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To: Rutles4Ever
You are correct in one sense, but I think you're wrong in another.

Your argument is not with me, I just quoted infallible doctrinal statements of the Church.

you are discounting the power of God to provide the dying soul with enough enlightenment at the moment of death to choose or reject the Church.

None of the doctrinal statements I quoted do that. In fact, from Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441, : "unless before death they are joined with Her", pretty much covers it. We cannot say any particular person is in hell with certainty, but we do know that there are souls there. I think it's best not to leave it up to chance counting on last minute graces. If a person has refused God's grace all throughout life, and remained outside the Church, I think it unlikely that he will have a sudden about face at the moment before death, but I don't deny the possibility, nor the possibility of God sending St. Peter himself to baptize him.

51 posted on 06/21/2006 5:49:24 PM PDT by murphE (These are days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed but his own. --G.K. Chesterton)
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To: murphE
If a person has refused God's grace all throughout life, and remained outside the Church, I think it unlikely that he will have a sudden about face at the moment before death, but I don't deny the possibility, nor the possibility of God sending St. Peter himself to baptize him.

Ah, there's the rub. I agree that if someone has refused God's grace, they will be culpable, but there's no denying that there are many who have not been offered that grace, and are invincibly ignorant. Those are the people I'm referring to when I refer to an extraordinary grace offered by God at the moment of death. I'm not discounting what Boniface said, but there needs to be some clarification for the sake of those who think the Church believes every man, woman, and child on earth who doesn't receive the sacraments is going to hell. That's just not true.

75 posted on 06/22/2006 8:59:06 AM PDT by Rutles4Ever
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