An Ecumenical Council has taught “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” — outside the Church [there is] no salvation — definitively and infallibly. So this teaching is a dogma. But what does it mean, exactly?

Fourth Lateran Council: “There is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice.” [Fourth Lateran Council, Confession of Faith.]

Moreover, the same teaching is infallible under the ordinary and universal Magisterium, since it has been taught by successive Popes and by the Body of Bishops dispersed through the world, as one doctrine definitively to be held (cf. Lumen Gentium 25).

However, this does not imply that atheists, agnostics, non-Christians, and non-Catholic Christians cannot be saved unless they convert.

Pope John Paul II: “Since Christ brings about salvation through his Mystical Body, which is the Church, the way of salvation is connected essentially with the Church. The axiom ‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’ — ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ — stated by St. Cyprian (Epist. 73, 21; PL 1123 AB), belongs to the Christian tradition. It was included in the Fourth Lateran Council (DS 802), in the Bull ‘Unam Sanctam’ of Boniface VIII (DS 870) and the Council of Florence (Decretum pro Jacobitis, DS 1351). The axiom means that for those who are not ignorant of the fact that the Church has been established as necessary by God through Jesus Christ, there is an obligation to enter the Church and remain in her in order to attain salvation (cf. LG 14). For those, however, who have not received the Gospel proclamation, as I wrote in the Encyclical ‘Redemptoris Missio,’ salvation is accessible in mysterious ways, inasmuch as divine grace is granted to them by virtue of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, without external membership in the Church, but nonetheless always in relation to her (cf. Redemptoris Missio, n. 10). It is a mysterious relationship. It is mysterious for those who receive the grace, because they do not know the Church and sometimes even outwardly reject her. It is also mysterious in itself, because it is linked to the saving mystery of grace, which includes an essential reference to the Church the Savior founded. In order to take effect, saving grace requires acceptance, cooperation, a ‘yes’ to the divine gift. This acceptance is, at least implicitly, oriented to Christ and the Church. Thus it can also be said that ‘sine ecclesia nulla salus’ — ‘without the Church there is no salvation.’ Belonging to the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, however implicitly and indeed mysteriously, is an essential condition for salvation.” [Pope John Paul II, All Salvation Comes through Christ, General Audience, 31 May 1995.]

A person can enter the state of grace by Baptism in an Orthodox or Protestant Church. A person can enter the state of grace by a baptism of desire or of blood. And the objectively grave sin of not converting to Catholicism, once a person has sufficient knowledge of the Church, might not be an actual mortal sin. A person might reject the Church outwardly, without realizing that this rejection is gravely immoral. In this way, a person can be in a state of grace and therefore, in one sense, a member of the Church, without formal membership. And anyone who dies in a state of grace, dies as a true member of the Church, and will attain to eternal life.

See my related posts:
Salvation for Atheists and Agnostics
Salvation for Jews
Salvation for Muslims
Teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on Salvation

by
Ronald L. Conte Jr.
Roman Catholic theologian and
translator of the Catholic Public Domain Version of the Bible.