But Jesus is the Truth, and He guaranteed that the Holy Spirit would lead His Church into all the Truth. Truth cannot be divided, else it is falsehood in whole or in part. Many of the things you mention *are* important, as they pertain to basic issues such as how one is saved. It is impossible, as well as illogical, to believe that such central issues "do not matter" to the Holy Spirit.
Jesus prayed for unity of belief and practice only hours before His torture and crucifixion. Given that He was God as well as Man, He knew what would shortly happen to Him. That would certainly preoccupy *me*, if I were in His shoes! Nevertheless, He maintained sufficient presence of mind to entreat His Father for unity in His Church at just this moment of excruciating anticipation. I submit that this provides much evidence that our orthodoxy and orthopraxis *are* very important in the mind of God.
St. Paul and other NT writers make many appeals to their hearers that they be united in doctrine. The issue of orthodoxy seems to have been important to them, as well. And we all believe that they were writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit!
The mandate to the Church to transform the social climate is nearly destroyed - gutted - by our lack of unity and consistency. No pagan, no agnostic, no Jew, no Muslim, no anybody is likely to pay much attention to us when we rail on against the perversion, immorality and ego-massaging "spirituality" going on all around us, even while we cannot even agree among ourselves what aspects of society are wrong or why they are wrong!
Why should outsiders take any stock in us? Look at things from their perspective. To them, "Christianity" is all of a piece, the distinctions we recognize are meaningless to them. So, what they hear is a maelstrom of conflicting, contradictory voices telling them that this or that is wrong or not wrong, this or that is right or not right. They can hardly decide just on this basis, and the lack of general credibility and sense of hypocrisy generated from this mash of conflicting voices only adds to their disinclination to take Christianity seriously! Our *mandate* from Christ to preach the Gospel to every creature is thereby nearly destroyed.
Yet, you seem to say that unity of belief and practice is not important.
"Yet, you seem to say that unity of belief and practice is not important."
I only seem to say that, but that is not what I say.
Or if it is what I have said, it is because I have written in extreme shorthand, in a website-length response, to a specific person raising a specific issue. I told him that I would address what he said when I had the chance, over the weekend, and I will tell you the same thing.
However, for the sake of clarity, I will answer this particular concern. I orthodoxy in faith important? Sure it's important. For one thing, it helps keep the momentum of the faith so that it reaches new ears, and that's important.
But is it ULTIMATELY important, in the final, fatal question of what happens when you die? Probably not very.
The Catholic Church expects that good people of all faiths and unbaptized babies and the like, do, somehow, end up in heaven because God is - in the end, in the final analysis, when all is said and done, ULTIMATELY - a loving and merciful father.
So, do the Hindus have much right, doctrinally, in their religion? No. Do Hindus go to heaven. Probably tens of millions of them do.
That's what I am thinking of when I say ULTIMATELY important.
And I don't think we should lose sight of that fact when we start bickering about orthodoxy. Orthodoxy and correct belief, faith and practice are important for many reasons, and they're important to God. But do only Catholics go to heaven? No. And the Church does not teach that they do.
The Church teaches "No salvation except through the Church". The Church also teaches that good pagans somehow do end up in Heaven, through the grace of the Father. These doctrines are actually NOT in collision, they only SEEM to be, when looked at shorthand.
Some folks want to force the shorthand and say that only Catholics go to heaven. And that is an error for a Catholic to say, because it isn't Church doctrine.
That's really the point I am drilling at.
There are things we argue about. And they're not unimportant. But when looking at ultimate things, first things, God probably takes into heaven a lot of unbaptised people who think that Jesus was a lunatic. They probably figure out they're wrong when they meet Jesus at the instant of death, and although they may be the very latest of the laborers to the field in the parable, they still end up getting the wage.
This doesn't mean we should dismantle the Church or that nothing matters. There are plenty of ways that having the real truth being fully taught in the world matters. For one thing, it actually does help the pagans and the Protestants and the Muslims and Jews in many direct, indirect and mystic ways.
But that wasn't what I was talking about.
The thread was about a Near-death experience. When we're talking about death, we're talking about ULTIMATE personal dispositions. And the truth is probably twofold: there are only Christians in heaven, but also that plenty of people who didn't die Christian are in heaven. And what happened to that minister, which is outside of the range of life discussed by the Bible and the traditional doctrines, is very probably the time, place and event for billions of otherwise good souls that lifts the scales and causes the conversion and baptism of faith. It is outside of OUR world and ability to reach, but in that transition state it is not outside of the reach of God and Jesus to reach and suddenly transform. We can't say much about that phase, because THAT'S not in Scripture or the tradition. The only way that we know about it is modern medicine snatching about 20,000 people back from the dead. It's arrogant for us to try to bind God in what God can do for a given soul at the instant of death, and what I am saying is that the apparently conflicting orthodox teachings of "No salvation outside of the Church", and Hindus in heaven is probably tied in the phase of life-to-death that this thread was about.
When we speak of ULTIMATE dispositions of individual souls, which is the only thing I was speaking about, orthodoxy might be a help, but what matters is the goodness of life and goodness of heart of the soul going back to God, regardless of where that soul lived on earth and regardless of what religion it grew up under and believed while alive. In a nutshell, the baptism of faith can occur during the transition to death, and the pain and agony and terror of death may well itself be a massive balloon payment on sin, a rather large chunck of purgatory.
We do not know.
But we have every cause to be optimistic.
Now I will stop.
I will give you and the other fellow a proper response over the weekend.