I think I need to clarify some things.
I suppose that there could be persons who are objectively <= 2.0 but are not fully culpable because of innocent intellectual and/or psychological impediments.
For example, Joe had to listen to his little sister scream horribly as she slowly died in his parent’s house’s fire, and consquently, he cannot believe that a good God would allow this, and so he becomes atheist.
Or another person is a deist because they have not learned the true understanding of the meaning of suffering (i.e, from the Catholic Church), so that, in light of physical evil, which seems indifferent to the moral condition of the recipients of its wrath, they conclude that since God must be good, and good people suffer physical evil that seems senseless, they conclude that God does not interfere with the Creation, seeing as this would be the only logical conclusion that can be inferred.
So, again, I suppose there could be persons in conditions of <= 2.0 that are not fully culpable because they have innocent obstacles in intellect or will.
But, in general, it is understood in Catholicism that only persons who cross the threshold of death with sanctifying grace can go on to be with God eternally. Sanctifying grace implies the presence, at least implicitly, of three Theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.
Faith would seem to require some positive belief in a power beyond the mere physical realm. It would also seem to imply that the person accepts, in humility, that he cannot find all the answers to the meaning of life on his own, but that the divine power must impart something. He doesn’t need to be correct in where or how he thinks this takes place, he just needs to do the best he can to try to seek this revelation. This would seem to be absolutely required, since the idea that humanity can find the answers to its questions utterly independent of the divine is IMPLICITLY opposed to one of the foundational principles of Gospel: Jesus did not come to the world and say, “Hey, guys, you already know everything you need to know. I don’t need to tell you anything. You can figure it out by yourself.”
For what does salvation mean? It means we cannot save ourselves. That we need help, to be rescued. And how are we rescued? In intellect and will, for those the faculties of soul that need healing. How is our intellect saved or rescued? By receiving the light of God’s Revelation.
This leads to the second problem, which is the other faculty, the will. For even after it is revealed to us WHAT we need to know and WHAT we need to do in our intellect, our WILLS need the POWER to carry out these things, to live in this light. And that requires GRACE, assistance, life, from God, or at least from the Divine.
Therefore, it would seem that neither a deist nor a rationalist can be with God if they refuse, respectively, to admit they need divine assistance to be moral and that they need revelation from the divine to know what it is they should do, who the divine is, and how they relate to Him.
In conclusion, I am not here to condemn individuals who may be “<= 2.0”, for the obstacles that keep them from being brought above “2.0” may be innocent, a pain, a wound. But it would seem that this wound would have to be healed in some sense, at least partially, before death.
Also, the people in heaven are A+ because they are morally perfect and incapable of sinning and because, seeing as they see God face to face, they know and understand all doctrine, even those that have not yet been resolved by the Church formally.
From there, I give don’t give Catholicism on earth an A+ because, as it were, doctrinal development is not yet complete and because we all have concupiscence and because most of us, including especially me, a poor sinner, have not reached the unitive phase of the saint.
I also thought it might help for me to post the following link on my site that discusses the notion of the
salvation of non-Christians.
I hope this helps clarify.
