Anyway, back on track. What I have stumbled across is that many Catholics believe that Catholicism is the ONLY way to have divine faith and truly be saved. Please correct me if I’m wrong. But as far as another question on this:
Why would I have to raise my kids Catholic if that is not the denomination I wished to join? And, would it really be that bad if she converted over to another denomination? In this, I want to point out that I find it strange to say, “convert”. In reading the boards I have often seen people referring to converting to other denominations, reconverting back to Catholicism, or trying to convert people to Catholicism. Why not convert people to Christ?
Catholics believe in a doctrine of “No salvation outside the Catholic Church”. We believe that the Catholic Church contains the
full truth about Christianity, without any error, and other denominations either lack some elements or are in error to differing degrees. I know that this phrase tends to evoke a lot of emotions in non-Catholic Christians, HOWEVER… there is a VERY specific meaning to this phrase! When we say that there is “no salvation outside the Catholic Church”,
it does NOT mean that non-Catholics cannot be saved! (Or even non-Christians!) It means that they might be saved in SPITE of a lack of full and complete knowledge. They will be doing the will of God, as passed down through the Bible and proclaimed most fully through the Catholic Church, without even realizing it. It’s akin to this. Imagine the Catholic Church as a 16 year old who goes out and buys a brand new car. They read the entire instruction manual, sign up and take driving lessons, and successfully make it to school. Now, imagine other groups are 16 year olds who go out and buy used cars. They have only partial instruction manuals, or perhaps no instruction manual at all. Some get lessons, but some do not. Now, they
may eventually make it safely to school as well, but if school represents the Kingdom of Heaven, which route is the safer choice? If they DO make it to school, it will be by unintentionally following the rules that were in the book they never read and the lessons they never signed up for. (In other words, they were still saved THROUGH the Catholic Church).
The key here is that the non-Catholic must be “invincibly ignorant”. In other words, they are trying to follow God the best that they can, but through no fault of their own, they are unaware of the full truth of Catholicism. This could pertain, for example, to a Native American in the time before Columbus (as perhaps the most obvious example). There is no possible way that he or she could know about Christianity, so if they tried to follow God to the best of their ability, there would be at least a
chance, even if remote, that they could be saved. However, for Catholics that understand the faith and willfully leave it, this would risking damnation by rejecting known truths about God and Christianity (although we can never
truly know the state of their soul).Because of this, Catholics suspect (although again, we do not know and do not judge) that many of the first generation of Reformers
may have endangered or lost their salvation. This would NOT, however, apply to subsequent generations, because they could very likely be invincibly ignorant of the truth of Catholicism, since they would be taught from birth to reject it. They would not know any better, and they would be following Christianity the best they know how. The difficulty in achieving salvation would likely increase the further the beliefs of their denomination or religion differed from Catholicism.
As an example, Catholics believe that sin can be removed in three ways. One is through Baptism, although this can only be done one time. Another is through Confession. Finally, one could make a direct appeal to God through an Act of Perfect Contrition. To do this, one must be free of ALL remaining attachment to sin. In other words, one must be truly sorry for the sin, without even the slightest lingering fondness for the memory of it. Further, one must be sorry not JUST because they fear an eternity in hell, but because they are truly sorry for offending God. Now… a
true Act of Perfect Contrition is quite difficult to make, but fortunately, Catholics have the Sacrament of Confession available to us (as do the Orthodox, I might add). Catholics can know with certainty that their sins were forgiven, but might always second guess an Act of Perfect Contrition. It
may have been perfect, but we don’t really know. If you believe what Catholics teach, then Protestants and non-Christians don’t have access to Confession, and might not even know what an Act of Perfect Contrition is or how to make it. So… if they EVER committed a mortal sin (even just once), there would be no way for them to remove it (to their knowledge), and they would risk eternal damnation. Now, to what standard they would be held is unknown, because in order for something to be a sin, you have to KNOW it’s a sin and willfully do it. It
might be necessary for a person to refrain from mortal sin perfectly for their entire life without a slip-up, although we have know way of knowing precisely how merciful God would be to them in the end.
Can you start to see the problem? While Catholics and Protestants are both Christian, they speak with an entirely different lingo and look at Christianity from different points of view. Catholics have a sacramental view of Christianity, while Protestants have more of a personal relationship. If a Protestant changed to another denomination, it’s likely most other Protestants would believe that they were still Christian and saved. For a Catholic (or Orthodox) to do this, it would be tantamount to risking their eternal soul, because we believe the errors in belief by Protestants to be significant enough that they could
possibly endanger their salvation.
