DECLARATION OF CATHOLIC FAITH
“Thus, remaining firmly rooted and established in the true Catholic Faith, strive always to be worthy ministers of the divine Sacrifice and of the Church of God, which is the Body of Christ. For, as the Apostle says: ‘all that is not of faith is sin’, schismatic and outside the unity of the Church.”²
In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, divine Wisdom, the Word Incarnate, Who willed one sole religion, Who rendered the Old Covenant definitively null and void, Who founded one sole Church, Who triumphed over Satan, Who conquered the world, Who remains with us until the end of time and Who shall come again to judge the living and the dead.
He, the perfect Image of the Father, the Son of God made man, was appointed the sole Redeemer and Saviour of the world through the Incarnation and the voluntary offering of the Sacrifice of the Cross. Our Lord satisfied divine justice by shedding His Most Precious Blood, and it is in that Blood that He established the New and Eternal Covenant, abolishing the Old. He is therefore the sole Mediator between God and men and the sole way to come to the Father. Only he who knows Him knows the Father.
By divine decree, the Most Holy Virgin Mary has been directly and intimately associated with the entire work of Redemption; to deny this association — in the terms received from Tradition — is therefore to alter the very notion of Redemption as willed by divine Providence.
There is only one Faith and one Church by which we may be saved. Outside the Roman Catholic Church, and without the profession of Faith that she has always taught, there is neither salvation nor remission of sins.
Consequently, every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul, and there is but one baptism as the means of being incorporated into her. This necessity concerns the whole of humanity without exception and embraces without distinction Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists.
The mandate received by the Apostles, to preach the Gospel to every man and to convert every man to the Catholic faith, remains binding until the end of time and responds to the most absolute and most pressing necessity in the world. “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.”³ Therefore, to renounce the fulfilment of this mandate constitutes the gravest of crimes against humanity.
The Roman Church alone possesses simultaneously the four marks that characterize the Church founded by Jesus Christ: Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity.
Footnotes
¹ Rom. 14:23
² Roman Pontifical, Admonition to ordinands to the subdiaconate
³ Mark 16:16