Does Vatican II's 'subsists in' make the Church invisible and contradict Humani Generis?
Robert Sungenis holds that "subsists in" means the Church is visible, with a component allowing the spiritual inclusion of those God saves outside its formal structure. He argues that such salvation, affirmed by Pius IX in 1864, is possible only because the visible Catholic Church exists, so everyone who is saved is saved through its graces rather than through a separate spiritual church.
A viewer (Mr. Chan) asks whether Lumen Gentium's statement that the Church of Christ 'subsists in' the Catholic Church, with elements found outside it, makes the Church invisible and contradicts Humani Generis on the Church's visibility.
Answer
"Subsists" means the Church is visible but with a component that allows for the spiritual inclusion of those whom God saves outside the formal visible structure. We already know from Pius IX's 1864 encyclical that people can be saved outside the Catholic Church. But their salvation is allowed only because the Church is a visible entity on earth through which God saves them; if the visible Catholic Church did not exist, no one outside could be saved, because you are saved by the graces of the Church, which God filters through her. So Lumen Gentium is not describing a spiritual church disconnected from the visible one. Everyone who is saved, Catholic or not, is saved through the graces of the Catholic Church.