Where do souls of non-Christian go after they die?

[QwertyGirl]

Of course nobody knows for sure, but it is interesting to speculate.

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

AND

by definition, Invincible means

• Subject is highly difficult to know and no matter the effort they can’t understand the subject matter
• Evidence or information is scarce
• Insufficient mental ability by the individual

The 3rd point describes very few people in society.

Here’s a hint that we often must remember, when we’re talking about specialized fields, as well as jargon that originates in other languages:

The term comes from the Latin. In this context, I would argue, it means merely what it says: “not overcome”. This is ignorance that is not overcome.

Here’s a hint in return,

“NOT OVERCOME” & “Subject is highly difficult to know and no matter the effort they can’t understand the subject matter” is a distinction without a difference.

Gorgias:

Oh, my. You really haven’t read it, have you?

Newman recognizes the English Historian Edward Gibbon

“{8} It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”

Gorgias:

you quoted Lumen gentium.
This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful.

It doesn’t stop there. It identifies ALSO those who are NOT Catholic faithful by saying "would refuse to enter or to remain in it, "

“to enter it” means they aren’t in it NOW. That = non-Catholics

Newman’s phrase (above) is soooo simple AND true.

Gorgias:

the arguments you’ve been attempting to make are that there is an obligation to study theology, not history.

It’s not either/or.

(emphasis mine)
“The Church’s moral theology has always distinguished between objective or material sin and formal sin. The person who holds something contrary to the Catholic faith is materially a heretic. They possess the matter of heresy, theological error. Thus, prior to the Second Vatican Council it was quite common to speak of non-Catholic Christians as heretics, since many of their doctrines are objectively contrary to Catholic teaching. This theological distinction remains true, though in keeping with the pastoral charity of the Council today we use the term heretic only to describe those who willingly embrace what they know to be contrary to revealed truth. Such persons are formally (in their conscience before God) guilty of heresy”. Source , Author Colin B. Donovan, STL

one moves from material heretic to formal heretic after one is baptized, AND is/becomes knowledgeable of the truth and won’t accept it…

 

[goout]

steve-b:
You can dance all day long for the next 50 years and post the whole catechism, and it won’t change the fact that you misrepresent the Church’s use of the word heretic in regard to protestants.

Let me just repeat it for those reading since you are impervious to it:
You are wrong to use the word heretic in regards to protestants, end of story.
(repetitive citations omitted …)

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:
You can dance all day long for the next 50 years and post the whole catechism, and it won’t change the fact that you misrepresent the Church’s use of the word heretic in regard to protestants.

Let me just repeat it for those reading since you are impervious to it:
You are wrong to use the word heretic in regards to protestants, end of story.
(repetitive citations omitted …)

Protestantism is material heresy. The Great Heresies | Catholic Answers

Do you know the difference between material and formal heresy? Becaise I already posted this to you HERE and maybe you didn’t know what Coli n was saying

 

[goout]

goout:

steve-b:
You can dance all day long for the next 50 years and post the whole catechism, and it won’t change the fact that you misrepresent the Church’s use of the word heretic in regard to protestants.

Let me just repeat it for those reading since you are impervious to it:
You are wrong to use the word heretic in regards to protestants, end of story.
(repetitive citations omitted …)

Protestantism is material heresy. The Great Heresies | Catholic Answers

Do you know the difference between material and formal heresy?

Steve why don’t you just stop? Serious question.

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

goout:

steve-b:
You can dance all day long for the next 50 years and post the whole catechism, and it won’t change the fact that you misrepresent the Church’s use of the word heretic in regard to protestants.

Let me just repeat it for those reading since you are impervious to it:
You are wrong to use the word heretic in regards to protestants, end of story.
(repetitive citations omitted …)

Protestantism is material heresy. The Great Heresies | Catholic Answers

Do you know the difference between material and formal heresy?

Steve why don’t you just stop? Serious question.

You’re the one who challenged me

 

[goout]

The misrepresentation of Catholic teaching needs to be pointed out, for your own sake and for those reading who get wrong impressions about Catholic belief.
Done. Repeatedly.
Have a blessed day Steve.

 

[steve-b]

goout:

steve-b:

goout:

steve-b:
You can dance all day long for the next 50 years and post the whole catechism, and it won’t change the fact that you misrepresent the Church’s use of the word heretic in regard to protestants.

Let me just repeat it for those reading since you are impervious to it:
You are wrong to use the word heretic in regards to protestants, end of story.
(repetitive citations omitted …)

Protestantism is material heresy. The Great Heresies | Catholic Answers

Do you know the difference between material and formal heresy?

Steve why don’t you just stop? Serious question.

You’re the one who challenged me

Look at this sequence of posts. You challenged me so I answered.

 

[steve-b]

The misrepresentation of Catholic teaching needs to be pointed out, for your own sake and for those reading who get wrong impressions about Catholic belief.
Done. Repeatedly.
Have a blessed day Steve.

I have 26 posts on this thread. I quoted all my references properly referenced. They are ALL Catholic sources.

 

[goout]

goout:

The misrepresentation of Catholic teaching needs to be pointed out, for your own sake and for those reading who get wrong impressions about Catholic belief.
Done. Repeatedly.
Have a blessed day Steve.

I have 26 posts on this thread. I quoted all my references properly referenced. They are ALL Catholic sources.

Congratulations to you.

 

[RobynP]

I just wanted to share this homily by Pope Benedict XVI that I think answers the question of this thread beautifully and also addresses the core of the reason some Catholics want to insist that they know who is invincibly ignorant and who is damned:

If we are honest, we will have to admit that [the salvation of non-Catholics] is not our problem at all. The question we have to face is not that of whether other people can be saved and how…

The question that torments us is, much rather, that of why it is still actually necessary for us to carry out the whole ministry of the Christian faith—why, if there are so many other ways to heaven and to salvation, should it still be demanded of us that we bear, day by day, the whole burden of ecclesiastical dogma and ecclesiastical ethics? And with that, we are once more confronted, though from a different approach, with the same question we raised yesterday in conversation with God. What actually is the Christian reality?..

…If we are raising the question of the basis and meaning of our life as Christians, as it emerged for us just now, then this can easily conceal a sidelong glance at what we suppose to be the easier and more comfortable life of other people, who will “also” get to heaven. We are too much like the workers taken on in the first hour whom the Lord talks about in his parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20:1-6)… We are staring at the trials of everyday Christianity and forgetting on that account that faith is not just a burden that weighs us down; it is…a light that brings us counsel, gives us a path to follow, and gives us meaning. We are seeing in the Church only the exterior order that limits our freedom and thereby overlooking the fact that she is our spiritual home, which shields us, keeps us safe in life and in death. We are seeing only our own burden and forgetting that other people also have burdens, even if we know nothing of them. And above all, what a strange attitude that actually is, when we no longer find Christian service worthwhile if the denarius of salvation may be obtained even without it! It seems as if we want to be rewarded, not just with our own salvation, but most especially with other people’s damnation—just like the workers hired in the first hour. That is very human, but the Lord’s parable is particularly meant to make us quite aware of how profoundly un-Christian it is at the same time. Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because that kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God.

Are Non-Christians Saved?

In a 1964 sermon, the Catholic priest who later became pope discussed whether there is salvation outside the Church.

www.beliefnet.com

 

[on_the_hill]

The food court at the mall.
At first it looks great because you’re so hungry, but then you realize you don’t really want to eat any of the generic factory-made unhealthy food they sell, and the chairs are really uncomfortable.

 

[goout]

Nice find. Thanks

 

[RobynP]

It’s from this book which is a collections of his homilies while he was still a priest in Germany. Such good stuff!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004FV4TW0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

 

[steve-b]

I just wanted to share this homily by Pope Benedict XVI that I think answers the question of this thread beautifully and also addresses the core of the reason some Catholics want to insist that they know who is invincibly ignorant and who is damned:

[snip for space]

Mar 2016

now Emeritus Benedict XVI, gave an interview. It looks like he qualified that which he said THEN, before becoming pope, as well as the direction he notes that things go conversationally today, and in extension the message being sent…

HERE

Excerpts: from the article

Pope Benedict asks the piercing question that arose after this palpable change of attitude of the Church: “Why should you try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it?”

Catholics themselves, in Benedict’s eyes, are less attached to their Faith: If there are those who can save their souls with other means, “why should the Christian be bound to the necessity of the Christian Faith and its morality?” asked the pope. And he concludes: “But if Faith and Salvation are not any more interdependent, even Faith becomes less motivating.”

Pope Benedict also refutes both the idea of the “anonymous Christian” as developed by Karl Rahner, as well as the indifferentist idea that all religions are equally valuable and helpful to attain eternal life.

“Even less acceptable is the solution proposed by the pluralistic theories of religion, for which all religions, each in its own way, would be ways of salvation and, in this sense, must be considered equivalent in their effects,” he said. In this context, he also touches upon the exploratory ideas of the now-deceased Jesuit Cardinal, Henri de Lubac, about Christ’s putatively “vicarious substitutions” which have to be now again “further reflected upon.”

In extension getting down to specifics , the question with these “new” relative and indifferent ideas
Why be Catholic?

Seems to me, Benedict is saying, Church documents have not only been badly misapplied, but even distorted to fit certain people’s agendas.

 

[RobynP]

I’m…not really seeing how any of that contradicts the homily I shared but ok.

 

[Gorgias]

“NOT OVERCOME” & “Subject is highly difficult to know and no matter the effort they can’t understand the subject matter” is a distinction without a difference.

No. “Not overcome” is an assertion that does not specify a cause. “Highly difficult to know” or “can’t understand the subject matter” are causes. So… distinction and difference.

It doesn’t stop there. It identifies ALSO those who are NOT Catholic faithful by saying "would refuse to enter or to remain in it, "

“ to enter it ” means they aren’t in it NOW. That = non-Catholics

Good point. Yet, it’s the statement of a teaching that proceeds from the principle that’s being discussed. Where would you place this statement within the context of LG, given that its structure is Catholics / non-Catholic Christians /Jews, Muslims, other unbaptized …?

Nevertheless, the thrust of the paragraph you’re quoting is the Catholic faithful.

It’s not either/or.

Oh! OK, then… please show me the magisterial quote binding persons, upon pain of heresy, to study history? I’ll wait while you find it…

 

[steve-b]

I’m…not really seeing how any of that contradicts the homily I shared but ok.

Moving from when Ratzinger was a priest to post papacy as emeritus Benedict XVI, he made the following statement in a reflection in the interview (link given)

Excerpt:

"While the fathers and theologians of the Middle Ages could still be of the opinion that, essentially, the whole human race had become Catholic and that paganism existed now only on the margins, the discovery of the New World at the beginning of the modern era radically changed perspectives.
In the second half of the last century it has been fully affirmed the understanding that God cannot let go to perdition all the unbaptized and that even a purely natural happiness for them does not represent a real answer to the question of human existence.
If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were still convinced that those who are not baptized are forever lost — and this explains their missionary commitment — in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was finally abandoned.

From this came a deep double crisis.

On the one hand this seems to remove any motivation for a future missionary commitment. Why should one try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it? But also for Christians an issue emerged: the obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life began to seem uncertain and problematic.
If there are those who can save themselves in other ways, it is not clear, in the final analysis, why the Christian himself is bound by the requirements of the Christian faith and its morals. If faith and salvation are no longer interdependent, faith itself become unmotivated.
Lately several attempts have been formulated in order to reconcile the universal necessity of the Christian faith with the opportunity to save oneself without it."

IOW development of bad theology leads to expected bad results in the Church, and in extension the faithful.

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

“NOT OVERCOME” & “Subject is highly difficult to know and no matter the effort they can’t understand the subject matter” is a distinction without a difference.

No. “Not overcome” is an assertion that does not specify a cause. “Highly difficult to know” or “can’t understand the subject matter” are causes. So… distinction and difference.

If you’re going to play that card, both are effects. Therefore a distinction without a difference

It doesn’t stop there. It identifies ALSO those who are NOT Catholic faithful by saying "would refuse to enter or to remain in it, "

“ to enter it ” means they aren’t in it NOW. That = non-Catholics

Gorgias:

Good point. Yet, it’s the statement of a teaching that proceeds from the principle that’s being discussed. Where would you place this statement within the context of LG, given that its structure is Catholics / non-Catholic Christians /Jews, Muslims, other unbaptized …?

“Whosoever” covers Catholic and non-Catholic.

Gorgias:

Nevertheless, the thrust of the paragraph you’re quoting is the Catholic faithful.

It begins that way. It ends with the thrust of (in or not in), as in whosoever, as in EVERYONE, whether in or out.

It’s not either/or.

Gorgias:

Oh! OK, then… please show me the magisterial quote binding persons, upon pain of heresy, to study history? I’ll wait while you find it…

taking this in steps

For example, Is scripture also History? Yes.

Also

Re: History on its own,

Take your pick on what can be gleaned http://ccc.scborromeo.org.master.com/texis/master/search/?sufs=0&q=history&xsubmit=Search&s=SS

As for one’s ignorance of things they need to know but deliberately won’t learn them, nor take the subject seriously, …

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.” In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

 

[goout]

So for instance, when one knows the Church’s position on a particular teaching, but uses her teaching to promote false ideas?
Does 1791 apply to that person?
I am just curious.