No Salvation Outside
the Catholic Church

"Outside the Church there is no salvation" is a dogma of the Catholic Faith that was taught By Jesus Christ to His Apostles, preached by the Fathers, defined by popes and councils and piously believed by the faithful in every age of the Church. Today you will hear heretics state, "everyone goes to heaven" or "all religions are the same". This is heresy! The Catholic Church has always defended this vital doctrine. As a matter of fact the Church defined this pinnacle dogma on three occasions.

"There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved." (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.)

"We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff." (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.)

"The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church." (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.)

Even Pope John Paul II has defended the doctrine of "No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church" on many occasions here are three examples.

"As a sacrament of intimate union with God, the Church is in Christ, outside whom there is no salvation." Pope John Paul II

"The mystery of salvation is revealed to us and is continued and accomplished in the Church, and from this genuine and single source, like 'humble, useful, precious and chaste' water it reaches the whole world. Dear young people and members of the Faithful, like Brother Francis we have to be conscious of and absorb this fundamental and revealed truth contained in the phrase consecrated by tradition: there is no salvation outside the Church. From Her alone there flows surely and fully the life giving force destined in Christ and in His Spirit, to renew the whole of humanity, and therefore directing every human being to become a part of the Mystical Body of Christ." Pope John Paul II

"We are the guardians of something given, and given to the Church universal; something which is not the result of reflection, however competent, on cultural and social questions of the day, and is not merely the best path among many, but the one and only path to salvation." Pope John Paul II