WHY WILL NOT A FALSE CHURCH SAVE YOU?
This is a most important question since the Roman Catholic Church has dogmatically declared that outside the Church there is no salvation. We will attempt to answer that question in a clear and concise manner in order that the reader may understand. First off, it should be noted that in order to find the truth we look to the Church because St. Paul says the truth rests on the Church, “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” 1 Tim. 3:15. I did not understand this passage for a long time but I finally came to realize that St. Paul is giving us a figure of a building resting on the ground, the foundation, and the pillars, the supports, and this is what holds the building up. The ground and the pillars, and St. Paul said the Church is the ground and pillar of the truth. If we take the Church away, the truth falls, which is what Martin Luther did. Now you have thousands of different denominations, not agreeing on what the true faith is. So if we really want to know God’s truth, we must look to the Church which God, namely Jesus Christ, established, and that is the Roman Catholic Church. It was the first Apostles who actually named the Church, according to Venerable Mary of Agreda, from THE MYSTICAL CITY OF GOD, which has the approval of many popes. When we look up the Apostle’s Creed, we see that they said, “I believe in the holy Catholic Church.” Having established this fact, now let us answer the question of so many, “Why is the Roman Catholic Church the true one?”
First off, we will use the Scripture to confirm what the Church has always taught us, that Jesus Christ established the Roman Catholic Church. In the early Church, they did not have the Scriptures of the New Testament to show the true Church because the Gospels and letters came to us one by one. Our Lord confirmed the new teaching of the Apostles and disciples by backing up what they were saying with miracles. “But they going forth preached everywhere: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.” St. Mark 16:20. These signs were the miracles. Now let us proceed to St. Matthew 16:18: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Here Jesus establishes St. Peter as the rock upon which He will build His Church, but let us look at the last part, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church.” This passage tells us that Christ’s Church will exist in all centuries from 33 A.D. until the end of the world. His Church must be able to be traced in every century all the way back to 33 A.D. How do we do that? We look at the unbroken succession of the Popes. With our modern technology, you can search List of Popes, and it brings up all the Popes from St. Peter to the present. (https://ucatholic.com/resources/list-of-the-popes-of-the-catholic-church/ or short URL: https://tinyurl.com/dk7sdxy5).
For example, here are the first ten: 1. St. Peter (33-67)
2. St. Linus (67-76)
3. St. Anacletus (Cletus) (76-88)
4. St. Clement I (88-97)
5. St. Evaristus (97-105)
6. St. Alexander I (105-115)
7. St. Sixtus I (115-125) Also called Xystus I
8. St. Telesphorus (125-136)
9. St. Hyginus (136-140)
10. St. Pius I (140-155)…. And here are the last five:
262. John XXIII (1958-63)
263. Paul VI (1963-78)
264. John Paul I (1978)
265. John Paul II (1978-2005)
266. Benedict XVI (2005-2013)
If you are an American and someone asked you how long your country has been a free country, you could answer, “Since 1776 when we declared our independence and elected our first president, George Washington.” And they asked you, “How can you prove that?” and you showed them a list of all the presidents from 1776 to the present, Donald J. Trump. So the list of popes proves our existence all the way back to the time of Christ. No other church which claims to be Christian can do that. None! If it doesn’t go back to 33 A.D., then you are in the wrong church! This is not to say you are a bad person but to point out to you the true Church. Cornelius was a good and God-fearing man, pleasing to God. But God sent an angel to him to tell him to send for Peter who would instruct him with words “whereby he should be saved.” Straight from the angel’s mouth, and the angel was sent by God.
“And there was a certain man in Caesarea, named Cornelius, a centurion of that which is called the Italian band; A religious man, and fearing God with all his house, giving much alms to the people, and always praying to God. This man saw in a vision manifestly, about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in unto him, and saying to him: Cornelius, And he, beholding him, being seized with fear, said: What is it, Lord? And he said to him: Thy prayers and thy alms are ascended for a memorial in the sight of God. And now send men to Joppe, and call hither one Simon, who is surnamed Peter…” Acts Of Apostles 10; and St. Peter explains to them (chapter 11), how the angel told Cornelius that St. Peter would speak to him, “words, whereby he would be saved,” using future tense. “And he told us how he had seen an angel in his house, standing, and saying to him: Send to Joppe, and call hither Simon, who is surnamed Peter, Who shall speak to thee words, whereby thou shalt be saved, and all thy house.” In other words, Cornelius was a very good man, but he was still not in the way of salvation. He had to enter this new religion and Church preached by the Apostles, principally St. Peter.
The HANDBOOK OF DENOMINATIONS also agrees with what I am telling you. It is not a Catholic book but it documents some of the major churches in existence in history. This is what it states about the Catholic Church: “Across the first 1,000 years of Christendom the principal Church was the Roman Catholic, for the first 1500 years. Up to the time of the Protestant reformation, the Western world was almost solidly Roman Catholic.” – 4th Edition. Frank Mead.
As Father Arnold Damen stated in his talk on the true Church, “Religion must come from God.” God, namely, Jesus Christ, established His own Church as the way to salvation, and no man has the authority to set up his own church, yet thousands have had the audacity to do so. Since Christ is the head of His Church, and the Church is His body, and we who are joined to it are members, then St. Augustine rightly said, “Whatever can be said of Christ can also be said of His Church.” If Jesus Christ is the way to heaven, “I am the way…” then His Church must also be the way and no other. Because Jesus gave His Church His mission and His authority, “As the Father hath sent me, so I also send you.” And as St. Francis de Sales, pointed out, He whom the Father said to hear, “This is my beloved Son. Hear ye him,” (St. Matthew 17), also said to hear His Church, “And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican.” St. Matthew 18:17. Do you realize what Jesus is saying here? The heathen and the publican (public sinner), cannot be saved unless they repent and convert, Jesus Christ, theologians inform us, is putting us in a class with them if we refuse to hear the Church and that this is a threat of damnation if we will not hear the Church. Apostate Catholics who have left the Church and no longer hear it, and protestants who refuse to come in and follow the Church are in this class. Martin Luther, an apostate priest who broke his vow of chastity and celibacy and married a nun, who also broke her vow of chastity, became the first protestant who decided he knew better than Christ’s Church and went out and started the Lutherans. Sister Maria Serafina Micheli (1849-1911), had a terrible vision of Luther in hell. You can find it here: https://motherofgodlibrary.org/2019/06/05/. Jesus wasn’t joking when he said, “And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican.” Luther has now been in hell almost 500 years! You can find Fr. Arnold Damen’s talks on the true Church and THE CHURCH OR THE BIBLE here: https://www.olrl.org/apologetics/one_church.shtml or, olrl.org and click on, For Protestants. Protestants who read this will be shocked to see he gives irrefutable arguments that the Bible is not our guide to heaven. Do not take my word for it. Read it for yourself.
I will give one more reason why the true Church is necessary, from the Holy Bible, and I have not even begun to quote the infallible dogmatic pronouncements of the Popes. St. Luke said in the Acts of the Apostles 2:47, that those who were such as should be saved were “added to the Church.” “And the Lord increased daily together (to the church), such as should be saved.” Why do we need to be added to this body of Christians? Because the Church is a body of which Christ is the head, Ephesians chapter 1; and this is what St. Augustine had to say a thousand years before Martin Luther came along. “It happens sometimes that one will lose a finger, a hand, or a foot. As long as the member was united to the body it had life. Cut off from the body, it dies. So too the Christian Catholic. As long as he is united to Christ’s body the Church, he has life, cut off he dies. Grieve for the Catholic who is cut off from the Church.” This is why St. Paul says of those united to the Church, “He is the Saviour of His body.” Ephesians 5:30.
Now let us look at two stories which bear this truth out. We must be members of the true Church for salvation. If we worship in false churches, no matter how good the sermons are, or the music, we are violating the first commandment which forbids false worship. A false church is like a bad roadmap that has the wrong directions in it. It will not get you to your destination.
Cyriacus the holy old hermit and Theophanes the heretic: There dwelt on the sacred river Jordan a certain old man, Cyriacus by name, of great merit before God. To him came a stranger named Theophanes, to ask advice concerning temptations against purity. The old man began to encourage him with talk about temperance and chastity. Greatly edified and strengthened, he said to the old man, “Truly, my father, if it were not that in my own country, I communicate with the Nestorians, I would remain with you.” Now when the aged man heard the name, “Nestorians,” distressed for the ruin of a brother, he began to rebuke him, and entreated him to withdraw from that most evil and baneful heresy, and to seek admission into the holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, telling him at the same time that there is no other hope of salvation. “But, my father and master,” said the brother, “Surely this is what all heretics say; that, ‘Unless you communicate with us, you will not be saved.’ Miserable that I am, I do not know what to do! Therefore beseech the Lord to make me know for certain which is the true faith!” The old man was full of joy, and said to him, “Come. Sit in the cave with me, and have complete hope in God, for His goodness will discover to you the true faith.” Then, leaving the brother in the cave, Cyriacus went forth to the Dead Sea to pray to God for him. Now about the ninth hour the following day, the brother saw someone standing before him of terrible appearance, who said, “Come and see the truth.” And, taking him, he led him to a darksome and fetid place where there burned fire and flames; and, in these flames he saw Nestorius, Eutyches, and certain others. And he who had appeared to him said, “This place is prepared for heretics and for those who follow their teachings. If this place pleases you, then continue in your present doctrine; but if you do not want to undergo this punishment, join yourself to the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which that old man is teaching you do. For I tell you that, although a man should practice all virtues, and yet not believe rightly, he will have to suffer in this place.” At these words, the brother regained consciousness, and told Cyriacus, on his return, all that he had seen. And then he joined the Holy Catholic Church.
“For I tell you that, although a man should practice all virtues, and yet not believe rightly, he will have to suffer in this place,” his guide told him. Our religion consists in two things, faith and morals, and they both have to be good, like two tires on a bike, to get you where you’re going. Morals are how we live, and faith is what we believe. A Catholic who dies with bad morals will condemn himself to hell, such as adultery for example, even though he believe rightly. A non-Catholic who practices good morals but believes wrongly will condemn himself to hell. One who denies the teachings of Jesus Christ makes Him a liar. Even though he has good morals, He will not save his soul if he refuses to embrace the truth. “He that believeth not the Son, maketh him a liar.” 1 St. John 5:10.
You see, heretics deny certain doctrines revealed by God. For example, Protestants deny Jesus Real bodily presence in the Holy Eucharist, (symbolic they say), even though Jesus said it was ‘’living bread,” come down from heaven, St. John 6:41,51. Heretics make Jesus Christ a liar, 1 John 5:10; and St. John said those who believe not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him, St. John 3:36. St. Augustine says that heresies are only embraced by those who had they persevered in the faith, would be lost by the irregularity of their lives (St. Aug. de Va. Rel. c. 8.). How true. Two heretics I am familiar with were both irregular in their morals and both lost the faith.
“Heresy has been called a canker: “It spreadeth like a cancer” (II. Tim. ii, 17); for as a cancer infects the whole body, so heresy infects the whole soul, the mind, the heart, the intellect, and the will. It is also called a plague, for it not only infects the person contaminated with it, but those who associate with him, and the fact is, that the spread of this plague in the world has injured the Church more than idolatry, and this good mother has suffered more from her own children than from her enemies. A heretic is one who “chooses”. His Choice is his own “opinion” as opposed to the constant teaching of the Church which which Christ has given us as the infallible guide of Salvation. This was why St. Paul says a heretic is condemned “by his own judgement.” Titus 3:10-11. “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing that he, that is such a one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment.”
JESUS’ TERRIBLE CONDEMNATION OF HERETICS: To Mother Marianna: “A thousand times cursed be those heretics and their followers, who place in doubt these mysteries concerning myself and my mother. Let them be cursed, and let their eternal abode be the center of the earth, together with the father of lies, Lucifer and his henchmen. Inside the fire, created by the divine ire for the rebellious angels, and the men who follow them, severing themselves from the truth, and leaving the Catholic Church.”
St. Augustine wisely considers a heretic to be worse than a Murderer because a person who kills the body ultimately can have no power to harm the soul but a heretic unlike the former draws his victim to eternal perdition. What is Heresy? As was said above, “Heresy consists in a stubborn denial of truths which have been defined and proposed by the Church as divinely revealed doctrines.” (Canon 1324-1325 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law).
What does the Church say regarding our actions toward heretics? “Those who support heretics come under the condemnation of the IV Lateran Council which declared that “Those who give credence to the teachings of heretics, as well as those who receive, defend, or patronize them, are excommunicated.” The 1917 Code of Canon Law affirms that Catholics have a duty to reject error and heresy and all that works against the faith in the following words: Canon 1325.1 – “The faithful are bound to profess their faith openly whenever under the circumstances silence, evasion, or their manner of acting would otherwise implicitly amount to a denial of the faith, or would involve contempt of religion, an offense to God, or scandal to the neighbor.” “Silence construes consent,” as St. Thomas More told his audience at his trial, not opposition. St. Francis de Sales on this point tells us that “It is our duty to denounce as strongly as we can heretical and schismatic sects and their leaders. It is an act of charity to cry out against the wolf when he is among the sheep, wherever he is.” – Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 29. “If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you.” 2 John 1:10. “But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or a server of idols, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat.” 1 Corinthians 5:11.
St. Jerome says that the very fact of the heretics forming a Church apart from the Roman Church, is a proof, of itself, that they are followers of error, and disciples of the devil, described by the Apostle, as “giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils” (I. Tim iv. 1). The Lutherans and Calvinists say, just as the Donatists did before them, that the Catholic Church preserved the true faith down to a certain period – some say to the third, some to the fourth, some to the fifth century – but that after that the true doctrine was corrupted, and the spouse of Christ became an adulteress. This supposition, however, refutes itself; for, granting that them Roman Catholic Church was the Church first founded by Christ, it could never fail, for our Lord himself promised that the gates of hell never should prevail against it: “I say unto you that you are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). It being certain, then, that the Roman Catholic Church was the true one, as Gerard, one of the first ministers of Luther, admits (Gerard de Eccles. cap. 11, sec. 6) it to have been for the first five hundred years, and to have preserved the Apostolic doctrine during that period, it follows that it must always have remained so, for the spouse of Christ as St. Cyprian says, “could never become an adulteress.”
In the history of the foundation of the Society of Jesus in the kingdom of Naples, we read the following account of a young Scotch nobleman, named William Elphinstone. He was related to King James, and lived for some time in the heresy in which he was born. Enlightened by divine grace, he began to perceive his errors. Having gone to France, with the help of a good Jesuit Father, who was also a Scotchman, and still more by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, he at last discovered the truth, abjured his heresy, and became a Catholic. From France he went to Rome, and there a friend, finding him one day weeping and in great affliction, inquired the cause of his grief. He answered that during the night his mother, who was lost, appeared to him and said, “It is well for thee, son, that thou hast entered the true Church; for as I died in heresy, I am lost.” From that moment, he redoubled his devotions towards Mary, choosing her for his only Mother, and by her he was inspired with the thought of embracing the religious state, and he bound himself to do so by a vow. Being in delicate health, he went to Naples for a change of air, and there it was the will of God that he should die, and die as a religious; for shortly after his arrival, finding himself at the last extremity, by his prayers and tears he moved the Superiors to accept him, and in the presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament, when he received it as Viaticum, he pronounced his vows, and was declared a member of the Society of Jesus. After this it was most touching to hear with what tenderness he thanked his Mother Mary for having snatched him from heresy, and led him to die in the true Church, and in the house of God, surrounded by his religious brethren. This made him exclaim: “Oh! How glorious it is to die in the midst of so many angels.” When exhorted to repose a little, “Ah!,” he replied, “this is no time for repose, now that I am at the close of my life.” Before expiring, he said to those who surrounded him, “Brothers, do you not see the angels of heaven here present to assist me?” One of the religious having heard him mutter some words , asked him what he said. He answered, that his Guardian Angel had revealed to him that he would remain but a very short time in purgatory, and that he would soon go to heaven. He then entered into a colloquy with his sweet Mother Mary, and like a child that abandons itself to rest in the arms of its mother, he exclaimed, “Mother, mother!” and sweetly expired. Shortly afterwards a devout religious learned by revelation that he was already in heaven. – THE GLORIES OF MARY, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, CHAPTER 1, Mary, Our Queen, Our Mother, page 54.
Our Lord Jesus Christ said the truth shall make you free but many people who hear the truth are still not free. The Pharisees for example and so many others. How many of them heard Our Lord speak words of truth to them and work many miracles, yet they refused to believe and be saved? “But if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works: that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”[John 10:38] “Jesus answered them: I speak to you, and you believe not: the works that I do in the name of my Father, they give testimony of me.” [John 10:25]. You see, He was saying that the miracles He performed proved what He was saying but they still refused to believe. So what is the condition for the truth to make us free? It is “continuing in his word,” he said. If we do that, the truth shall make us free. “If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:31-32.
Many will not come to the Church because of family and friends. Jesus said we must put Him first. “He that loveth father or mother…son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me.” St. Matthew 10:37. And He said, “A man’s enemies shall be they of his own household,” 10:36. However, even in the early Church there were several million martyrs in the first 300 years of persecution, and many of these were converted to the true Faith and had to renounce their family ties because many family members did not approve of their actions. They had to do violence to their own will to gain heaven. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.” [Matthew 11:12]. And now, they are reigning gloriously in heaven, and will enjoy the beauties of heaven forever.
The following prayer is recommended to the frequent repetition of persons of all denominations and sects whatsoever who, in sincerity of heart, wish to arrive at the knowledge of the one, true and saving faith, “Without which it is impossible to please God,” and consequently obtain eternal happiness. As Father Ronald Tangen once said, “Sincerity means we will try to find out the truth.”
O Lord, I humbly beseech Thee to teach me Thy true religion, that leads to everlasting happiness, through Jesus Christ Thy Son, Our Lord. Amen.
1 Casti Cannubi encyclical on Christian Marriage: https://tinyurl.com/834vtavh
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