Dear Friends and Benefactors,

Throughout the history of the Church there have been assaults on various points of doctrine. But none of these have been as devastating and wide spread as those attacking the Church today. What a contrast there is between those, who insist on spreading the false notions of Ecumenism and Religious Liberty, and St. Peter, who taught that those who are outside the true Church of Jesus Christ stand in need of being saved by leaving their own erroneous positions and entering the one and only Ark of salvation.

Our Faith teaches us that the process of salvation, in the strict and proper sense, is that by which a man is removed from the condition of spiritual death (i.e., of original or mortal sin) and transferred to the condition in which he enjoys the supernatural life of God (i.e., sanctifying grace). This process is brought to completion when a man attains the ultimate and unending perfection of this life of grace in the possession of the Beatific Vision, where he is forever exempt from the danger of losing it. For every individual who has come or ever will come into this world in the state of original sin, the forgiveness of original or mortal sin is an integral and absolutely necessary part of the process of salvation.

This transfer from the state of original or mortal sin into the state of sanctifying grace we call justification. And since the sin of Adam, justification for any human being cannot take place apart from the force of Our Lord’s redemptive sacrifice. Justification is possible only in Our Lord Christ Jesus. And the Catholic Church, in the divinely inspired epistles of St. Paul, is represented precisely, though metaphorically, as "the body of Christ." To be "in Christ Jesus," then is to be "within" the Mystical Body of Christ, Our Lord’s one and only true Church or Kingdom. And, just as justification and glorification are absolutely impossible other than "in Christ Jesus," they are likewise absolutely impossible "outside" the Catholic Church. Thus the only possible way for us to have our sins forgiven is to come into contact with Our Lord and with His salvific power in the one and only social unit which has been divinely constituted as His Mystical body.

The Council of Trent tells us that this means being within His Church as a member or at least by a sincere, even though perhaps only implicit, desire or intention. "This translation (to the state of grace), after the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be effected except through the laver of regeneration or a desire for it…"(Dz 796). The man not in contact with Our Lord cannot have the remission of sin and he cannot have the effects that follow upon that remission of sin.

Furthermore no one can be "within " the Church even by implicit desire or intention in such a way as to attain the life of grace in it unless he has a true supernatural faith and unless he loves God and his neighbor with the genuine and supernatural affection of divine charity. There can be no substitute for the actual possession of faith, hope and charity as requisites for the attainment of the life of heaven. A man could not be saved if he were to merely desire to have faith and charity at the moment he passed from this life. He must actually posses genuine supernatural faith and the true and supernatural love of charity at the moment of death.

These elements of faith, hope and charity, also called the inward or spiritual bonds, are the necessary elements uniting those who belong to the supernatural kingdom of God on earth with one another. Without these there could be no social unit identifiable as the true Church of Jesus Christ.

In addition to this inward bond there is another which is often designated as the outward or bodily bond of unity within the true Church. This outward bond consists in the baptismal profession of the faith, access to or communion in the sacraments, and subjection to the legitimate authorities of the Church. This second bond is made necessary because of God’s free choice.

During its various Old Testament stages, God’s kingdom on earth did not contain the factors which compose the outward bond of ecclesiastical unity in the Church militant of the New Testament. But in establishing His supernatural kingdom of the New Testament as a visible and fully organized society, He has freely decreed that these outward bonds should belong to the composition of this kingdom in its final status in this world and that there is no other social unit which can in any way be called His kingdom or His Church. Thus He formed His kingdom, the Catholic Church, in such a way that membership in it depended entirely on the possession of that outward bond of ecclesiastical unity.

Because these factors for membership belong to the true Church by reason of God’s free choice, and are not by their nature part of the supernatural life in the way that sanctifying grace and charity are, God in His goodness and mercy allows that such realities as the Church itself and the sacraments of baptism and penance can, under certain circumstances, bring about the effects which they are meant to produce as means necessary for the attainment of eternal salvation when a man possesses them only in the sense that he desires or intends to have or to use them.

Among these circumstances is the genuine impossibility of receiving the sacraments of baptism or of penance or of entering the Church as a member. If it is possible for a man to be baptized or to go to confession and receive sacramental absolution, or really to become a member, he will not attain to eternal salvation unless he actually avails himself of these means. But when the employment of these means is really impossible, that man can attain to eternal life by an effective desire to employ them.

If a man has this sincere and effective supernatural desire he will realize that the good he seeks can only be given by God. His expression of that desire to God in the form of a petition is the act of worship we call prayer and this prayer is infallibly efficacious when certain conditions are met according to Our Lord’s own promise, "Whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive; and they shall come to you" (Mk, 11:24). To fulfill the conditions, prayer must be said for one’s self and must seek eternal salvation or something necessary for its attainment. It must also be enlightened by true divine faith and motivated by the theological act of hope and supernatural love of benevolence for God. Finally, it must be persevering, thus expressing the genuine desire of the person.

If a person who is praying in this way should die before he can become an "actual" member of the Church, while loving God and his neighbor with the love of charity and accepting God’s supernatural revelation with the certain assent of faith, then by the very force of his prayer, he will die as one contained "within" the Church by will or desire and leave this world "within" the true Church of Christ on earth and remain in the Church Triumphant for all eternity.

That one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing. However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance, God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wants his will to be conformed to the Will of God. These things are clearly taught in the dogmatic letter which was issued by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, on June 29, 1943 (Mystici Corporis)…he mentions those who are related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer ‘by a certain unconscious yearning and desire,’ and these he by no means excludes from eternal salvation; but on the other hand, he states that they are in a condition ‘in which they cannot be sure of their salvation’ since ‘they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church!’ With these words he reproves both those who exclude from salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally as well in every religion (Letter from the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, August 8, 1949).

During this month of November let me remind you once again to continue praying for the souls who have died within the Church and presently reside in Purgatory. Through our prayers we can help them to obtain relief from the fires of purgatory and thus enter into the eternal happiness of Heaven where they will join all the saints in praising and glorifying God forever and ever.