John Thornton
>outside the Church.' He then went on to talk about his non-Catholic wife.
>'My wife is a saint. She's a
>much better person than I am. She's Episcopalian, Church of England. She
>prays, she believes in God,
>she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it's just not fair if she
>doesn't make it, she's better
>than I am. But that [outside the Church there is no salvation] is a
>pronouncement from the Chair. I go
>with it.' Things could not be more clearly articulated - both Gibson's
>going with the Chair and his
>innate discomfort with the Chair's teaching, maybe even with God, if his
>wife is not saved."
>
>The background to this is that, since the Council of Trent in the 16th
>century, which was responding to the Reformation, the official Catholic
>position was that the Catholic Church was the "body of Christ," meaning
>that if you were outside that "body" Christ couldn't save you. The 2nd
>Vatican Council in the early 1960s became much more inclusive, but old
>Mel, going with his sect's rejection of Vatican II, feels he has to
>condemn his own wife to hell-fire (or at least purgatory, I suppose -- I
>don't know old Mel's position on the exact arrangements in the hereafter).
>
>
>Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org