Mel Gibson says his non-Catholic wife is a “saint”

First of all, he calls his non-Catholic wife a saint, something one could never say about a non-Catholic.  It’s very common that those who deny the dogma sometimes affirm it, as even Msgr. Fenton says (below).  The unfortunate fact is that Mel Gibson clearly denied the dogma in his interview with Diane Sawyer: From Mel Gibson’s interview with Diane Sawyer on PrimeTime:

DIANE SAWYER:    (Voice Over) So when we talked with Gibson and his actors, we wondered, does his traditionalist view bar the door to Heaven for Jews, Protestants, Muslims? MEL GIBSON: That’s not the case at all.  Absolutely not.  It is possible for people who are not even Christian to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s just easier for –and I have to say that because that’s what I believe. DIANE SAWYER: (Off Camera) You have the nonstop ticket? MEL GIBSON: Well, yeah, I’m saying it’s an easier ride where I am because it’s like –I have to believe that. Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, The Catholic Church and Salvation, 1958, pp. 122-123: “These were the people who reduced the necessity of the Church for the attainment of salvation to a mere empty formula.  Of course, they had to use a formula, and they usually employed either the Latin expression ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,’ or its English equivalent, ‘No salvation outside the Church.’  Since there is hardly another dogma which has been so constantly reasserted by the Church’s magisterium, no Catholic writer could possibly get around the fact that the truth expressed in this formula was an integral part of Catholic teaching.  Most of the men who wrote imperfectly on this subject were at least logical enough not to want to deny some statement which had been set forth by the official teachers of the Church.  Hence they adopted the expedient of holding the formula itself, and then explaining this formula in such a way as to make it appear to mean quite the opposite of what it says.  In their hands the expression ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus’ became a mere empty or vain formula, since they presented this statement as signifying, in effect, that there really is salvation outside the Church.”