Following on from a wonderfully friendly and collegial conversation, a few results from my own re-studying of this document–one I have continually, since my conversion, regarded, not as an embarrassment, but as a crucial link in the anchor-chain of Christian faith. First, the important and controversial “outtakes”:

Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, […] and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

(source: UNAM SANCTAM)

Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: ‘The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man’ [1 Cor 2:15]. This authority, however, (though it has been given to man and is exercised by man), is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him (Peter) and his successors by the One Whom Peter confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven’ etc., [Mt 16:19]. Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13:2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings, which is false and judged by us heretical, since according to the testimony of Moses, it is not in the beginnings but in the beginning that God created heaven and earth [Gen 1:1]. Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

(source: UNAM SANCTAM)

…aaaaaand everyone take a deep breath.

No, the Church did not just say that everybody outside the visible communion of the Church is ipso facto hellbound, and neither did I. I am very sure that is not what this document states, and even more sure that is not what the Church has ever held authoritatively (though some have believed it, and for example some statements of Augustine’s about baptism probably suggest that construction–another reason not to take untempered Augustine as your sole theological source). The case of Fr. Feeney should be plain enough on that count, even in the days between Vatican I and Vatican II.

First question, then: is this a dogmatic definition?

Short answer: Yes. There is no serious dissent on the question, just hand-waving and avoidance for those who assume they know what this text says, code it as extreme and narrow-minded, and try to think of a way not to offer the obedience of assent to what they ought to believe with firm faith. It was understood as part of the faith of Christians–the Catholic faith–well before Boniface VIII affirmed it. I can multiply sources, if you like, but in the end you can go do the detailed study (or not) and draw your own conclusions.

I am persuaded that right reason will persuade you that Unam Sanctam is a cohesive, coherent, and vital part of the tradition that we see articulated in Lumen Gentium, in the declaration Dominus Iesus issued over the signature of Pope St. John Paul II by Joseph Ratzinger (as CDF Prefect, later Pope Benedict XVI), and in the Catechism that is the “rubber hits the road” representation of the Church’s teaching for conscientious lay Catholics.

Let me draw a near endpoint for our hermeneutical trajectory, here. Lumen Gentium is the highest-ranking (so to speak) recent statement on the subject, but Dominus Iesus is the most specific to the question at hand. A quick study of the footnotes will demonstrate that Dominus Iesus is itself intentionally a focussed restatement of certain themes less focally considered in Lumen Gentium, but which sources itself primarily from the documents of Vatican II. It is also worth remembering that Unam Sanctam is a higher-ranking statement than any of the Vatican II documents, so a faithful and charitable reader will necessarily resolve any uncertainty about the meaning of Lumen Gentium in favor of the clear meaning of Unam Sanctam–taking care not to miss the possibility that a later document explains more fully or precisely a truth articulated in broader strokes earlier!

Here, then, a clear and authoritative statement on the matter from Dominus Iesus:

Above all else, it must be firmly believed that “the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door”. This doctrine must not be set against the universal salvific will of God (cf. 1 Tim 2:4); “it is necessary to keep these two truths together, namely, the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for this salvation”.

(source: Dominus Iesus)

And as a sketchy theological exploration–but one from theologians who may definitely be considered to be concerned both with the weight of Sacred Tradition and the urgency of contemporary situations–consider the following snippets from an article by Joseph Ratzinger reviewing some works by von Balthasar:

—

This logic is, of course, Pauline; it is the logic of Romans 9-11. And it is this logic which, like a stumbling-block, gets in the way of many Christians who too hastily assume that a narrowly objective decision-making, or a narrowly objective consciousness of a divine decree, or a narrowly objective visible union of individuals as such, is the essence and extent of the “salvation” of which Paul speaks, which Christ brings. But what is necessary for salvation is the whole work of God in Redemption, from the doom and promise of Genesis 3 through the sacrifice of Abel and the marking of Cain, from the Promise through Abraham’s Seed and the blessing of Hagar’s child, from the calling of Jacob’s Seed and the provision for Esau’s children, through the Incarnation and the promised Consummation of all things–in all this work God chooses a People through whom and to whom the Promises come, and yet offers hope for inclusion with those People to “whosoever will,” because the People is the necessary and effective instrument, locus, means, manifestation, and realization of God’s saving work without being the limit of God’s work.

There is a limit to God’s work. Hell is real, and we may not presume to think it empty (but we may not foreclose the possibility that it will be nearly so). But the visible communion is not that limit.

So what does Unam Sanctam dogmatically define?

Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus, dicimus, definimus, et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis.

(source: Unam Sanctam)

Like so many things, this follows from a worked-out theology of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ; we know that He, and He alone, brings salvation, who “came to seek and to save that which was lost.”

In the same sense that, for every creature, salvation necessarily depends on subjection to the Roman Pontiff, salvation necessarily depends on many things which, as a matter of hermeneutics and theology, we cannot easily and equally apply to every individual without exceptions in the ways most obvious to our understanding:

We quickly realize that to accept what God provides, by the means He chooses, is to accept salvation; to cut oneself off from that, to reject that, to stand against that, to be more attached to what He will heal us of than to His healing work, to be more attached even to a lesser good than to His call, is to reject salvation. But it is precisely to those who reject salvation, even to those who in receiving it have turned aside and rejected it, that Christ comes in Redemption.

And so the call of the Church, through Unam Sanctam as much as through the canons of Trent or Orange or Nicea, through Lumen Gentium in one way and through the decree on Infallibility in Pastor Aeternus in another, as much through Mary’s “whatever He says to you, do it” as Paul’s “believe on the name of the Lord,” is for those who have rejected Christ to be continually converted back to Him.

And in this, we who are in full communion with the whole Church do not deny those who are in impaired communion their due; we wait for them, and try rather to reduce the signs of opposition between us, to remove stumbling-blocks rather than to build them up; and we learn to appreciate the theological depth of certain paradoxes in Paul’s writings:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ … for each must bear his own burden.”

and

“Not that I am perfect … let those who are perfect have this mind … and if in anything you are not of this mind, the Spirit will reveal that to you.”

So we do not oppose any good thing that God does, but we know that God can and will supply what is lacking when we are all as faithful as He has helped us to be–and do not presume to know better than He does what we must do to be saved.