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OK, I'll answer your last question, but please realize that nothing you posted gave evidence to the assertion that the Pope has called non-Catholics as "non-Christians".

What is the intent of a statement like this?

To reaffirm the teaching of the Church. As to WHY NOW, there's a good discussion of this going on at catholic.com. I refer you to http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=167828 starting with post #21 (I'd rather not copy posts by others verbatim on this board)

OK, I'll answer your last question, but please realize that nothing you posted gave evidence to the assertion that the Pope has called non-Catholics as "non-Christians".

Apparently I'm not doing a very good job at expressing myself, so I'll ask it this way:

Does the Catholic Church believe that non-Catholic Christians have a place in Heaven?

If so, why all the fuss about "proper/improper"?

And yes, I read through the posts on the link you gave me. It seems that even Catholics are disagreeing amongst themselves as to the meaning of the Pope's statement.