Is there salvation
outside the church? No, says Rev Dr Joseph Pamplani, well-known Catholic
theologian and preacher who has done some outstanding studies on the history and
tradition of the church. “Church is the fortress set up by Jesus Christ where
devil can’t enter. Church is the protective fortress for all believers,” he
says emphatically.
“When you
say that you’re a member of the church, that means you are living close to Mother
Mary,” he says. Yes, the same Mother Mary who was entrusted to you by Jesus,
through St John, minutes before He died on the cross. “Church is the gate of
salvation.”
“When a
believer gets out of this fortress of church for any reason discredit or
dishonor priests, devil will catch that person. Narrating an incident from his
childhood days, Rev Fr Pamplani says, “When I was young, it was my
responsibility to put hen in a coop just outside the house in the evenings.
However, some of the hen would avoid the coop and get on to the nearby tree and
they would never come down to the coop. One night, we heard the loud sounds
from the tree near the coop. A fox had come and took away one hen. It’s very
simple. When this hen avoided the protection offered by the coop, it ended up
in the hands of the fox,” he says.
Likewise, if
you avoid the protection offered by the church, you may get trapped by the
devil. “There’s no hope for anybody outside the church. Here we’re not talking
about other religions like Islam or Hindu etc. There’s only one person outside
the church. That’s devil,” he says.
“All others are saved by the Precious Blood of Jesus
Christ. After becoming a believer, if you, at any stage, avoid going to the
church or skip sacraments, there’s a chance that devil which comes in the form
of a fox will catch you. Beware parents, if your kids avoid attending the
church on Sundays and keep away from confessions, you need to be scared,” Rev
Fr Pamplani says.
Citing
another example, he narrated an incident in a parish in Kerala. “A rich
businessmen who owns a transport service filed a case against the parish
claiming the parish appropriated 17 cents of land which, he claimed, originally
belonged to him. I told the church committee members not to go for a case in a
court and instead, return the land to the businessman. After six months, the
businessman came running to me, saying he incurred massive losses in his
business. Suspecting some curse on him, this businessman offered to return
double of what he originally took away,” Rev Fr Pamplani says.
He says church is the communion of people who strongly
believe that nothing is impossible for God. “For nothing is
impossible with God," says Luke 1:37.
Yes, nothing is impossible for God -- this is what God conveyed to Moses
in the Old Testament and Mother Mary in New Testament. Mother Mary
believed that nothing is impossible for God.
In a
nutshell, what he says is: don’t lose that protective cover of the church. We
must remain in that fortress in order to avoid the trap of devil.
Who gave us
the Bible?
“Who put together the Holy Bible in the
current format?” asks Rev Fr Joseph Pamplani. There were thousands of Christian
books, including ones written by St Thomas in the first two centuries after the
death of Jesus. It was Pope
Damasus, head of the Catholic church in 366-384, in his Decree, who listed the
books of today's canon or the Holy Bible in the current form. The Council of
Rome in 382 was apparently the forum which prompted Pope Damasus' Decree.
