Just so we’re clear, it (this thread I started) was never a question of final destination, it was a question of the internal logic used in each. If A+B=C works for proclaiming OCAC, why not for OSAS? As I said earlier, I think we established early on that the problem isn’t the logic, but rather the premises we start out with. A Catholic and a Protestant assign different levels of importance and effect to faith on the one hand, and sacraments of initiation on the other.
But what you just said does lead to an interesting question, which is: what do Catholics gain by saying OCAC, since all it means is one is still bound by canon law, but is violating it by going to another church etc, therefore being consistently in mortal sin, and therefore likely going to hell?
One last thing: as someone pointed out earlier, from about 1983 to 2010, you could fill out a form that would declare a formal resignation from the Catholic Church, at which point the CC would consider you free from canon law. So for 27 years, OCAC was not the case, according to Rome. For 27 years, Confirmation didn’t have the indelible character attributed to it in this discussion.
Being saved and being Catholic are two entirely different things–why do you think that we need to regard them the same way?
Look at it this way: a woman becomes pregnant with a child. that child will always biologically be her child, no matter what happens or who raises the child. The child will carry that woman’s DNA.
That’s like what being Catholic is. Baptism makes a change in a person’s soul which stays there no matter what. There is no changing that mark.
The Catholic Church does not bind those who are baptized outside the Church to Her laws, because that would be putting a laying an unknown load on the person’s shoulders, in most cases unbeknownst to them.
Now, you have not clarified what you mean by “saved” in the phrase OSAS. What does it mean to become saved? How does one attain that state? Normally we take it that a person does something, frequently saying a prayer, sometimes going up to the front at a Protestant service, etc. and is then “saved,” and that this state of “being saved” means that no matter what they do from that time onward, they are guaranteed a place in Heaven because of having said that prayer or gone up at that service.
Whereas Catholics believe that baptism confers a state of grace (which one might say is like the state of “being saved”), bit that a person can *lose *that state of grace.
Most people who leave the Church don’t care what the Church thinks about them or what the Church’s rules are. It really only becomes an issue when the person wants to return to the Church and has since married in a way which violates Church rules.
But on this forum this becomes an issue when people caelessly call someone who has been baptized Catholic “not Catholic.” Most people understand when someone says, well, Mr baptized-Catholic, abortion-supporting politican is not really Catholic, but some people take issue with that because of the inaccuracy. One should instead say Mr BC AA pol is a *dissenting *Catholic, meaning not adhering to the teachings of the Church.
And it is important to remember that just because someone is Catholic, whether because of their baptism or because they were received into the Church, does not mean that they are automatically going to Heaven. I think it may have been St Augustine who said the road to Hell is paved with the skulls of *bishops. *
