Some things I've learned about invincible ignorance.

[NorthTexan88]

This topic confused me a great deal when I first became Catholic.
This is pretty much how I look at invincible ignorance now, personally at least.

I went through 2,000 years of Church history, read quotes from saints, and read up on the doctrine of outside the Church there is no salvation. This is pretty much what I came up with, this is how I look at it and it makes sense to me:

1. There is NO salvation outside of the Roman Catholic Church- this is a dogma & must be believed
2. There ARE exceptions to this
3. We do not know these exceptions, only God knows
4. Never assume that someone is saved through invincible ignorance
5. Evangelize like crazy in assumption that invincible ignorance will not save people

I stopped asking myself how will God possibly save the people in my family, who are 99% protestant, and I started evangelizing them to bring them into the Church, and I have been met with a good deal of success.

 

[CradleJourney]

Ah, but the argument of “do your best according to your conscience” raises the issue of what a “correct” - that is, Godly - conscience is.

The terrorist who kills 100 people, including himself, in a bombing is utterly convinced of the rightness of his act. He sees it as a sacrifice which is pleasing and laudatory to God. Yet we cannot, in our own good conscience, say that there’s a good chance God will let him off the hook since he thought he was doing the right thing.

I’m not sure if it’s Catholic teaching, or my own experience and belief speaking here, so please bear with me. But doesn’t God work all things toward good, thus wouldn’t he give every individual (even the terrorist) the chance to make various choices in their lives that lead either toward or away from Him (even if they never find out exactly who He is)? And so while the terrorist may have convinced himself that it is pleasing to God, he still, at some point - probably many, presented with chances to turn away from the path that lead him to that conviction. The determination to plow ahead with what he (the terrorist) thought best rather than to be open to those other influences (parents/neighbors/friends/non-terrorist writings/moderate teachers of his religion/etc.) is what would lead to his being in trouble with God.

(Hopefully that idea made sense … often have trouble moving ideas from heart to brain to computer screen).

Wouldn’t invincible ignorance be simply the recognition that because we are human, and only perceive the world from our point of view, we cannot 100% say that someone, somewhere, is not squarely on their path to God - even though we cannot see it and even though their journey here on earth might be ended before they “get there” … maybe even by that hypothetical terrorist?

 

[Nabooru]

I think we can take hints on what might happen to a person. We cannot say to a person, “I know that God is personally sending you to Heaven/Hell.” But I do believe we can make an educated guess.