Mr. Jerry Benitz has forgotten this truth

Mr. Jerry Benitz, an individual who leaves many comments at the Bryan Hehir Exposed Blog, and who has been critical of Pope Benedict XVI at that very same forum, has suggested that Professor Fakhri Maluf was some sort of dry martyr who was persecuted by the Church for defending the dogma "Outside the Church there is no salvation."  He writes, "Br. Francis was one of the four Boston College professors who brought the charge of heresy against the school for teaching salvation outside the Church, the famous 'Boston Heresy Case.'  Brother (Prof. Maluf) suffered for his courage." (See here).

This is, of course, sheer nonsense.  Professor Maluf ran into trouble with Boston College and with the Church for insisting that the Church's interpretation of "Outside the Church there is no salvation" - Extra ecclesiam nulla salus - is incorrect and that Father Leonard Feeney's interpretation of this dogma is the correct one.

In a letter of the Holy Office to Archbishop Cushing of Boston dated August 8, 1949, the Holy Office explained that the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation because of the command of Christ and also because the Church is a necessary means for salvation. However, it was explained that since the Church is such a means only by divine institution and not by intrinsic necessity, that formal membership in the Church is not required of all men under all circumstances: "The infallible dictum which teaches us that outside the Church there is no salvation, is among the truths that the Church has always taught and will always teach. But this dogma is to be understood as the Church itself understands it. For Our Savior did not leave it to private judgment to explain what is contained in the deposit of faith, but to the doctrinal authority of the Church....Of those helps to salvation that are ordered to the last end only by divine decree, not by intrinsic necessity, God, in his infinite mercy, willed that such effects of those helps as are necessary to salvation can, in certain circumstances, be obtained when the helps are used only in desire or longing. We see this clearly stated in the Council of Trent about the sacrament of regeneration and about the sacrament of penance."

This is the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which tells us that: "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments." (CCC, 1257).

Mr. Benitz has forgotten this truth: "..the task of authentically interpreting the Word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ." (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) No. 10.

More on Professor Maluf's legacy here.

More on the Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire and Holocaust denial here.