So are you saying that even though I try my best to live a Christian life and believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, if I knowingly reject the Catholic Church and go to my Church every Sunday, I will go to hell?
I understood Houghton M. to say that only God knows and it is God who judges us.
Relax. Ten-to-one you are invincibly ignorant, that is, even though you think you are rejecting the Catholic Church knowingly, you have never really made the acquaintance of the Catholic Church and her teachings. You are rejecting a figment, an invention.
Of course, if you actually stop for a moment and honestly ask yourself, “just what do I really know?” “Where has my information come from?” “Is it accurate?” “What does the Catholic Church really believe?”
if you started asking those questions and honestly pursued them, you might realize you’ve been living with a false understanding of the Catholic Church. And then you’d have an obligation for the sake of Truth to find out the Truth.
So, if your conscience doesn’t bother you, if you don’t have a little twinge of remorse or question, you’re probably safe. Unless, of course, you’ve already had those twinges and in some deep way are aware that you’ve been scammed by the information about the Church you’ve been given.
You probably shouldn’t have responded to me. The more you get into this, the less you’ll be able to plead invincible ignorance.
But for now, you’re probably okay. I’m just a die-hard Catholic apologist, you don’t need to open your mind to what I say, you already know Catholicism is wrong.
You’re the one who has to decide whether you’ve openly and honestly searched for the truth about Catholicism or not. I don’t have the faintest idea whether you have not. I’m glad I don’t have to decide. Someone Else does.
But a lot of non-Catholics will be saved and a lot of people formally Catholic will be damned. For the same reason: they didn’t really care about finding out the truth and living according to it.