Some Protestants claim that Catholics have declared them “anathema,” which condemns Protestants to hell. But is this true? Joe dives deep to find out.

Transcript:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to cover a potentially sensitive topic today. This question of whether or not Catholics believe that all non-Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and other non-Catholic Christians, as well as obviously non-Christians, whether we believe they’re all going to hell. And there’s a couple ways I want to approach this. First, this idea that the Catholic Church, Mizes Protestants, you’ll regularly hear certain Protestant speakers claiming, oh, the battled Catholic church has issued an anathema against the gospel and against Protestants, and they’ll usually point to the Council of Trent. And so one question worth asking, is any of that true? And what is an anathema and how does all that work? But then I want to get to actually the fundamental, just the heart of the question. So I actually think the anathema thing is a bit of a distraction and say, is it damnable not to be Catholic?

And what do we make of the biblical answer to that question? So let’s start with the anathema thing. As I say, you’ll find people saying Protestants are under an anathema, and you’ll find some Catholics saying, no, they’re not. And I think in some ways this sort of misses the mark. I think in a technical sense the answer is no. Somebody raised Protestant is not under an anathema for a pretty simple reason. An anathema as Dietrich Von Hildebrand points out in the charitable anathema is the pronouncement that you’ve been excluded from the community of the church. If you don’t retract your errors, you are presenting something heretical and damnable and non-Catholic, and there is no room in the church for that kind of idea. So if you’re going to persist in it, you’re cut off from communion with the church. The problem with applying that to people who were never Catholic in the first place is that it’s the equivalent of saying, well, fine, Taylor Swift, you’re getting married to Travis Kelsey, I guess we’re going to get a divorce.

You were never married, so you can’t divorce somebody you’re not married to. Well, similarly, you can’t excommunicate someone who is never in your communion. So an anathema, at least in the way like the 1917 code of Canon law uses the term it’s referring to an act of excommunication. And regularly when you see the term anathema used throughout the history of the church, particularly at councils, it’s referring to the beliefs, not even just of ordinary Christians, but of leaders like bishops and heretical teachings that if they persist in them, they’re going to be deposed and excommunicated and removed from the church. So it’s an important censure, it’s an important kind of penalty, but it’s intended for those erring members of the flock, those who are part of the Catholic communion, who are believing things and teaching things and leading people astray in a way that’s disruptive for the communion.

The second kind of thing that’s relevant here is the church has moved away from anathema, at least for now, and this is explicit at the opening address to the Second Vatican Council. Pope John 23rd talks about this and he talks about the modern errors that keep popping up and then kind of falling out of fashion. And he says the church has always opposed these errors and is often condemned them and indeed with the strongest severity as for the present time, the bride of Christ is pleased to apply the medicine of mercy rather than to take up the weapons of severity rather than condemning. She thinks that the power of her teaching should be more abundantly explained to meet the needs of the present day. Now, I want to point something out here. He’s reiterating like, look, we still reject error and we’ve even rejected it very strongly.

But right now, the most prudent thing doesn’t seem to be just saying, Hey, you’re damned, you’re going to hell. You’re not being a good Catholic to a bunch of people who are pretty openly not Catholic, and instead to positively lay out the Catholic teaching that prudentially, this seems like the better approach, and this is very much the kind of judgment call that a mother needs to make. If the church is meant to be moderate magistrate mother and teacher, there are going to be times when as a parent you rebuke and punish your kids and there are going to be times where you try to win your kids over and you might treat a young child and an older child pretty differently. You have to handle those cases sort of situationally. In other words, John the 23rd isn’t saying anathema is bad or we need to repudiate any of that.

He’s just saying in the modern context that we’re facing, anathema doesn’t seem like the thing that’s going to do the trick here. Rather we need to mercifully lay out the truth in an inviting kind of way. And he makes clear that this doesn’t mean that there aren’t fallacious teachings, opinions and dangers that need to be prevented and dissipated. We’re not just saying everything is great, but rather he says that these so openly conflict with the correct principles of honesty and have born such disastrous fruits that today men seem to be condemning them of themselves. In other words, think about the great errors of that time period in 1960s. You’ve just come out of a world that was facing fascism and nazim. You are in the middle of a world facing communism and certainly the church has plenty to say in response to that. But even if those things didn’t exist, plenty of people who’d lived under those systems could tell you of the horrors and the evils of the systems.

So in that sense, simply pointing out there is an alternative. You don’t have to live this way, you don’t have to believe these kind of things about the human person or to behave in these kind of manners, that might be the thing that’s more attractive. So there’s a pretty intentional, pretty explicit move away from the condemning with anathema. Now you’ll find people who think this was a bad move. So I think diet front Hildebrand is pointing out why anathema can be very good, and you’ll find modern people saying, we should continue to use anathema rather than this so-called medicine of mercy that John the 23rd lays out. All I want to say here is wherever you fall on that, recognize this is not a difference in doctrine. This is a difference in discipline and pastoral approach, and there is abundant scriptural evidence for any of these approaches and we see in different times and places the apostles themselves using different tools.

So for instance, in Galatians six, St. Paul says, brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, let you too be tempted. That’s very much like don’t take a harsh approach, take a gentle approach. But in this same letter three chapters earlier, St. Paul says to these same Galatians, oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith, are you so foolish? He is perfectly happy to say, Hey, dummies to the same people, he is telling that they need to be gentle. So there is a time and there are people who can receive a much harsher kind of rebuke. And so this is again, something that every parent knows or needs to know.

If you’ve got a child who’s already estranged, who’s on the verge of just running away from home, or maybe they’re an adult child who already has a tenuous relationship with them, if you lead with rebuke in condemnation in the rest, you’re probably not likely to win them over. You’re probably likely to just sever that relationship. You need to lead with that spirit of gentleness. On the other hand, if you have a really strong relationship, you have more room to just cut to the chase and be like, Hey, stop being an idiot. How about that? And the church does both of these things depending upon who she’s dealing with regularly. I hear people complain, it seems like traditional Catholics get treated more harshly by the church than people living these wild dissolute lifestyles. And I think there’s some truth to that, but I also think there’s some pastoral wisdom to that, that people who are already feeling estranged from the church are going to be treated more gently than people who feel very secure in their place in the church.

It’s a difference between Galatians three and Galatians six, and there’s really a lot of room in between. And so for instance, in Second Thessalonians, St. Paul says, if anyone refuses to obey what we say in this letter, note that man and have nothing to do with him that he may be ashamed, but do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. So you see kind of a blend of some harshness and some gentleness in Paul’s approach. And I think there’s plenty of room for both and regularly, maybe the pendulum swings too far one way or the other. And the good news is, unless Pope Leo’s watching this, thanks for watching if you are Pope Leo, or unless a bishop is watching this or someone in a position to administer this kind of rebuke and judgment and do all of that disciplining you, and I don’t really need to worry about this.

We might think that the discipline is being done too loosely or too harshly or might have more complicated opinions on it, but just recognize that’s what’s going on. So I mention all of that just to explain kind of what anathema are in the life of the church, that they are this very strong censure of doing what two Thessalonians three says to tell someone, we’re not going to have anything to do with you and you should be ashamed. Your teachings are horrible, they’re not Catholic, you’re out of here. But we still want to warn you as a brother. Those two things we have to kind of keep in tandem, and that’s how we try to approach these kind of things. Now, all of that about the anathema is I think important for forming a well-formed historical understanding of this. So I think people get this question wrong a lot, but I actually think it doesn’t matter that much.

Now, I know that sounds strange, but what I mean by that is the question of whether Protestants are under an anathema or not is a really technical question. And the better question is, are these Protestant beliefs damnable? And there’s a popular idea that, oh, the church pre Vatican two believed that everyone who wasn’t Catholic was always going to hell, and then at Vatican two they rejected and reversed that teaching. And that’s not really true on either end. Pre Vatican two, you have people like Father Feeney who taught that everyone who wasn’t explicitly Catholic was going to hell and he was excommunicated for it, which would be terrifying if you’re a phite. I would think. On the other hand, Vatican II doesn’t just say, go do whatever the kind of popular idea that it just is like, oh, the church is the best option, but you do you isn’t true.

Rather very clearly the second Vatican Council talks about it being damnable not to be Catholic. That’s going to include being Protestant or being Orthodox or being anything but under the right conditions. So let’s make sure we get these conditions right. Lumen Genium talks about this in paragraph 14, basing itself on sacred scripture and tradition it the Second American Council teaches that the church now so journeying on earth as an exile is necessary for salvation. That’s the positive teaching the church is needed for salvation. Why? Well, they’re going to give some explanation, I’ll give some more Christ present to us in his body, which is the church is the one mediator and the unique way of salvation in explicit terms, he himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the church for through baptism as through a door. Men enter the church, right?

If you say baptism is necessary for salvation and baptism is what brings you into the church, then you seem to necessarily have to say the church is necessary for salvation. That just follows logically. We’ll get into all that in a second. But the conclusion that the second American council draws from this is very explicit whosoever therefore, knowing that the Catholic church was made necessary by Christ would refuse to enter or remain in it could not be saved. So that seems to pretty clearly say two things that Vatican II is sometimes mischaracterized on. First it’s not teaching universalism, it’s not teaching. Everybody goes to heaven, it’s talking about things that are damnable. And second, it’s not teaching just kind of a religious indifferentism or even a denominational indifferentism. You can be Catholic or Orthodox or one of the Protestant denominations. That’s not what it’s teaching. It’s saying the church is necessary for salvation.

And if you know that and then refuse to become Catholic, you will go to hell L. That’s the teaching. So is that teaching just some crazy arrogance on the part of the Catholic church or is that teaching biblically sound? Now I’m going to lay out the necessity of the church. Now, I know that some people are going to look at this and say, well, how do we know that the visible church talked about in scripture is the Catholic church? And there’s a much longer answer to that that would involve looking at church history and identifying the church. And I’m not going to do all of that today. So what I’m going to show you as best I can is that being part of the flock of Christ, being part of the kingdom, being part of the visible church is necessary for salvation. And I just want you to work with me here and say, if the church is right, that it is the visible church and continues to be the visible church, then this at least logically makes sense.

You at least can’t reject the necessity of the church for salvation. You then have to say which church is necessary for salvation, right? What visible church am I meant to be a part of? And that’s a really good question to be asking. So let’s lay out the biblical case beginning with Ephesians chapter one in which St. Paul says the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then there’s a very, very long sentence, and then jumping from verse 17 to verse 22, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ has put all things under his feet and has made him Jesus the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all. So, okay, so we’ve just said that the church is the fullness of Jesus Christ. In the words of Saint Augustine, in homily one on the first epistle of John, he says to that flesh, the church is joined so that there’s made the whole Christ Christus Totos head and body.

So this seems pretty clearly to be the teaching that we find particularly from St. Paul, that the church in Christ are in a one flesh union. He says this in Ephesians five, and you see him laying out the foundation of this here in Ephesians one, that the church is a bride of Christ and is a body of Christ and is thus inseparable from Christ, so much so that we can speak of the church in Christ as just one. Now that is admittedly striking. That’s admittedly shocking to many people’s ears. I get why? But it’s also biblical. And I think St. Paul was in a great position to recognize this because in Acts chapter nine, Paul himself was on his way to Damascus to persecute any belonging to the way. Now, two things to notice there. One, he’s not persecuting Jesus individually. Jesus is in glory in heaven.

And two, the church is called the Way. Now that is already a divine title. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. And here the church is saying that she is the way. So is this a contradiction? Are there now two ways the church is teaching a different way than the way of Christ? If you’re someone who says, oh, you are putting the church against Christ, you could have that kind of uncharitable read of the New Testament, but I would suggest no, that the way is Christ and the way is the church and the two are so inseparable that you don’t have one without the other. That’s already a big clue of the necessity of the church for salvation because this is the way and no one comes to the Father except through the way John 14, six. So Saul’s persecuting the way and Jesus appears to him or a light, he hears a voice from heaven and says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me, not my church?

Me SA then says, who are you Lord? To which he hears, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. So there’s this really radical identification where to persecute the church is to persecute Jesus, to kill members of the church is to kill members of the body of Christ. It is to directly attack Jesus Christ. That is how close this union is. And if you think about head and body, that kind of makes sense. If somebody starts hammering your arm for some reason, you don’t say like, oh, well you’re just going after my body. You’re not going after me. You say no attack. You’re literally attacking me. So that’s this radical identification of Christ in the church. So you can’t separate the two.

By the way, I have this Gio image of the conversion of St. Paul. It’s very common in western art to present Paul falling from a horse. There’s no reference to horse. He’s probably on a camel, but whether horse or camel, I want to actually talk about sheep instead because one of the ways Jesus positively lays out this teaching is in John 10 when he describes his mission. He says, I have other sheep that are not of this fold, meaning the visible people of the Jews. I must bring them also and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd. So Jesus in the Old Testament had a visible people, Israel, the Jewish people are the visible people of God, but there were other people who were in relationship with him and Jesus desired that they would all be one flock. Now that seems to very strongly indicate that he doesn’t just want them to remain like one people invisibly spiritually.

They already could claim that if it just means I want the people who follow me to follow me wherever they are, they can be in a bunch of different denominations. They’ve got that right. They’ve already got that in John 10. Jesus seems to be suggesting there’s going to be a flock where they’re going to be actually gathered together in some way. And in the next chapter, St. John reminds us that Jesus was sent to die for the nation Israel, but not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So again, the Messianic mission includes the gathering together of the lost tribes of Israel and indeed the faithful Gentiles as well, to gather them together into a single people of God. This is what the word church means. Ecclesia in Greek means like an assembly or a gathering.

This is the bringing together of the people, which again seems to really strongly suggest this is being done with a visible church because you sometimes have this idea that like, oh, the church is just like this invisible reality of all the saved. You already would’ve had that back in John 11. You already had children of God in all these various contexts and nations. If that’s all the church is that already existed, then what’s Jesus doing? What’s he gathering together? What does that even mean? There already is gathered as they’re going to be. They’re just in a thousand different places unconnected, but they’re all children of God. No, the Ecclesia is gathering together an invisible assembly, an unassembled assembly. I don’t know what that is, a disembodied body, a kingdom that no one can see. I mean, what are we talking about here? So the biblical evidence points to there being as a central part of Jesus’s mission.

He doesn’t come to give us the New Testament. He doesn’t do that during his earthly mission. He comes instead to form a church to gather together the Jews and Gentiles, the Jews first, and then the Gentiles are the apostolic mission into this visible people. This visible assembly called the church in Ephesians five St. Paul talks about it like this. He says, the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. So Christ is the savior of the church, but the church is both his bride and his body. Those two images are going to be very important because just as a husband loves his wife, Christ loves the church and gives himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot a wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

So Christ comes to die for the church to save the church. This is at the core of his mission. And so if you don’t understand this role of the church, then you don’t understand why Jesus comes into the world. You don’t understand why he dies on the cross. You’re missing this huge portion of Christianity and the idea of having Jesus without the church, having the king, without the kingdom or the shepherd without the flock or the head, without the body or the bride, groom without the bride becomes unthinkable if you have a sound christology and a good biblical understanding of who Jesus is and why he came. So let’s turn in a darker direction to talk about the antichrist. There’s a lot of popular musing about the antichrist, the left behind series. It has these apocalyptic visions and you’ll have people who suggest, oh, the pope’s the antichrist.

This was a popular argument of the reformers, and I think many times people talk about this without ever taking the time to actually read what the Bible says about the antichrist or what the early Christians said about the antichrist. So for instance, in second John St. John says, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. On a literal level, John is accusing gnostics and particularly the doist gnostics of being antichrist because they’re denying the incarnation. But early Christians like Saint Augustine pointed out that there are other ways that you can functionally be an antichrist. You can deny the incarnation by having a disembodied incarnate kind of Christianity. And this is particularly true of thematics. Now he’s worried about the donus, but I think his general point here stands.

Augustine said he Christ came to gather and won. You come to Unmake like you are creating a bunch of different denominations rather than uniting people together, you would pull Christ members as sunder. How can it be said that you don’t deny that Christ has come in the flesh when you render a sunder, the church of God which he has gathered together. Therefore, you go against Christ, you are an antichrist. That’s his argument that look, if Christ comes to gather the church as his body and you attack the body of Christ, you are an antichrist. That’s the argument. So then the question would be like, well, can you be an antichrist and be saved? And it seems like the answer to that would be pretty obviously. No. So somebody who makes war on the Catholic church, somebody who makes war on the visible church is making war on Christ.

They are persecuting Christ just as St. Paul was, and they are cutting themselves off from union with him, putting the matter positively again, Jesus. In John 17, I mentioned this passage a lot, so I’m not going to belabor it here. Jesus in John 17 prays for future disciples and his prayer for us specifically knowing all of the scandals for all of history, he’s not praying... Read more on Catholic.com