10
it is contained in the good dispositions of soul by which a man wants his will to be
conformed to Gods will.
22
Here the Church harkens back to Thomas differentiation between reality and desire to indicate
that a person of good will may be saved simply by an implicit desire to belong to the Church.
Another important idea highlighted in Mystici Corporis, which becomes very important for the
most current developments in Roman Catholic thought, is that what non-Roman Catholics lack is
not eternal salvation, but merely some of the benefits of salvation in the present sphere.
The final element in the historical background is Vatican II. Whatever doors were
pushed slightly ajar in previous centuries were blown wide open by this most recent ecumenical
council. The following ideas exemplify the paradigm shift of Vatican II: As the documents
were being drafted, the affirmation that the true Church of Jesus Christ is the Roman Catholic
Church was changed to say that the Church of Jesus Christ "subsists in the Roman Catholic
Church, allowing the possibility that the Church exists in some way outside the RCC. The
sacraments of other Christian communities are considered to have value. There is the
introduction of the idea of descending levels of connection to the RCC. Other religions are
found to contain true and holy elements. Parallel to this affirmation is the complete lack of any
sense of satanic origin for other religions. Perhaps most profound in their effects on the Roman
Catholic theology of salvation in other religions were the documents Lumen Gentium and
Unitatis Redentigratio. Sullivans comments on these two documents are striking:
With the promulgation of those two conciliar texts, an extraordinary change took place in
official Catholic doctrine about the salvation of non-Catholic Christians. Up until the
1963 draft, . . . the official doctrine was that since there is only one church of Christ,
which is exclusively identified with the Roman Catholic Church, it follows that the
Catholic Church is the only ecclesial means of salvation, and that, therefore, salvation for
other Christians must also come through the Catholic Church, by virtue of their implicit
desire to belong to it. The recognition, both in Lumen gentium and in the Decree on
Ecumenism, of the ecclesial value of the other Christian churches and communities
22
American Ecclesiastical Review, 127 (1952): 308-15.