Are they going to Hell?

[GrzeszDeL]

Dan-Man916:

When Vatican II in Lumen Gentium and Redemptoris Missio by JPII talk about the “spheres of salvation”, they were not denying Florence. They were talking more specifically about the Church and the scope of the relation of those whom are Incorporated to the Church of Christ (albeit imperfectly) through Baptism.

Just a tiny quibble, Dan. Neither Lumen Gentium nor Redemptoris Missio talk about “spheres of salvation.” You are thinking, perhaps, of Paul VI’s Ecclesiam Suam, which talks about ever narrower “circles of salvation.” Beyond that, I think it suffices to say that we still disagree, but I rather doubt that I could say what I have to say any more clearly than I have already said it, so I will demure.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

kfarose2585:

I realize that we cannot know God’s mind, but I am wondering what your opinions/beliefs are on this matter: if a person is not Christian, are they automatically stripped of the possibility of reaching Heaven? Or are there exceptions, like the pious and loving mountain man who has never even heard of God, but who is always sacrficing himself for others? What about Buddhists and Jews and repentant, confused atheists? Does the Church teach anything on this matter?

A few thoughts:​

Sometimes - makes that “often” - it occurs to me that people who wheel out dogma and other bits of paper, forget that God is not limited by our ideas, our imaginations, or by the helps He gives His Church

Jesus spent a lot of time denouncing the Pharisees and scribes; they had God all worked out: or so they thought - and mixing with schismatics, heathens, heretics, and all the people who are so obviously not card-carrying, synagogue-going, Torah-observant, one-God worshipping, rigidly orthodox Jews.

Job’s comforters are rebuked - Job is commended; yet he was not tidily orthodox.

I think this is a warning for us, here and now. satan is orthodox - it’s not helping him. he can play Bible ping-pong better than any exegete or Fundamentalist preacher. Orthodoxy won’t be any good if we don’t love God and neighbour - and how we love our neighbour whom we can see, is the test of how we love God Whom we can’t see.

Love is from God - God* is* Love. A non-catholic who loves his neighbour for God’s sake and by God’s grace, cannot be lost.

God is faithful to His Church - but that is not the same as being limited to it. He’s not the Church’s prisoner, but the Church’s Lord.

If it is true that “the Spirit of the Lord fills the whole earth”, then IMO it seems extremely odd to think that that the only people not going to Hell are those lucky enough to belong to the one-sixth of the human population who are in union with Rome. If God saves only Catholics, then he is no different from the popular caricature of the Calvinist God, Who is said to choose a minority for salvation and damn the majority of the human race. How can that be "the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the God Who is rich in mercy, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to salvation? Those who wish to believe, or able to believe, in a God Who damns 83% of the human race for not believing in a Christ Whom many of them have never even heard of, are welcome to do so.

I think the tendency to adopt a strict interpretation of the necessity of the Church may well owe something to Jansenist tendencies in US Catholicism, influences carried by the French and Irish clergy who have been so important for the building and guidance of US Catholicism.

God delights in showing mercy - this may be why judgement is so terrible when it comes. Look at Judah before the Exile. ##

 

[Dan-Man916]

Greg,
you are right. it was ecclesiam suam.
I was looking at Dominus Iesus, and i really think that this is about the most succinct explantion I can find.

VI. THE CHURCH AND THE OTHER RELIGIONS
IN RELATION TO SALVATION

1. From what has been stated above, some points follow that are necessary for theological reflection as it explores the relationship of the Church and the other religions to salvation.

Above all else, it must be firmly believed that “the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door”.77 This doctrine must not be set against the universal salvific will of God (cf. 1 Tim 2:4); “it is necessary to keep these two truths together, namely, the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for this salvation”.78

The Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation”,79 since, united always in a mysterious way to the Saviour Jesus Christ, her Head, and subordinated to him, she has, in God’s plan, an indispensable relationship with the salvation of every human being.80 For those who are not formally and visibly members of the Church, “salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally part of the Church, but enlightens them in a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation. This grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit”;81 it has a relationship with the Church, which “according to the plan of the Father, has her origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit”.82

1. With respect to the way in which the salvific grace of God — which is always given by means of Christ in the Spirit and has a mysterious relationship to the Church — comes to individual non-Christians, the Second Vatican Council limited itself to the statement that God bestows it “in ways known to himself”.83 Theologians are seeking to understand this question more fully. Their work is to be encouraged, since it is certainly useful for understanding better God’s salvific plan and the ways in which it is accomplished. However, from what has been stated above about the mediation of Jesus Christ and the “unique and special relationship”84 which the Church has with the kingdom of God among men — which in substance is the universal kingdom of Christ the Saviour — it is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological kingdom of God.

 

[Dan-Man916]

(78) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 9; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 846-847.

(79) Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 48.

(80) Cf. St. Cyprian, De catholicae ecclesiae unitate, 6: CCSL 3, 253-254; St. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, III, 24, 1: SC 211, 472-474.

(81) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 10.

(82) Second Vatican Council, Decree Ad gentes, 2. The famous formula extra Ecclesiam nullus omnino salvatur is to be interpreted in this sense (cf. Fourth Lateran Council, Cap. 1. De fide catholica: *DS *802). Cf. also the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston: *DS *3866-3872.

(83) Second Vatican Council, Decree Ad gentes, 7.

(84) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 18.

 

[mlchance]

GrzeszDeL:

Hmmm, I may have spoken too soon. I suppose that Cornelius, even if Peter had never shown up, might well have come under the dispensation of baptism in voto, so I am probably on shaky ground in my contention.

And yet you keep making the same shaky contention. To wit:

GrzeszDeL:

In any case, as the Florentine fathers make cleaer, mere ignorance is entirely beside the point. One must be added to the Catholic Church before the end of one’s life if one is to be saved.

Both Scripture and a proper understanding of Church teaching contradict your understanding of the Council of Florence.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[GrzeszDeL]

mlchance:

Both Scripture and a proper understanding of Church teaching contradict your understanding of the Council of Florence.

Whatever…

 

[mlchance]

GrzeszDeL:

Whatever…

Ah, yes. The 12-year-old school of conversation.

You yourself admitted that Cornelius would have been saved even if he had not been baptized into the Church. You refuted your own position. The Church herself refutes your position.

Whatever indeed.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[Shibboleth]

Someone could do 40 million good things but without God’s Grace they will not help them in the after life. They may receive temporal rewards but not eternal.

 

[Shibboleth]

Humm clear but confusing…

Pope Innocent III (circa 1160 - 1216 CE) is considered “one of the greatest popes of the Middle Ages…” 1 At the Fourth Lateran Council (a.k.a. the General Council of Lateran, and the Great Council) he wrote:
“There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all can be saved.”

Pope Boniface VIII (1235-1303 CE) promulgated a Papal Bull in 1302 CE titled Unam Sanctam (One Holy). He wrote, in part:
“Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins…In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Ephesians 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed…Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” 2

“Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium” (1964)
“The Catholic Church professes that it is the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church of Christ; this it does not and could not deny. But in its Constitution the Church now solemnly acknowledges that the Holy Ghost is truly active in the churches and communities separated from itself. To these other Christian Churches the Catholic Church is bound in many ways: through reverence for God’s word in the Scriptures; through the fact of baptism; through other sacraments which they recognize.”

1. The non-Christian may not be blamed for his ignorance of Christ and his Church; salvation is open to him also, if he seeks God sincerely and if he follows the commands of his conscience, for through this means the Holy Ghost acts upon all men; this divine action is not confined within the limited boundaries of the visible Church." 6

 

[Peace-bwu]

I trust in the Mercy of God for the souls of those who do not know Him in life. I tend to think God probably expects more out of those who know Him. He expects us to use our gifts and talents for His glory and obey the calling of the Holy Spirit, and His laws. God knows our hearts. Taking care not to fall into the sin of assumption… assuming God will forgive my sins later , and go ahead and sin anyway, or assuming my sins are unforgivable thereby refusing His grace, mercy and forgiveness… I will say that I trust in His Mercy and would never *assume *anyone is going to hell… that is between God and that individual soul and I hope God is extremely merciful so that my loved ones and I may make it to heaven too.

Those who hear the truth and turn away… and reject God are choosing to be without Him.

 

[Vincent]

Shibboleth:

Humm clear but confusing…

Just for clarification, the following which you quoted is not the text of Lumen Gentium:

“Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium” (1964)
“The Catholic Church professes that it is the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church of Christ; this it does not and could not deny. But in its Constitution the Church now solemnly acknowledges that the Holy Ghost is truly active in the churches and communities separated from itself. To these other Christian Churches the Catholic Church is bound in many ways: through reverence for God’s word in the Scriptures; through the fact of baptism; through other sacraments which they recognize.”

1. The non-Christian may not be blamed for his ignorance of Christ and his Church; salvation is open to him also, if he seeks God sincerely and if he follows the commands of his conscience, for through this means the Holy Ghost acts upon all men; this divine action is not confined within the limited boundaries of the visible Church." 6

Using Google, I found this quote at the “Religious Tolerance” website, which in turn got the quote from “…notes [which] are intended as an AID to study by Catholic Students of the Second Vatican Council. They contain material, some written in a journalistic style, for the American reader. To that extent they are biased; but they ‘set the stage’ and ‘wet the appetite’ for further study of this crucial historical event.”

Interesting summary, though.

 

[briand]

kfarose2585:

I realize that we cannot know God’s mind, but I am wondering what your opinions/beliefs are on this matter: if a person is not Christian, are they automatically stripped of the possibility of reaching Heaven? Or are there exceptions, like the pious and loving mountain man who has never even heard of God, but who is always sacrficing himself for others? What about Buddhists and Jews and repentant, confused atheists? Does the Church teach anything on this matter?

I often struggle with this, I would understand and actually would agree if God sent me to hell. In my old faith community we were often told the almost all the world will go to hell, about 99.999 % of all living souls will be sent to hell, then resurrected given new bodies and sent back to hell for ever with no chance. In fact only those who accepted Jesus, understood the trinity fully, understood all aspects of the atonement and on and on might have a very slim chance.

It got so bad I could not look at people in the eye thinking that I would see them tortured forever and ever and while I was in heaven I would see then tortured and I would want to see it and gain a type of joy from it. Now they never worded it this way but it was what was taught.

When my father died, a very horrible long death I remember seeing his face, how tortured he was. I thought he went to hell and it ripped by guts out that I did not do enough to convert him and his blood would be on my soul. As for now I don’t get it. I saw the passion of the Christ. I wept so much in that movie, not as much for Jesus suffering, as I understood to the very core of my soul that His Death was not enough.

 

[Peace-bwu]

The last I studied about the topic, the Catholic Church is the Church Christ established, it is the only Church that holds ALL of Sacred Tradition as given to us by the Apostles. Most Christian churches have some elements of the truth of the Catholic Church in their denominations… People who are saved are saved through their connection to the Catholic Church. If they use a Bible they are using part of Sacred Tradition, if they have any element present it the Catholic Church it is because the denomination is a schism of the Catholic church they are protesting. (To put it simply , they kept some Sacred Tradition and tossed the rest to fit their theology.) So we can say that it is through their connection with the Catholic Church that they know Christ, whether they care to admit it or not, the historical truth is clear on this subject. Some other posts have given the criteria for someone who intentionally turns away from this truth. A protestant, or anyone else who is ignorant of the truth and what they are turning away from is not damned to hell.
I have faith in the Divine Mercy of Jesus!

 

[asquared]

If you wish to initiate a discussion of this topic, why would you begin by soliciting my opinion? My opinion, yours, or that of any other participant is worthless. Thankfully some (not all) posters are responding by quoting and discussing relevant Church documents. I did not read this discussion before my question on Fr. Feeney on Apologetics, and search did not turn up this thread so I apologize for starting a similar thread.

 

[kfarose2585]

I was primarily looking for Church teachings (hence the last question in my original post), but I know that sometimes the Church leaves certain issues, to an extent, open to our interpretation. I wasn’t sure if this was one of them, so that is why I asked both for doctrine and individual beliefs.

 

[larryo]

Vincent:

We can’t choose what we don’t know. Correspondingly, neither can we reject what we don’t know.

If it takes full knowledge, as well as complete consent, for a person to be mortally culpable for a grave act, then “damnation by ignorance” seems to be ruled out. On the other hand, it does not mean “salvation by ignorance,” either.

A person who knowingly and willingly rejects the Catholic Faith cannot be saved.

While salvation is possible to the ignorant non-Catholic, it does not necessarily follow that he will be saved. One cannot infer certainty from what is merely potential. That is why we can’t say that ignorance “saves” a person. It can’t. At all.

Being outside the Church, even in ignorance, is never a good thing. A non-Catholic ignorant of Christ and His Church can easily be damned for doing something he knows is definitely wrong.

Your reply is correct and in accordance with Church teaching as set forth in the *Catechism, *paragraphs 846 and 847. Specifically, the text states, “…they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” The *Catechism *goes on to state: “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience–those too may achieve eternal salvation.”