Expert: Griff Ruby - 7/13/2011

Question
I was reading the fundamentels of Catholic dogma. And it said that when most of the world's bishops generally agree on something, they are infallible. in the 1960s didn't that mean that the general rejection of extra ecclesia nalus salus become an infallible statement.

Answer
There is no infallibility attached to having any number (or percentage) of bishops agree on a point, though there is such a thing regarding the Ancient Church Fathers.  The Ancient Church Fathers contain (in their writings) the sources of all of Divine Tradition as known to the Church for all ages past theirs.  When all of them, or even a significant majority of them all clearly agree on something (with any remaining dissenters being either admittedly unclear or incomplete or uncertain or subject to change), that is taken as a clear sign of an infallible doctrine, fully as reliable as if it appeared on the pages of Sacred Scripture itself.
But no such thing is to be said of any group of bishops, apart from when acting in an Ecumenical Council and acting together in that Council as a "college," and of course even then it would only apply to matters of Faith or Morals, not discipline or other topics outside the range of Faith and Morals, exactly like a Pope teaching the whole Church Ex Cathedra.
Now, there is something somewhat akin to this in the realm of the theologians, and by theologians I mean here not merely everyone with classes, or even a degree, in theology, but rather those who are fully recognized as professional theologians, the kind who are invited to write theological textbooks for pontifical seminaries and the like, or appointed as Deans of prominent seminaries.  But with these there now also enters in the fact that they must agree not only with each other (as alive today) but also with all such throughout all ages.  That is something the Modernists do not do, for they disagree most sharply with all the deceased theologians of ages past who as yet still significantly outnumber those living dissenters today who have usurped the posts ordinarily held by real theologians.
It is impossible for any position contrary to the previously established teachings to be infallible, no matter how many superficial qualifications seem to have been supplied to it.
Technically, it was not the doctrine of "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" that was rejected, but rather that everyone and everything was "defined" to be the Church.  So now, in the twisted perceptions of the Modernist diabologians, everyone is a "Catholic" (hence, inside the Church) regardless of whether he is a Catholic or not, so then everyone gets "saved," easy.