“Jesus Christ said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ and the Church teaches that there is only salvation in Christ,” Fr. Murray said during an appearance on the Thursday episode of EWTN’s The World Over with host Raymond Arroyo.
Fr. Murray pointed to Pope John Paul II’s Declaration Dominus Jesus as an expression of the definitive teaching of the Church, quoting the former pope’s statement, “ … it is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions … ”
Francis’ remarks in Singapore, on the other hand, are giving the “impression to people who aren’t Christian” that “you don’t need to convert in order to be following the path that God gave to the world,” Fr. Murray noted to Arroyo.
He stressed that Catholics understand that other religions “are not revealed by God” or are they “willed” by Him. Therefore, we cannot tell people of other affiliations to keep practicing their own erroneous religion.
“No, Christ said (to0 go out and preach the Gospel and baptize all nations,” Fr. Murray said.
“To say that God wills that other people don’t follow Christianity is in fact contradictory to what Christ himself said,” he pointed out.
Later in the interview, he recommended that Francis “hash out” the truth of Christ and His Church’s teaching in a “theological discussion” with people like Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, and Cardinal Raymond Burke.
“Because the impression given to people is that Catholicism is not serious anymore about converting everybody, but in fact that’s the central mission,” Fr. Murray said.
This teaching of “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus” (no salvation outside the Church), has been increasingly rejected by modernizing activists in recent years, yet remains valid and unchanging in the Church’s teaching.
Pope Leo XII pronounced it clearly in his 1824 encyclical letter Ubi Primum:
It is impossible for the most true God, who is Truth Itself, the best, the wisest Provider, and the Rewarder of good men, to approve all sects who profess false teachings which are often inconsistent with one another and contradictory, and to confer eternal rewards on their members. For we have a surer word of the prophet, and in writing to you We speak wisdom among the perfect; not the wisdom of this world but the wisdom of God in a mystery.
By it we are taught, and by divine faith we hold one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and that no other name under heaven is given to men except the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth in which we must be saved. This is why we profess that there is no salvation outside the Church.
The Catholic Church notes that it is possible for those remaining outside the Church “through no grave fault of their own” and who are somehow unaware that the Church is the true Church to still be saved “by making use of the graces which God gives them.”
However, salvation in these cases of “invincible ignorance” is not found through other churches but is through the Catholic Church as the channel of grace, as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas.