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To: Heliand
How do you presume these droves of non-Catholics without access to the Sacraments are able to do something which we Catholics have all hopelessly failed to accomplish with access to the Sacraments - live a life completely free of sin? If they cannot, how do they have access to the life of grace? If they do not have access to the life of grace due to their continual sinning and their lack of a means of forgiveness via Penance, how are they justified and saved?

You've not heard of the concept of "perfect contrition"? You'll find it in any catechism not written for young children.

491 posted on 12/09/2009 5:39:06 AM PST by Campion ("President Barack Obama" is an anagram for "An Arab-backed Imposter")
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To: Campion
You've not heard of the concept of "perfect contrition"?

Perfect contrition requires supernatural faith, since perfect contrition requires a perfect love for God. Someone who does not know the truth about God can hardly have a supernatural faith concerning Him, or a perfect love of Him.

Man is justified by faith (Hebrews 11.6). The Council of Trent very plainly states:

Of this Justification the causes are these: ... the instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of faith, without which (faith) no man was ever justified (Session 6, Chapter VII)

Protestants and pagans do not have supernatural faith. The former have personal opinions about God formed by their own feelings and desires regarding who He should be. This is easily seen in the latent Nestorianism held by many Protestants. Pagans worship idols, forces of nature, great men of history, and demons. One cannot be further from God than being involved in the depravity of paganism.

And if a Protestant were baptized (not always a valid assumption), and were to come to some form of supernatural faith, meaning they accepted the truths of the Catholic religion as proposed by the Church because God has revealed them, they would no longer be a Protestent, but rather some sort of Catholic schismatic, like the Anglo-Catholics and Papalist Lutherans.

Back to perfect contrition though. The Council of Trent states:

The Synod teaches moreover, that, although it sometimes happen that this contrition is perfect through charity, and reconciles man with God before this sacrament be actually received, the said reconciliation, nevertheless, is not to be ascribed to that contrition, independently of the desire of the sacrament which is included therein. (Session 14, Chapter IV)

Also:

Canon 29. If anyone says that he who has fallen after baptism is not able by the grace of God to rise again; or that he is able indeed to recover the justice which he has lost, but by faith alone without the sacrament of penance, contrary to what the holy Roman and Catholic Church - instructed by Christ and His Apostles - has hitherto professed, observed, and taught; let him be anathema.

Needing a desire for the Sacrament of Penance is rather difficult when you don't hold the Catholic faith, no? Or maybe you wish to reinterpret these teachings for us too in some manner that likewise empties them of their straightforward meaning.

686 posted on 12/09/2009 9:48:51 PM PST by Heliand (St. Pater Mavimeno, pray for us)
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