"No Salvation Outside the Church” Explained (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Mike Schmitz· Host0:00

Someone wrote to me and they said, "Hey, I heard a Catholic say that if there's someone who is not Catholic, who dies outside the Catholic Church, then no salvation. Don't bother praying for them because they are not Catholic, therefore they wouldn't be saved." Oh, wow, that is wrong on a lot of levels. That's wrong on a lot of levels. Here's where it starts. Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension Presents. It starts with a truth that gets distorted. Here's the truth. The truth is, and the Catechism even quotes this, there's no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Now, that's the truth. What does that truth mean? So let's go deeper on this one. There's no salvation outside the Catholic Church is an actual teaching of the Catholic Church. It is important for us to understand. That doesn't mean that every person has to be a card-carrying Catholic in order to go to heaven. That's not what it means. What it means is that the Church is God's plan for salvation for the world, right? That the Church is what Jesus Christ established as the kingdom of God on Earth. Obviously, there's one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, meaning that there's only one person who could bridge divinity and humanity. That's Jesus. He's both fully God and fully man, and so he's the one mediator. He's the one mediator, right? But we-- Let's keep this in mind. He's the one who does that mediation. But there's other mediations. There's the mediation of someone t-teaching about Jesus. There's someone bringing the gospel. Th-there's, there's someone preaching the gospel. Those all people are mediating. Someone who prays for you, that person is mediating. So realize there's one mediator, Jesus, is the only one who could bridge the gap between God and, and huma-humanity, and there's