This text is a collection of comments by Bishop Corrada on Monday evening October 1st 2007. The Bishop was addressing an audience at the Catholic property in Bullard on the topic of who is saved and who belongs within the Church.
The lecture was organized by St. Mary Magdalene parish and was the third in a monthly series. The lecture title was
“ALL WHO SEEK YOU WITH A SINCERE HEART.”
In his opening remarks, the Bishop spoke of how humans are divinely equipped to begin to know God through natural observation and through the wonders of nature. God wills all to be saved and so humans are then given the extra help of Revelation, where God reveals Himself to humans.
“Let us start with who is in the Church vs. who is not in the Church. Begin with the catechism #50, which says “Man can know God with certainty based on God’s works alone”. But there are other instances where man cannot know God except through divine intervention. What this is saying is that you don’t have to be Catholic to know God. We in the western world believe in Revelation. We believe that God has revealed Himself by giving His Son to man.”
Speaking on the role of the Church in helping people towards their salvation, the Bishop cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church #169 which states that forgiveness of sins and salvation can only be done by God.
“God is the only one who can save us. The Church cannot save. Because we receive the light of faith through the Church, she is our Mother. We believe in the Church as the mother of our new birth and not in the church as if she were our effort of salvation.”
We must greet everyone with a Catholic heart and judge who is saved, who is not saved.
The Bishop told the story of encountering the two gay men at the car wash. Everyone was watching to see how the bishop would respond to these two young men. I kept an open mind and remembered that only God can save.
Bishop Corrada spoke at length about the efforts of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI to foster unity between Roman Catholicism and our sister, the Orthodox Church in the East. In pursuit of the unity lost in 1056 the Pope is trying to bring back into full communion many small groups whose roots and origin are within the Roman western Church.
“When the cardinals elected Pope Benedict XVI they did so thinking he would be a transitional Pope. Now they realize he is in it for the long haul. If you can say that Pope Benedict has one objective, it is to bring unity among all the oriental Churches and the Catholic Church. The Pope wants to bring the Lutheran and Episcopal churches into unity with the Catholic Church. This has become more imperative.”
In the last few months the Church has published 3 documents that aim at restoring unity among Christians. One document is a letter that the Holy Father wrote to the Chinese Catholics in a clear effort to bring about Holy Communion between the bishops of the Chinese national Church and the Church universal.
“The letter from the Pope to the Chinese Catholics – bishops elected by the communist government and bishops appointed by the Pope. The Chinese government has since allowed the Pope to elect a bishop to the diocese of Shanghai. “
The second document that came out is the document from the Pope on the missal to be used in the Church, the ordinary missal and the extraordinary missal – what people refer to as the Latin Mass.
“Every priest and every Catholic should be able to use the ordinary missal in English and in Latin and the extraordinary missal in Latin. It’s the same missal. It’s a diverse reality but it’s the same sacrament. In Tyler we have a group of Catholics at St. Joseph the Worker, about 70 families, who use the Latin Mass. I brought a priest in to care for them.”
Bishop Corrada then spoke about the controversy about whether protestant congregations may be called churches.
“The third document affects us the most, not put out by the Pope himself, but approved by the Pope is the document of the Congregation of the faith that is presided over by the Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith in Rome.”
The document insists that only ancient churches can rightfully be called churches. To be a church, there must be apostolic foundation, ie. It must be founded by one who is a successor of the Apostles. That element is missing in many congregations.
The Pope is telling us that the history of the Church teaches us then authentic communion is not expressed without arduous effort of reconciliation. The Church is reality. We believe that those separated churches and communities suffer some deficiencies in their sacramental life and in their ecclesiology. We believe that the true Church of Christ resides in the Catholic Church. We believe that although separated churches and communities suffer from defects, the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation.
We believe the other denominations are deprived neither of significance nor importance to the mystery of salvation. In fact, the Holy Spirit uses them as instruments of salvation. Every Catholic should know that; I want everyone to know that.
When you are with someone who is not Catholic, you do not teach by this or by that, but by just being yourself, by example. … No matter where you go, you are sowing the seeds of the gospel. Money is about money; pleasure is about pleasure. I would suggest that pleasure is not just about pleasure. Pleasure is part of the kingdom of God. We have the same problem in the U.S. as in China; ideology, secularism; getting the best job, the best car, making more money. This problem is hitting the oriental churches. This ideology of secularism is taking God out of the equation, so we have to unite.
The local church in Tyler is in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. I am not saying that we don’t have to listen to what the Pope says; but I can make decisions here as an apostle. As the Bishop, I am a successor to the apostles.
Many of the Protestant churches are upset because the Catholic Church says Protestant churches are not churches but other faith communities. We make the distinction because they are not successors of the apostles and they do not have the other 6 sacraments; they are confused. The Protestant church separated from the Latin rite in the 16th century; there are no Protestant churches whose roots are in the Orthodox Church. When the Orthodox look at the West, they ask the Pope what he is doing to restore the unity of Christianity in the West.
Whenever I go to Rome to meet with the Pope, all he wants to know is how are you dealing with the Protestants in your community? How is salvation working through them? As Latin rite Catholics we have to be very concerned about our Protestant brothers and sisters in the community because they depend on us. We as the Catholic Church are the anchor. We have to show gentleness and understanding to our separated brothers. There has been some corruption within our Church. We must fix this. If we don’t have gentleness in how we treat our fallen away Protestant brothers, we are going to do great damage to them. The Church needs constant reform, constant renewal and constant prayer.