Bonaventure Hinwood OFM, Pretoria
In your editorial of June 26 reference was made to “the statement made by Pope Francis in which he apparently said that non-believers could be saved through Christ “if they do good”. The context and tone suggest that this is a new teaching, which is the way the secular press also treated it: part of the innovative activity of the new pope.
Yet it is the clear teaching of Vatican II that divine providence does not “deny the help necessary for salvation to those, who without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, but who strive to lead a good life, thanks to his grace” (Church 16).
This salvation can come only through Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and human beings, as Vatican II says (Missions 3). The Council further tells us that by taking on our human nature “the Son of God has united to himself in some fashion with every man” (Church Today 22). By this he, and he alone, is the source and channel of grace to every human person, irrespective of whether or not they have an explicit knowledge of him, or even a belief in God.
So Pope Francis was not saying something revolutionary, but simply stated the Catholic truth, to which Vatican II had already given witness, not as something new, but as part of our tradition.
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