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CS Lewis addressed this in “The Great Divorce,” a fascinating little book about heaven and hell, and who goes where and why.

People who cling to sin, who will not turn away from their vices, who treasure their faults (this is easier to do than you might think) keep themselves out of heaven. It is not God’s will that anyone stay out of heaven, but He allows people to choose where they want to be.

The book is very perceptive about what constitutes sin...

To use the child with matches analogy, if the parent corrects the child, keeps all matches away from the child, sooner or later the child will be older and have more freedom, and if the child still has the desire to play with matches, see things burn, if the child will not accept the correction from earlier, if the child ignores willfully the father’s loving teaching, then that child will likely be burned someday in spite of all the father tried to do.

Unless he put the child in a cage and allowed no matches near her, if she wants to burn things and explore fire, she will do so. Does the loving father want his daughter in a cage all her life? No. He wants the best for her: a free, life filled with happiness and no pain....

People who cling to sin, who will not turn away from their vices, who treasure their faults (this is easier to do than you might think) keep themselves out of heaven.

I totally agree.

It is not God’s will that anyone stay out of heaven, but He allows people to choose where they want to be.

Given that God certainly has the power to choose for Himself who He wants to be with Him, if He passes that decision to man, doesn't that mean that God doesn't care which of us chooses Him SINCE He wipes His hands clean of any responsibility for the decision?

But I thought that Catholics adhere to a strict non-interference policy on the part of God. If true, then if the child wanted to play with matches and start a fire, causing her to die, then God would just stand there and watch. If God corrected the child, then that would be interference, or "forcing" against the child's will. Catholics tell me that God NEVER forces.

Yes, the child's will is superior to the will of the father, concerning herself. The father never wants harm to come to her, but her will trumps her father's will. When she acts in a self-destructive manner, the father just stands by and watches, doing nothing because he respects his daughter's free will. He doesn't like it, but he is powerless to do anything. This is the correct analogy that I see in Catholicism. Of course if I treated my own child like that I would be arrested. :)