Our Lord tells us that most people go to hell. For example:

Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!

St. Matthew, 7:13.

Just as no one saved his life outside Noah’s ark, so no one saves his soul outside the Catholic Church.1

Most Catholics are lax and bad. The Doctor of the Church, St. Gregory the Great, teaches: “[I]n the Church the bad are many and the good, few”.2 St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that most Catholics go to hell because they do not live their Catholic Faith.3 Thus, lukewarmness is the greatest danger to our salvation.

An easy, comfortable Catholic life weakens our faith and dampens our charity. When the world viciously assaults our Faith, when Christ our Master once again endures His Passion in His Mystical Body, it forces us to constantly fight for our Faith and shake off our lukewarmness.

Here is how Doctor of the Church, St. Hilary of Poitiers, taught this truth:

When our Faith is attacked, it increases. Therefore, in dangers, our Faith is secure; in security, our Faith is in danger.4

One of the early warrior-priests of the Catholic Resistance against Vatican II, was Fr. James Dumphy, a LaSalette Father from St. Louis. When preaching weekend missions to Traditional Catholics in the 1970s, one of his regular themes was what a blessing it is to live during a great apostasy. His pithy expression was that the apostasy forces us to “be a saint or a Satanist”.

The apostasy that besieges us and bombards our Faith, dwarfs the countless crises that have always battered the Catholic Church. If we constantly fight for Christ against the world, then we will keep our Faith and strengthen it.

But those who do not continually discuss and ponder the Faith will steadily weaken, and if not become Satanists, will still lose their souls.

Our fallen nature pulls us toward lukewarmness and hell. By fighting each day against the current apostasy, by the grace of God we can overcome this greatest danger to our salvation. Let us thank God for the gift of living in this Great Apostasy!

  1. Read here the declarations of the dogma Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation: Bishop Williamson Promotes Vatican II’s Heresy That People Can be Saved Outside the Catholic Church↑

  2. Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, on the Gospel of St. Matthew, 22:1-13. Here is the longer quote:

    It should not frighten you that in the Church the bad are many and the good, few. For the Ark, which in the midst of the Flood was a figure of the Church, was wide below and narrow above, and at the summit measured but one cubit (Genesis vi:16). And we are to believe that below were the four-footed animals and serpents, above the birds and men. It was wide where the beasts were, narrow where the men lived: for the Holy Church is indeed wide in the number of those who are carnal-minded, narrow in those who are spiritual. For where she suffers the morals and beastly ways of men, there she enlarges her bosom. But where she has the care of those whose lives are founded on spiritual things, these she leads to the higher place; but since they are few, this part is narrow. Indeed, wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate that leadeth to life and few there are that find it (St. Matthew 7:13). The Ark is made narrow at the summit so that it is but one cubit wide: because, of those in the Church, the holier they are, the fewer they are.

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  3. When explaining Our Lord’s words, “For many are called but few are chosen”, St. Thomas explains that the “many” are those who have the Catholic Faith; the “few” are those whose lives reflect their Faith through good works. Here are his words:

    Many are called but few are chosen, because all those who have the Catholic Faith are called, but those who do good works are chosen, and these are few, as it was said above: Strait is the way that leadeth to life and few there are that find it.

    Lectures on St. Matthew’s Gospel, St. Thomas Aquinas, ch.20, end of §1 (italic emphasis showing the Gospel quotes).↑

  4. Catena Aurea on St. Matthew’s Gospel, St. Thomas Aquinas, editor, quoting St. Hilary of Poitiers, ch.20, §5.↑