Aren’t We All Going to Heaven? - Reviewing Deadly Indifference by Eric Sammons
Nine out of ten Catholics would probably answer yes to the question. “Aren’t We All Going to Heaven?” And the reason is clear. Theologians and obedient hierarchs have carefully been constructing a Big Tent Catholicism for over six decades, which pins salvation upon mere ‘sincerity’ or the self-realized person. The whole conceit of the ‘Spirit-of Vatican-II’ dreams were spun out this controlling lie. Lives and treasure depended upon propagating this novum. This tale of ‘easy redemption’ swept away millennia of carefully defined doctrine like a mighty tidal wave. Bonhoeffer contemptuously called this fraud ‘easy grace,’ showing that even a Protestant spotted deceit when he saw it. But when unchecked in the Church, it eventually creating a mythology that has fashioned the spanking-new ‘Spirit-of Vatican-II-Church’ in which we dwell. Truth to be told, outré and common theologians alike, and most of the Catholic intellectual class, constructed one of the most byzantine houses of cards in the Church’s history.
A suffering church has been waiting for respite from this long and persistent ruse, and it has come. Mr. Eric Sammons has written Deadly Indifference, a learned, yet accessible, book which finally furnishes chapter and verse to this half-century-old theological subterfuge. To use Karl Jasper’s descriptive term, Mr. Sammons book will be seen by history as axial: unique moments which close one part of history and begin another. A similar term might be pivotal. Therefore, it threatens the regnant theological paradigm of almost three-quarters of a century. Like the fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, it compels Catholics to see that the new soteriological clothes since 1965 are no clothes at all. It has been, to use a colloquialism, the grandest theological con game of the past century.
Be forewarned, this book is not meant for the faint of heart, or those wedded to the status quo. Strong stomachs are called for. Mr. Sammons brings Catholics back to the immemorial and unchanging teaching of the Catholic Church. And that might be too bracing for weaker souls. Mr. Sammons’ theological reasoning is executed with the meticulous care of a seasoned theologian. It is like a surgeon’s scalpel, carefully excising the cancerous growth, while leaving surrounding vital nerves intact. No mean task. The critical teaching at issue is extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church, there is no salvation).
In the past fifty years certain theologians have weakened that teaching quite cleverly by nesting it among truths, half-truths, and disguised error. Deadly Indifference’s adroit navigation of this complexity is done with admirable care and unusual exactitude, disentangling fraud from truth. His theological virtuosity makes this book axial. It also delivers the coup de grace to towering lies that have been the mother’s milk of Catholics universally for decades upon decades. The result being the attenuation of their Faith, the flattening of their zeal, and the literal loss of their supernatural identity.
In the first pages of the book there is set before us the ancient teaching of the Church: extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church, there is no salvation). This theological formula is first articulated by Saint Cyprian of Carthage (c.200-258 AD). Ever since, it has been the cornerstone of Catholic doctrine, enshrined in infallible granite by Lateran Council IV (1215), “There is indeed one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved.” Then there is the adroit assemblage of all the relevant Magisterial texts supporting the teaching. The graphic clarity of the teachings might startle not a few Catholics as they are slowly nudged from their forced slumber.
May I whet your appetite?
For 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"
Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quidam (December 8, 1854).
Those who do not belong to the visible Body of the Catholic Church….
We ask every one of them to correspond to the interior movements of graced,
and to seek to withdraw from that state in which they cannot be sure of their salvation”
Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, 103.
After the citation of many more magisterial texts than these, the author concludes, “Of all the teachings of the Catholic Church, few have been taught more consistently throughout her history than extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.” Having set forth the ancient teaching, this book launches into its most impressive part. It confronts the problem of what is deftly named the Emphasis Shift. With the Second Vatican Council various theologians begin to soften the teaching of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. They never flatly deny the teaching, but they surround it with so many qualifications that it was killed by a thousand cuts. Or they played a game of legerdemain, as when they confidently cited Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium 16:
But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the creator. In the first place amongst these are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is he who gives to all men life and breath and all things, as the Savior wills that all men be saved. Those who also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them to the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny those helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with his grace strive to lead a good life.
All well and good. But the same confident theologians fail to cite the final paragraph of that passage, which dramatically changes the whole tone of giddy optimism into the more sobering classical teaching of the Church:
But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasoning’s and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator. Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, “Preach the gospel to every creature,” the Church fosters the missions with care and attention.
When speaking of extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, to be sure, the Church was not insensitive to the innocent parts of the human race who, through no fault of their own, never came to a knowledge of the Catholic Church. For them the term invincible ignorance applied. Over the centuries, the Church has refined this teaching so that it reached a doctrinal clarity and perfection. Essentially it was twinned with Trent’s teaching on the kinds of Baptism – water, blood, and desire. Baptism of water is self-evident on its face. Baptism of blood, applying to those who die for the Faith, though not having received Baptism. However, Baptism of desire was the form that required the lion’s share of the Church’s doctrinal illumination. It applied to those who, never hearing of Christ or His True Church, endeavor to live according to the ‘lights’ that the good God has given them, few and poor as they might be. Those ‘lights’ would essentially be the precepts of the Natural Moral Law, joined to the belief in God, who rewards good and punishes evil (cf. Rom.: 2:5).
Clearly, in that state they are not barred from Heaven (however, if such a happy state should result, it is only through the Catholic Church). However, the Church has perennially taught that this circumstance is both precarious to salvation and begs redress whenever possible. She takes her lead from Saint Peter (I Pet. 4:18), “If the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?” Put another way, if the Catholic, with all the supernatural aids supplied by Mother Church, pursues his salvation “in fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12), what of non-Catholics? Here is the infallible truth that inspired the heroic missionary efforts of the Saints, often resulting in grisly martyrdoms. It is the stuff of such as these that has driven the driving passion of the most ordinary Catholics to “convert all nations” (Mt. 28:19). It is also the conviction that has made apostasy so dreaded a sin, indeed the one earning Our Lord’s most ominous condemnation, the “sin against the Holy Spirit” (cf. Mk. 4:12; Lk. 12:10).
Here is where Deadly Indifference shines. While the theologians dared not deny this infallible truth, they subtly weakened it with impermissible expansions, resulting in a rump residue, a mere shadow of the former teaching’s grandeur. The consequences were catastrophic. Where the Church made the qualifications to Baptism of desire all but improbable, the Emphasis Shift makes them normative. This Shift is more tragic than its abstraction would suggest. It eventually devolved into the general Catholic conviction that the sincere good life is sufficient for salvation. No surprise, therefore, that most contemporary Catholics react to the forceful expression of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus as though seeing footage of Auschwitz’s crematoria. When the full-throated millennial doctrine is properly proclaimed it appears to ordinary pew-sitting Catholics as alien as a piece of Ku Klux Klan propaganda. Mr. Sammons expertly details the fallout from this seemingly benign Emphasis Shift with empirical scrupulosity and theological grace. Suffice it to say that this oft-thought anodyne shift has set its tentacles around every aspect of Catholic life with deadly effect. Even orthodox bishops find themselves shying away from the explicit expression of the teaching, with some even embracing an Origenist ἀποκατάστασις (apocatastasis). Deadly Indifference chronicles some of the more egregious examples. This article will leave you to that in the quiet of your study.
No, not everyone is going to heaven. That is not an insouciant judgment, but the Holy Spirit speaking through the teaching of the Church. Unless it is once more proclaimed boldly and fearlessly, even more will lose the chance of
salvation. Our Savior did not die on the Cross so that the ‘well-meaning' could gain heaven. He died so that every man would have the opportunity to hail the Blood He shed on the Cross. That Precious Blood is only touched through His Holy Catholic Church.
Belittle that staggering mystery, and salvation simply disappears.
Father John A. Perricone is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Francis College (Brooklyn, NY). He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University (Bronx, New York).
Numerous talks by Father Perricone can be found on our website www.KeepTheFaith.org. Father Perricone offers the Tridentine Mass each Sunday at 9:00 am at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Jersey City.
(Article was originally published in The Latin Mass Magazine: Aren’t We All Going to Heaven? - Reviewing Deadly Indifference by Eric Sammons, Fall 2021)
[ Image Credit: Christ in Heaven (probably by Fra Angelico) ]
