Fr. Lawrence Smith

“There are explicit statements from various quarters of the magisterium, up to and including Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, asserting the rights of the secular to remain secular, of the Jews to remain Jews, of the protestants to remain protestants, and the schismatics eastern churches to remain in schism. How is it, then, that a Catholic faithful to immemorial Catholic tradition is to be taken to task for remaining Catholic? Talmudic Judaism, masonic secularism, and heterodox Christianity need not change at all, but Catholics must change all?!? This is not merely unfair, this is absurd! Beyond its absurdity lies an utter unnecessity: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and so is His Body, the Catholic Church! None who clings to Christ needs to repent his beliefs, to apologize for his beliefs, or to change his beliefs. The obedience demanded of the Catholic is permanent, therefore, the Church to which he offers his obedience must be permanent in her teaching, in her practices, and in her rituals! (page 366)”
― Fr. Lawrence Smith, Distributism for Dorothy

“Outside the Church of Christ there is no salvation. Vatican II, for all its legion flaws, did not deny this. Nothing in the 1962-1965 Council condemns the Catholic who adheres to the teachings of Pope Leo III and the 1215 statement of the Fourth Lateran Council, "There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved." At the end of the twentieth century, the Church did not forbid belief in what she believed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when she infallibly taught through Pope Boniface VII's Bull, Unam Sanctam, "We declare, say, define, and pronounce that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the Sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety, and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remains within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church." No more did Vatican II warn the faithful against those earlier Vicars of Christ in this dogmatic teaching than they themselves departed from the very first Vicar of Christ, Pope St. Peter, who insisted that Jesus Christ is "the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner; neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other Name under Heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved." (page 408).”
― Fr. Lawrence Smith, Distributism for Dorothy