Non-catholics going to heaven?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ConnorMM
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

ConnorMM

Guest
Are the situations in which non-Catholics are able to get to heaven ever stated or referenced in the Bible or Church doctrine
 
Last edited:
Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life nobody comes to the Father except through me.” Wednesday’s Gospel reading (5/8/19) fromJohn chapter 6 holds the promise “I will not reject anybody who comes to me.”
Tis Bearself referenced the Catechism. “for the gifts and the call are irrerocable” when it come to the Jewish people when it comes to the establishment of the Old Covenant. [CCC839]. Muslims who also worship the one true God are also mentioned, as well as those who have not yet received the good news of the Gospel.
God sent His own Son that all might be saved. That does not negate that truth that outside the “Church there is no Salvation.”
I have always heard this teaching stated in positive terms, as it is also stated in the Catechim. I am not my brother’s judge. It is God who judges. It is Christ who sits on the Judgement seat, who died for the salvation of all men. It is Christ who is the Head of the Church, the Body of Christ.
 
It depends what you mean by non-Catholics. There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church is the only true communion of faith and charity, and without those, one cannot be saved. It is possible for a person to be united to the Church by faith and charity without formally or explicitly professing to be a member of the Church. (below, CCC references=Catechism of the Catholic Church).

Faith properly orders our relationship to God: "By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. (CCC 143).

Because of this, faith is absolutely, without exception, necessary for salvation:

CCC
161 Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation.42 "Since “without faith it is impossible to please [God]” and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life ‘But he who endures to the end.’"43
Click to expand...
Faith is “a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed.” (CCC 150). In particular, as the quoted paragraph above states, this means faith in Christ, since Christ “is the Father’s one, perfect and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one” (CCC 65); “what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son” (CCC 65, quoting St. John of the Cross).

Even if in good conscience, people in non-Christian religions cannot have faith–they simply do not believe what God has revealed. Their belief is merely “religious experience still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking assent to God who reveals himself” and therefore “the distinction between theological faith and belief in the other religions, must be firmly held.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus 7).

Since they lack faith, persons who remain in such a situation until death could not be saved. However, we do acknowledge that, for those in good conscience seeking to follow the truth, “in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him.” (CCC 848). This may even happen only at the “eleventh hour” (cf. Matt. 20:6).

But even if one has faith in Christ, deliberately denying any revealed truth (heresy–a sin of separation from the Church) destroys faith altogether, since one is no longer assenting to God the revealer, but trusting one’s own judgment: “Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity.” (Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei 48). On the flip side, because faith is one, if one has faith in Christ–who is the fullness of revelation–faith is not destroyed by innocent ignorance about the various articles of faith: “there is no difference in the faith of ‘those able to discourse of it at length’ and ‘those who speak but little’, between the greater and the less: the first cannot increase the faith, nor the second diminish it.” (Lumen Fidei 47, quoting St. Irenaeus).
 
Last edited:
Just to add to my post above, charity is of course also necessary for salvation: “At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love” (CCC 1022, quoting St. John of the Cross). Schism, another “sin of separation” ruptures ecclesiastical charity, as St. Augustine noted: “By false doctrines concerning God heretics wound faith, by iniquitous dissensions schismatics deviate from fraternal charity, although they believe what we believe” (On Faith and the Creed 9).

So to sum up, “non-Catholics” can only be saved if they are united to us in charity and the one faith. Otherwise they cannot be saved.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top