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To: CharlesWayneCT
We Catholics should evangelize other Christians to become members of the Catholic Faith. There are Catholics who believe, wrongly (persistent Feeneyites), that salvation is not available outside the formal boundaries of the Catholic Faith. If they get to heaven, they are very likely to be surprised to find the place occupied not only by Catholics but by many non-Catholics who had already heard the judgment of our Savior: Well done, good and faithful servant!

The reason for evangelizing non-Catholic Christians to be Catholics is to give to them the many sacramental opportunities for sanctifying grace that facilitate one's quest for heaven. By analogy, there are superbly athletic 25-year-olds who play baseball or football very well. There are a smaller percentage who are 35 years-old and play as well. All in all, it is helpful but neither sufficient nor necessary to be 25 years old rather than 35 if you want to start for the Yankees or your own favorite team.

If you make heaven, there seems no rational reason, based on your denomination alone why God who judged you worthy would penalize you for succeeding on the tougher path (the one with far less in the way of sanctifying grace).

Therefore, Catholics should work harder to bring you into the fold to ease your path to heaven through sanctifying grace available through the sacraments. If we fail, you may well see heaven anyways just as many of us Catholics do not.

The Catholic Baltimore Catechism on which I was raised starts with the following:

Q. Who Made us? A. God made us.

Q. Why did God make us? A. God made us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy forever with Him in the next.

You can fulfill God's purposes without being a Catholic and many do. It is simply easier with the sanctifying graces that are available through His sacraments. The Mass is very important as well. That Christ wept in the Garden at Gethsemane over the fact that His flock would not be as one must inevitably mean that some of His flock would be of differing persuasions than others while still being OF His flock and not just that He would prefer it to be otherwise. He grants us free will and then judges our use of that free will.

The most Christian person I have ever known was my mother's best friend Hilda. Hilda was an old school Methodist (no liquor, no caffeine, no card-playing, no dancing, etc.) and believed in all that was entailed by that description. She suffered greatly in many ways via the misbehavior of family members. She never lost her absolute love for God, her sunny disposition, nor her passionate Christian charity, nor her dedication to Scripture, nor her heroic ability to turn the other cheek, nor her love for us who did not share the precise details of her faith. If I do make it to heaven and do not find Hilda there, I will be very confused. I am certainly not worthy to have known her. I thank God for the fact that I did.

484 posted on 12/09/2009 5:11:36 AM PST by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)
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To: BlackElk
Excellent explanation, BlackElk. (As always, but this one was a particularly good treatment of a thorny topic, so you deserve extra kudos. :-))

And a blessed feast day of St. Juan Diego, as well. "Am I not here, who am your mother? Go, tell the priests to have a church built here ... I will give you a sign"

492 posted on 12/09/2009 5:43:18 AM PST by Campion ("President Barack Obama" is an anagram for "An Arab-backed Imposter")
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To: BlackElk
You can fulfill God's purposes without being a Catholic and many do.

You say that but there is a written historical record of your popes denying any such thing...

At some point in time you guys have to reconcile these two opposing positions in regard to your dogma because you come off looking pretty goofy otherwise...

Your popes have on countless occasions claimed that there is no salvation outside the Catholic church...

529 posted on 12/09/2009 8:58:38 AM PST by Iscool (I don't understand all that I know...)
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