I grew up in the South. There are many devout Christians there. There is also an enormous amount of misinformation and ignorance about what the Catholic Church teaches and who she is. We were taught from very early on that “popery” was Anti-Christ, we spent an enormous amount of time on eschatological studies (I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the chart that chronologized the Rapture and Tribulation, with the picture of the Great White Throne on it), we were taught to pray for the conversion of Catholics. We were also taught, however, to call upon the Name of Jesus, to ask Him to save us in His Mercy, we were taught about sanctification of life (which is what Holy Mother Church would call the PROCESS of salvation anyway), we were taught about lives of charity (the Protestant insistance on justification by faith alone is NOT, as many Catholics alledge, cheap and easy grace in the minds of Protestants. Most protestants I grew up with lived lives of charity and certainly they cultivated hope. “Solo fide” had more pragmatically to do with the fact that they fervently believed that nothing could be added to what Jesus did for us on the Cross. Trent said this as well. Sometimes, I think we talk past each other), we were taught to seek Him daily and conform our lives to Him. My mother had the help of my devout and loving Baptist grandparents in raising us, and no one trusted and hoped in Jesus more than they did.
In those circumstances, when few Catholics were around and the ones who did didn’t engage in any evangelization at all, where at best we thought,“Those crazy Mary-worshipin’ Catholics” and at worst,“Great Whore of Babylon led by the Anti-Christ sitting in Satan’s seat,” where the entire culture is completely Calvinist/Anabaptist/Wesleyan/Campbellite in it’s orientation, where it is only begrudgingly admitted that there may be “some” Catholics in heaven, but that those are the “Christian ones” who got saved in a revival, but who were, sadly, too dumb to know a bad deal when they saw it or those who got “saved” in the Charismatic movement, I think that virtually by definition the ignorance is invincible. I think that has changed with the advent of EWTN (the Church owes Mother Angelica much), but I think people have been and are too suspicious (my folks can still remember Dr. Criswell saying that John Kennedy would be taking his marching orders from the Pope). I call that fairly invincible ignorance (still, only God can judge “invincibility”). There are times when I worry that my grandmother may be in hell (I despair at the bewilderment she must have felt upon coming there, this most loving and devout woman and I’ve honestly felt that I wouldn’t want to be where she isn’t), but then I honestly don’t see how she could be or how my grandfather will be (I still get the odd lecture about confessing my sins to a man when I should be confessing my sins to God, though he will admit that we’re now talking about Jesus more than Mary and that to his mind is a good thing), because all they knew of Catholicism was what they heard at funerals they attended. Those of you who grew up where Catholicism predominates may not be able to fully appreciate the cultural barriers in places where it doesn’t, esp. in rural American places that are not secularized in mindset, where people pray in restaurants, where ministers can mount the pulpit and by a single word defeat ballot initiatives to serve liqour by the drink, where high school kids have bible studies together before school, pray together, debate issues in the light of Scripture, and where you’re taught, by men that you love and reverence (when I told my childhood pastor, a truly gentle and wonderful man, that I had converted, he looked winded and sad) that “Romanism” is not only Anti-Christ, it’s also Anti-American, well, those are some high bars to jump. I was able to make the leap because I read history (recall what Cardinal Newman said). My grandfather has only read the newspaper, his Sunday school lesson, and the King James Version of the Bible. For my grandmother, you can add Reader’s Digest." In the end, we can only do for them what we do for ourselves: crave and ask for the Mercy of God in Christ Jesus.
Nonetheless, it is the clear teaching of the Church that salvation is normatively only found through Christ’s Church. God can act outside His Sacraments and Covenant, but it cannot be presumed that He will. The safest place is in the barque of Peter.
