Mysterium Fidei
Well-known member
No, that is not the teaching of the Church. If one receives a valid baptized as an infant, they are baptized into the Catholic Church and are members of the Church, although not visible members.Not quite.
I believe that anyone who is validly baptized is in the Church of Christ. If they are not Catholic, then, then are not in perfect union with the Church, but they are in union with it.
However, after they reach the age of reason and adhere to the heresies of the sect they are part of, they cease being members of the Catholic Church and are assumed to be members of whatever non-Catholic sect they belong to.
Have you ever read Lumen Gentium? It refers to non-Catholic sects as "churches." The new ecclesiology is a heresy and a contradiction of the traditional ecclesiology of the Catholic Church.I believe that Protestant sects are not churches in the strict sense, but rather, ecclesial communities.
The Church of Christ subsists in but is larger than the visible boundaries of the RCC.
There is but one Church of Christ, and it is the Roman Catholic Church. It is the one true Church outside of which there is no salvation. They are members of the Roman Catholic Church who are validly baptized, and who have not been alienated from it by (a) the sin of heresy, (2) the sin of schism, (3) the censure of excommunication. Those who are validly baptized in non-Catholic sects are presumed by Church law to participate in and assent to the sins of heresy and or schism of their respective sects.
The Roman Catholic Church is absolutely and exclusively identified with the Mystical Body of Christ. They are one and the same thing. There is no distinction to make. The Mystical Body is the Roman Catholic Church considered as a comparison to Christ’s physical body, where He is the Head and we the members.
Absolute requirements for belonging to the Roman Catholic Church and the Mystical Body of Christ are (1) that one professes all the truths which are taught by the Church as pertaining to faith, and (2) that one be submitted to the Roman Pontiff as the visible head of the Church. If either of these conditions is failing, one cannot be a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
If schismatic and non-Catholic churches who do not accept the papacy, the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist, on the sacraments, on confession of sins, on the dogma of purgatory, who reject all the Marion dogmas and the intercession of the saints, who reject the Catholic priesthood, the indefectibility of the Church and the infallibility of the Church, but still are all part of this big tent Church of Christ, along with the Catholic Church and these sects are a "means of salvation", what to you regard as a "false ecumenism"?
Please explain what you consider "false ecumenism"?
Is it telling non-Catholics that Catholicism is vastly superior to and the most excellent path to Christ, which is exactly what "Bp." Barron told the Jew, Ben Shaprio? Again, it's like arguing of what flavor of ice cream is best.
There is no such thing as being in "partial communion" with the Catholic Church, there is no such thing as a "partial" Catholic. What you believe is heresy that has been condemned many times by past popes.I have never asserted that Protestant ecclesial sects are just as good as being Catholic. I have never asserted that the Church of Christ subsists in Protestant ecclesial communities. I have never asserted that Protestant ecclesial sects are equal to Catholicism.
Catholicism is vastly superior to and the most excellent path to Christ.
Pius IX Letter Jam vos omnes, September 13, 1868, to Protestants and other non-Catholics; "Now, anyone who wishes to examine with care and to meditate on the condition of the different religious societies divided among themselves and separated from the Catholic Church will easily be convinced that no one of these societies nor all of them together in any way constitute or are that one Catholic Church which Our Lord founded and established and which He willed to create. Nor is it possible, either, to say that these societies are either a member or part of this same Church, since they are visibly separated from Catholic unity."