Is there an official document I can look at concerning this? This seems rather silly. I fully know what the Catholic Church teaches regarding the Papacy, Mary, the Eucharist, etc. I also fully understand exactly what these terms mean and how the RCC defines them. With all that, I fully reject what the Catholic Church teaches. These seems equal to saying, “Well, Oneness Pentecostals know what the Trinity is, but they reject it. However, since they can’t fully “know know” what it means, they aren’t damned.” I don’t know that anyone would really agree with that.
Well, it just means that, as humans, we can easily enough remain ignorant of one truth or another, specifically if there are competing forces such as upbringing, negative experiences, etc. The Church calls this “invincible ignorance”. The following excerpt from the Catechism is relevant here:
**IV. ERRONEOUS JUDGMENT
1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.
1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin."59 In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.
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.
1793 If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.
1794 A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true faith, for charity proceeds at the same time "from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith."60
Code:
The more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by objective standards of moral conduct.61 **
Also, there is good information about mortal sin and it’s requirements beginning at paragraph 1854. Here is the teaching on The Churches role in our salvation:
**“Outside the Church there is no salvation”
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Code:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Code:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337
848 "Although 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, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."338 **
Beginning on paragraph 839, the Catechism teaches about the Church’s relationship to non-Christians.
However, how could a heretic be a part of the Mystical Body of Christ? Do only some heresies result in damnation, but others do not? I do not understand how a heretic could be a member of the Mystical Body of Christ.