“FIRST, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who wants everyone to achieve salvation through Religion, must necessarily want everyone to be part of the society that he himself founded to preserve and teach that Religion;
“Second, since all men are obliged to embrace the religion of Jesus Christ, they are by this same fact obliged to use the means that Our Lord established to arrive at the true knowledge of Religion, and to render to God a legitimate worship;
“Third, the Church is a necessary society to which we are all obliged to belong, by virtue of natural and divine law, and therefore, whoever knowingly and willingly remains outside its bosom cannot expect salvation. The gates of eternal life, says the Savior, will not open except for those who have kept the commandments; whoever knew the commandment and refused to keep it will be condemned.
“Heirs to the doctrine of the Savior and the Apostles, the Holy Fathers profess the same truth wholeheartedly. ‘He who does not have the Church as his mother,’ says St. Cyprian, ‘will not have God as his father. If anyone could escape the waters of the flood without being in the floodwaters, he who has lived outside the Church may also escape eternal damnation.’
“‘No one attains salvation,’ says St. Augustine, ‘without having Jesus Christ as their leader; and no one will have Jesus Christ as their leader without belonging to his body, which is the Church.'”
— Msgr. Jean-Joseph Gaume, Catechism of Perseverance Volume III Lesson XXIII, 1850
