Category Archives: Doctrine

Death penalty: Revisiting its inadmissibility

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Pope Francis prays for the abolition of prisoner executions worldwide

Capital punishment is a topic that never fails to evoke strong emotive opinions from those who are for or against the punishment. It is no different in the Catholic Church. Since Pentecost Day more than 2,000 years ago, She has been on both sides.

It is a worthwhile topic to revisit because many Catholics tend to take extreme either/or positions and this has led to confusion.

Pope Francis’ seems to have settled the matter. His prayer intention for September calls for all people of goodwill “to mobilise” for the abolition of capital punishment throughout the world. (Watch video)

The Holy Father has persistently pushed to eliminate executions of prisoners since 2018 when he reformulated No. 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to teach that the death penalty is no longer admissible. The previous wording read as “the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.”

Two years later, Pope Francis doubled down on the inadmissibility of capital punishment in his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, much to the dismay of many Catholics, including clergy and theologians, who accused him of changing Catholic doctrine.

Has he?

No, he has not. Pope Francis is only advancing the doctrine to the next level from what his immediate predecessors had developed.

At the heart of this inadmissibility, he teaches that:

… more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’.

Catechism of the Catholic Church 2267

Popes since 1969 call for end to death penalty

In 1969 Pope St Paul VI removed capital punishment from the fundamental law of Vatican City. After him, St John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, taught that “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means …”

This teaching was reflected in his updated version of his Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1997 that Pope Francis recently reformulated.

On Christmas Day in 1998, the Polish Pope reiterated his opposition to capital punishment with the message, “May Christmas help to strengthen and renew, throughout the world, the consensus concerning the need for urgent and adequate measures to halt the production and sale of arms, to defend human life, to end the death penalty …”

Pope Benedict XVI went further when he addressed the Community of Sant’Egidio during his November 2011 general audience with the message, “I express my hope that your deliberations will encourage the political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number of countries to eliminate the death penalty …”

While the Pope has not change the doctrine on the death penalty, he teaches its application is no longer admissible.

In detailing Pope Francis’ rewording of CCC 2267, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Dicastery (Congregation previously) for the Doctrine of the Faith, explains, “This development centres principally on the clearer awareness of the Church for the respect due to every human life. Along this line, John Paul II affirmed: ‘Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this’.”

So, how does this development square with the Old and New Testaments where legal punishment of personal injury did allow “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Exodus 21:23-24)? Acts 5:1–11 speaks of the divine punishment meted out to Ananias and Sapphira when Peter rebuked them for their fraudulent action (Acts 5:1–11).

St Paul, in his Letter to the Hebrews 10:28 says that “a man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses”.

In Romans 13:14 he also writes that rulers acting against wrongdoers do so as “God’s servant for your good” and “does not bear the sword in vain”.

Doctors of the Church Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus invoke the authority of Scripture and patristic tradition for the death penalty. Their peers, Saints Robert Bellarmine and Alphonsus Liguor, were also in agreement that certain criminals should be punished by death.

Despite the episode of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 and St Paul’s Hebrew and Roman letters, Christians in the early centuries avoided capital punishment in Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ), which was then, as it remains today, the highest standard of holiness. The Church, then, was under persecution and Christians sought to follow Christ in His virtues, and in His sufferings, even to the point of martyrdom.

Christ rejects violence

Jesus, himself, refrained from using violence. He rebuked his disciples for wishing to call down fire from heaven to punish the Samaritans for their lack of hospitality (Luke 9:55). Later he admonished Peter to put his sword in the scabbard rather than resist arrest (Matthew 26:52).

The Church’s tolerance of capital punishment came about when Christianity was legalised in 313 AD and Catholics rose to positions of governance. Christian judges, especially, were required to dispense justice, including capital punishment, according to the laws of the land, but would be in mortal sin if the Church taught against legitimate authorities bearing the sword.

The clergy, though, were prohibited from participating in capital punishment for they were teachers of the Gospel and, as evangelisers, exercise the ministry of redemption.

What recent popes, especially Francis, have done and are doing is to reorientate the Church towards when She taught against capital punishment.

In Fratelli Tutti, the Holy Father reminds us that “Pope Nicholas I (858-867 AD) urged that efforts be made ‘to free from the punishment of death not only each of the innocent, but all the guilty as well. During the trial of the murderers of two priests, Saint Augustine asked the judge not to take the life of the assassins with this argument: ‘We do not object to your depriving these wicked men of the freedom to commit further crimes. Our desire is rather that justice be satisfied without the taking of their lives or the maiming of their bodies in any part. … Do not let the atrocity of their sins feed a desire for vengeance, but desire instead to heal the wounds which those deeds have inflicted on their souls’”.

Risk of executing the innocent

A key concern of the Church and people of goodwill has always been the miscarriage of justice that results in the execution of innocent people. While data covering all countries are unavailable, a 2014 study in the United States estimates that at least 4% of executed prisoners are innocent.

No justice system is perfect and the danger of executing the innocent is always there.

Despite all the safeguards in place, no justice system is perfect and we can assume innocent lives are lost through capital punishment up to this very day in countries that practise this punishment. In repressive authoritarian systems, the death penalty is also often used as a tool for vengeance and to silence political opponents.

Addressing the 6th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in 2016 Pope Francis makes this point.

(Capital punishment) does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance. The commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty.

The question must be dealt with within the larger framework of a system of penal justice open to the possibility of the guilty party’s reinsertion in society. There is no fitting punishment without hope! Punishment for its own sake, without room for hope, is a form of torture, not of punishment.

Returning to Scriptures, Moses sings that God will vindicate His people with the phrase “vengeance is mine” in Deuteronomy 32:35. He adds “In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.” In St Paul’s letter to the Romans, he also emphasises they should not “repay evil for evil” (Rom 12:17).

What we can take away from this is that man must not exact punishment on behalf of God for His honour. He will satisfy His own wrath. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah out of vengeance for their iniquity (Gen 19).

But He withheld vengeance from Nineveh after Jonah preached to them (Jon 3).

The Almighty, and not men, knows the hearts of every person and seeks repentance from all sinners, no matter how grave their offences are. He shows mercy to those who do and rain down His justice perfectly on those who refuse.

Submission of mind and will to Pope Francis’ teaching

So, while Pope Francis is not redefining capital punishment as “intrinsically evil” and therefore always wrong, which would have changed Catholic doctrine, he is teaching that its application is no longer admissible. This is the fundamental point that many Catholic theologians, clergy and laity have not given much weight or ignored outright.

At its core, what Pope Francis is teaching is that while “Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense (CCC 2266)”, the reasons for applying the death penalty are no longer admissible. In CCC 2267 and Fratelli Tutti he makes this point that the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide”.

Catholic legislators and judges, therefore, would not be in mortal sin if they are required to dispense the legitimate laws of their jurisdictions. But they and all Catholics must give religious submission of mind and will to Pope Francis’ teaching on the death penalty.

Those who refuse to do so, will do well to read Donum Veritatis, the instruction that the then prefect Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Congregation (Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued to theologians. But it is good reading for all Catholics. Key paragraphs:

28. … a particular application (is) the case of the theologian who might have serious difficulties, for reasons which appear to him well founded, in accepting a non-irreformable magisterial teaching.

Such a disagreement could not be justified if it were based solely upon the fact that the validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable. Nor, furthermore, would the judgment of the subjective conscience of the theologian justify it because conscience does not constitute an autonomous and exclusive authority for deciding the truth of a doctrine.

29. In any case there should never be a diminishment of that fundamental openness loyally to accept the teaching of the Magisterium as is fitting for every believer by reason of the obedience of faith. The theologian will strive then to understand this teaching in its contents, arguments, and purposes. This will mean an intense and patient reflection on his part and a readiness, if need be, to revise his own opinions and examine the objections which his colleagues might offer him.

According to available data, most executions take place in Asia, with China topping the global list. Only Bhutan, Cambodia, East Timor, Hong Kong, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have abolished the practice.

Main Image: Pexels, Koolshooters

38 million unborn babies aborted each year in Asia

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Why countries outside the US must not be too obsessed with Roe vs Wade ruling

When the United States Supreme Court reversed the decades-old Roe vs Wade case that recognised women’s constitutional right to have abortions, it received prominent news coverage around the world.

There is a sense of widespread relief among pro-life supporters. Why is this so? The latest ruling is not about abortion rights as it is about an interpretation of the US Constitution.

What the US justices ruled is that the Court’s previous decision in 1973 that the 14th Amendment protected abortion rights was “an abuse of judicial authority” and relied on “egregiously wrong” reasoning.

They returned to the 50 states the responsibility of deciding whether abortion should be allowed in their respective territories. At the time of writing, it is still legal in many states. Depending on which party is in power, who is to say Roe v Wade won’t make a comeback?

But this latest ruling has no bearing outside the United States. And Roe vs Wade should not be of any concern to Asia.

Why? Because of this grim statistic from the US-based Guttmacher Institute: The lives of 38 million unborn children killed in their mothers’ wombs each year in Asia. This includes almost six million in Southeast Asia from 2015 to 2019, which is an increase of 21% from the 1990-1994 period.

For the sake of comparison and depending on whether it’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or Guttmacher’s statistics are used, between 630,000 and a million mothers opt for abortions each year in the United States.

The problem as the numbers show is that this crisis is about 38 times more acute in Asia. In Southeast Asia only Brunei, Laos and the Philippines prohibit abortion outright.

In Singapore from a peak of 23,512 abortions in 1985 the numbers have steadily dropped to 4,029 (Ministry of Health) in 2020. Across the Causeway, the Federation of Reproductive Health Associations Malaysia estimates that about 90,000 pregnancies are aborted annually. The figure in Indonesia was 1.7 million in 2018, and 437,000 in Thailand during 2015–2019, according to Gettmacher’s data.

There are no official statistics for Vietnam, but the country’s news outlet, VN Express, reported in 2016 that 40% of all pregnancies in the country were terminated. This would put the number of abortions at about a million in that year which had 1.49 million live births.

Unplanned pregnancies have led many, especially impoverished women, to opt for unsafe abortion.
Pexels, Nicole Ganze

What it takes to stop the killing of unborn babies in Asia?

The answer to this is about changing hearts and minds. For Catholics, non-Catholic Christians and people of goodwill, this is the only sure-fire way to protect the lives of the unborn.

But the obstacle towards this goal is massive because not all cultures and religions believe that life begins at conception. Compounding it, legislation to provide “safe” access to abortion has been around since 1948, with Japan the first to legalise it in Asia, to curb the “population bomb” in the world’s biggest continent.

Adding to this problem, many secular governments are quick to rebuff religious teachings, especially the Catholic Church’s, as not being in touch with the times.

This point was underlined in passing the Singapore Abortion Bill in 1969 against the backdrop of too many women “resorting to dangerous do-it-yourself home procedures” or “to back-street and illegal abortionists, usually with tragic results”.

The then-Minister of Health Chua Sian Chin highlighted three main objections to the Bill, the first of which was religious:

Briefly the basis of objection is that abortions destroy the life of a foetus. Since the foetus is the beginning of human life, induction of abortion is equivalent to murder. This is a matter of viewpoint. Learned men, medical or otherwise, for centuries have not been able to agree on whether the foetus is human life.

In my view abortion is not murder. The destruction of the early conceptus differs in no essential way from destruction of the sperm cell or egg cell before the act of fertilization. No one mourns for a sperm killed by a spermatoxic contraceptive cream or an ovum permitted to die twelve hours after ovulation, because the woman from whose ovary it came knew how to prevent its survival by practising the rhythm technique of birth control.

After 53 years, is this the prevailing view today? I have no doubt it is with the growing secularism among Asians, even among not a few Catholics and in unlikely places such as in the Philippines. The Catholic majority country is under pressure from advocacy groups such as the Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network to pass abortion laws. Rogue priests often aid their cause.

What must Christians do?

It is one thing to teach that abortion is the killing of an unborn human life and a grave sin. It is another thing not to address the underlying causes that lead women to end their children’s lives.

As cited in Singapore’s passing of the Abortion Bill in 1969, the causes are the same everywhere: unplanned pregnancies have led many, especially impoverished women, to opt for unsafe abortion. They have nowhere and no one to turn to for comfort and advice. The fear that they are bringing a baby into dire poverty is often the trigger to kill their babies before birth.

At the height of abortion cases in Singapore in 1985, Redemptorist Father Edmund Dunne started the Family Life Society (now known as Catholic Family Life) to offer pregnancy crisis counselling and help to all women, regardless of religious background. Two years later he started Pregnancy Crisis & Support, a hotline for those in dire need of a friendly listening ear. It was the first of its kind in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Fr Dunne’s efforts led to other non-Catholic groups reaching out to women facing a pregnancy crisis. Did all this good work lead to a decline in abortions over the decades? I have no doubt it did.

But this isn’t enough. Catholics cannot twiddle their thumbs and leave the heavy lifting to those like the late Fr Dunne. It takes a village to transform hearts and minds, and if we are to achieve this, every Catholic must get on board.

It begins with catechising our fellow Catholics, especially our young, on the sanctity of life and why sex outside of marriage can only lead to knots such as unplanned pregnancies. Abortion has never been and never can be a human right. Pope Benedict XVI emphasised this point in Vienna in 2007 in his address to diplomats and representatives of international organisations:

It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right. It is the very opposite, it is a deep wound in society.

Pope Benedict XVI

Read: EU Bishops say ‘No such thing as a right to abortion’

The Jesus way to changing hearts

Faced with crisis, Catholics are often in the habit of asking, “What would Jesus do?”. That’s the wrong question because Christ left us a template on what to do. So, the question should be, “What did Jesus do?”.

Christ never forced His listeners to follow Him or do what He did. Instead, He invited people to listen to His Gospel, the Good News of Salvation. Christ spoke with love for the people who heard Him and the numbers who followed Him grew because they could not get enough of what He was teaching them. His following swelled to such an extent that it frightened the Jewish leaders into plotting to crucify Him on the Cross.

This is why activism in any form, for or against causes, never convinces anyone. Instead, it creates animosity, hatred and division.

Beyond catechising every Catholic first and creating disciples to spread this truth about the evil of abortion, we must evangelise the unbelieving world. And we must use every scientific evidence at our disposal and rope in such scientists to help us enlighten the sceptics of the world.

Read: Science on when human life begins

Only when we can speak of the Catholic truth about the beginning of life, we will have the vaccine to protect the unborn from the increasing abortion legislation to execute them before they are given a chance to live from womb to tomb.

When people realise this is what is actually written in their hearts about the reality of life and murder, then, our efforts to stop the killing of millions of babies in their mothers’ wombs in Asia and beyond can make real headway.

God’s unfathomable love for humanity

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He never abandons us, and is always ready to forgive our sins and heal all

One of my greatest desires in life is to yearn for God’s love and to love Him in return. This has been one of the reasons why I’ve always wanted to be a priest since I was a teenager in Vietnam.

I’d like to share a personal experience that happened to me last year.

On that day, 21 May, around 2.00pm, I left my office and went over to the chapel of St Thomas More College to get the Monstrance (The golden sacred vessel that is used to display the Blessed Sacrament during Eucharistic Adorations). 

After locating it in the sacristy, I opened the Lectionary and read a passage from the Gospel of John 17: 20-26 to prepare my homily for Mass the next day at the University of Western Australia. I’ll quote the full text of that verse:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

I then sat in the chapel and reflected on this Gospel passage. After some time in prayer, I felt deeply – at my very core – the unconditional love that God has enfolded me in the past 60 years of my life: from the moment I was born, my childhood and adolescent years, to my entry into religious formation in the Redemptorist Congregation, ordination and my life as a priest.

The six decades of my existence have been marked countless times with the seal of God’s love, through all important milestones and challenges in my journey as His disciple.  His love follows and remains with me unceasingly, even in my human weaknesses: when my love for Him runs dry and lukewarm, or in moments when I haven’t been my best self or lived up to what is expected of me.

Meditating John 17:20-26 before the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel, I came to a deeper understanding of God’s love for humanity.

God doesn’t abandon me, but continues to love me still and ever ready to forgive my flaws, heal my wounds, and embrace me back into a loving relationship with Him. To be honest, it is impossible for me to count each of God’s blessings in my life, for they are innumerable. I simply recall and engrave them in my heart, so that I will never forget what He has done for me.

In reading John’s Gospel that afternoon in the chapel, I was again touched by his immense love, especially this line,

I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17:23

I came to a deeper understanding that God’s love for humanity, which includes you and I, is manifested in the love that He has shown for His only Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. As I meditated on this, I felt so blessed and fortunate that God the Father loves me with the very same love that He has for His only Son. Upon realising this, I immediately felt a force enfolding my entire body, as if it wants to protect and shield me. It actualised within me a deep sense of joy and serene peace.

As the French writer, Victor Hugo once said, “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.”

Everyone desires happiness and to be loved, for no one is able to truly live without (or lacking) love. A person who doesn’t love (or be loved) may be physically alive, but spiritually dead.

This is why I truly felt so blessed, for I have at least more than once in my life, experienced God’s immense and everlasting love. It is from this same love that motivated me to respond to His invitation to be His disciple by sharing in the gift of His priesthood, which I have received 27 years ago in 1994.

I continued to silently sit there in the Chapel before the Blessed Sacrament and savoured the sweetness of His unconditional love for me in spite of my unworthiness.

It is also this same love that compels me to give of myself each day in the proclamation of the Gospel – the Good News that God loves humanity and desires to save us all.

Christ desires for us to be with him in His heavenly kingdom, imploring His Heavenly Father,

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

John 17:24

I am always convinced that after our earthly journey, we will all be reunited with Christ, our most venerable and compassionate Master/Teacher, in our heavenly kingdom, where we will be able to see the Glory of God, to gaze at Him face to face and share in His everlasting joy and eternal happiness.

I’d like to share with you this special spiritual experience in order to give thanks to God for His great love for me and the many blessings He has continuously been giving me in my life. I will never forget His unfathomable love for me. All I want to do is to give my entire life to Him and to love God and His people with all my heart.

Main Image: Heinrich Hofmann

Deposit of Faith and the 3 Persons

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Centred on the Trinity, it is a treasury of Catholic Truths

When I started reclaiming and relearning my Catholic faith about 20 years ago, I realised what I knew was probably at Primary 4 level. In my interaction with Catholics high up the pecking order, they used terms that were foreign to me.

Some of these I learnt quickly such as Magisterium. It comes from the Latin word magister, which means “teacher”. It refers to the teaching authority that Jesus Christ gave to St Peter and the rest of the Apostles. And from them to their respective successors. The Magisterium is exercised chiefly by the pope who can do so independently and the bishops who must teach in union with him.

One term that took a while to get my head round it is “Deposit of the Faith”. The words give the impression that faith is stored somewhere, such as in a vault. Something that banks do when we deposit our money with them. But faith does not have a physical form, and it took me a few years to understand the term fully.

Deposit of Faith simply means the vast body of divine wisdom that God has manifested to His people from the Old Testament. But it was especially revealed to us in the words and actions of Jesus Christ the Incarnate Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

It embodies all the teachings of Christ that He entrusted to the Apostles with the commission to make them known to the entire world (Matt. 28:16-20). They have since passed this Deposit of Faith to their successors to this day, without any additions or subtractions to preserve the purity of what they had received from Christ.

No one can change Jesus Christ’s teachings because they come from God. They are His divine plan for our Salvation – a roadmap to eternal communion with Him. Or else like a map that has had unauthorised alterations, it will lead us on the wrong path and we will be lost forever.

As St Paul in his epistle to the Thessalonians tells us, “We thank God constantly for this, that when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the Word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13).

“Deposit of Faith” has biblical roots as it appears in the Greek version of the New Testament. In the apostle’s letters to Timothy, St Paul entreats his fellow missionary, “O Timothy, guard the paratheke (παρακαταθήκην) or deposit (1 Tim 6:20). He repeats this again in 2 Tim 14 to “guard the paratheke that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit”.

This Deposit, then, is to teach Christians everything that Christ has revealed about Himself, the Father and the Holy Spirit. It serves as a bulwark against heresies that attempt to corrupt the Truth about God and His salvific plan for the whole world.

As the principal mode of transmission of His Teachings is through oral teaching, Christ gave the Apostles a simple formula to teach and recall them from the Deposit of Faith with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. This formula is founded on the Blessed Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Here, I’ll quote Monsignor Eugene Kevane, a pioneer in the field of catechetics, from his Introduction to Teaching the Catholic Faith Today (published in 1982 by Daughters of St Paul).

What was the content of Jesus’ teaching? How did He form the minds of His disciples? A catechetical reading of the Gospels shows that He taught them to understand who He Himself is and what the religion is by which mankind is to respond to this central doctrine.

“So that they would know who He Himself is, He taught them the mystery of the Trinity. Within the Godhead of Yahweh, the One God of the Hebrew revelation, there are three equal divine Persons …

“The Trinitarian pattern of this teaching that witnesses to Him is clear from His final mandate to His apostles as founders of His worldwide Teaching Church: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time” (Matt 28:19-20)

From the Trinity, springs forth all the teachings of the Catholic Church that are contained in the Deposit of Faith. “The Trinitarian profession of faith for baptism, with its subordinate topics for each Divine Person, became the Articles of Faith which the early Church called the Symbol and which we of the Latin Rite called the Apostles’ Creed from the Latin ‘Credo’,” Msgr Kevane wrote elsewhere.

“These Articles of Faith formed the first set of topics in the teaching. It formulated Jesus’ Deposit: it enabled his Apostles and their Successors to hand on the baptismal Profession of Faith by teaching. It was the substance of catechetical instruction then and now.”

Christ’s teachings do not change, even though the world went through a dramatic transformation in the last two thousand years. They are timeless and have addressed every issue of faith and morals in the ancient days of the Apostles and can do so now in our present day.

This does not mean our understanding of what Christ taught doesn’t develop. It does. A perfect example is the doctrine of “Outside the Church there is no salvation” or Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

This doctrine was strictly taught in its narrow sense in the early years of the Church, especially to combat erroneous teachings within and without the Church, such as the Albigensian and other heresies. But the Church gained a fuller understanding of this teaching at the Second Vatican Council.

The Fathers at the Council taught that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart … can be saved (Lumen Gentium, 16).

In doing so, they preserved the substance of Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: That the Church is necessary for Salvation and without Her no one can be saved.

In essence, the Deposit of Faith is a treasury the Catholic Church – as guardians of the revelations of Christ – draws from to define, teach and defend the Truths about God. The four Marian dogmas, which essentially are about the Person of Christ, are such occasions when the Magisterium has unlocked this precious treasury.

In the Solemnity of the Trinity today, it is important to reaffirm this essential toolkit Christ gave His Church to lead us to God.