But the main thing is that it is not the teaching of the Church.
Only since Vatican II...Countless numbers of Christians have been slaughtered for failure to bow down to your pope in times past...
And NOW, we are looked at as the 'red-headed step child'...
But I believe 'that' position is taken only to appease the 'almost' Catholic, Protestant groups to try to win them back to your group...
There is still plenty of literature on the Net, which shows that your church's position is that there is 'still' NO salvation outside the Catholic church...There are Catholics on these threads who have indicated they believe the same thing...
This has been discussed into the ground. Dante has non-Catholics in Heaven. He didn't get in trouble for that.
Whether you agree with us or not, OUR thinking, FWIW, about the Church is that it is not just some association of like-minded people, like Rotarians with hymns. The whole company of Heaven make up the largest part of the Church. By definition, if you're in heaven, you're in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I'm not asking you to agree, only to understand that what our thought structure is when we say you can't be in Heaven without being in the Church.
If you want to know what we think and have thought BEFORE you disagree with it, The next to latest First Things has an article by Cardinal Dulles which gives a whirl-wind tour of the past couple of millenia of Catholic thought on the matter.
Again, I don't recommend this in an attempt to persuade you of the rightness of our position, but to assist you if you would care to know what our position actually is.