (plans, wills) that every human being should go to heaven, doesn’t the Church’s teaching greatly restrict the scope of God’s redemption? Does the Church mean—as Protestants and (I suspect) many Catholics believe—that only members of the Catholic Church can be saved?
That is what a priest in Boston, Fr. Leonard Feeney, S.J., began teaching in the 1940s. His bishop and the Vatican tried to convince him that his interpretation of the Church’s teaching was wrong. He so persisted in his error that he was finally excommunicated, but by God’s mercy, he was reconciled to the Church before he died in 1978.
In correcting Fr. Feeney in 1949, the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued a document entitled
Suprema Haec Sacra, which stated that ”
extra ecclesiam, nulla salus” (
outside the Church, no salvation) is “an infallible statement.” But, it added, “this dogma must be understood in that sense in which the Church itself understands it.”
Note that word
dogma. This teaching has been proclaimed by, among others, Pope Pelagius in 585, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1214, Pope Innocent III in 1214, Pope Boniface VIII in 1302, Pope Pius XII, Pope Paul VI, the Second Vatican Council, Pope John Paul II, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in
Dominus Iesus.
Our point is this: When the Church infallibly teaches
extra ecclesiam, nulla salus, it does not say that non-Catholics cannot be saved. In fact, it affirms the contrary. The purpose of the teaching is to tell us
how Jesus Christ makes salvation available to all human beings.
Insult me all you want, Charlie. You don't know what you are talking about.