If you are a Christian, what is the real reason for you not being a Catholic? - 3

[CentralFLJames]

What you say is good but believe me I have lived closely to VERY GOOD people who didn’t believe in God. I am convinced they had implicit faith.

Why have they not received God’s gift of faith is a mystry.

There is really no mystery here Cinette. Because they have not yet been baptised. This is where Christians get their gift of faith sacramentally. It is just like Mary when she heard God’s message and truth, trusted Him and said “let it be done to me according to thy word”.

Baptism is a formal consent to receiving and accepting God’s gift of faith and from that day forward a person who lives in Christ and seeks to follow Him will grown and mature in faith.

There is also a case of baptism by desire (the good thief) and by blood (ref. The Holy Innocents slaughtered solely for Christ’s sake).

So it is possible that people living outside of The Church through no explicit rejection of it can actually receive their faith through a baptism of desire. Many of us have seen the basic goodness in others of people who likely are living a faith received in this manner.

James

 

[Cinette]

There is really no mystery here Cinette. Because they have not yet been baptised. This is where Christians get their gift of faith sacramentally. It is just like Mary when she heard God’s message and truth, trusted Him and said “let it be done to me according to thy word”.

Baptism is a formal consent to receiving and accepting God’s gift of faith and from that day forward a person who lives in Christ and seeks to follow Him will grown and mature in faith.

There is also a case of baptism by desire (the good thief) and by blood (ref. The Holy Innocents slaughtered solely for Christ’s sake).

So it is possible that people living outside of The Church through no explicit rejection of it can actually receive their faith through a baptism of desire. Many of us have seen the basic goodness in others of people who likely are living a faith received in this manner.

James

Thanks for that James. It is also thru no fault of their own that they are not baptised. But I think God has a plan. He is fair, and loving, and merciful…and he is a God of surprises

 

[guanophore]

Those words of St. Cyprian express a doctrine which depends for its validity on all kinds of things being true that Rome has rejected. Such as the fruitlessness of sacraments - such as baptism - conferred outside the Church. So the ancient quotation, & its modern use, do not match. Bishop Stephen of Rome destroys the Cyprianic position by insisting that heretics can confer baptism. So Cyprian is simply wrong, & was wrong in his own lifetime. So much for that quotation from him - it’s worthless, because it is not true.​

I don’t think these things are rejected. Scripture is clear about what the Church Teaches, that being that there is only One Body, One Church. Therefore, all who are in Christ are members of that one body. Those who are validly baptized are members of the Body. They may not know their mother, the Church. They are estranged foster children. Some of them are alienated from mother Church by their own animosity. However, it makes them no less her children. Just as all are subject to the Pope, whether they are rebellious subjects, or not.

 

[mike00077]

Catechism of the Catholic Church

1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

 

[distracted]

What you say is good but believe me I have lived closely to VERY GOOD people who didn’t believe in God. I am convinced they had implicit faith.

Why have they not received God’s gift of faith is a mystry.

it occurs to me that God makes all people “good” but not all people end up in Heaven… and also, the word 'good" needs to be defined & looked at… They may only “appear to be good” Who knows what they do when no one is looking…

gotta go.