There will be more Catholics who have accepted Christ as their Savior than “expected” by Catholics OR Protestants and less than Catholics think will be the case due to the fact that the Holy Spirit is more powerful than the destructive dogma of that religious system
I have noticed that in the Lives of the Saints, so many of them needed to have adult conversion experiences, even though they had been raised in the Church.
St. Benedict, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius, Bartolome de Las Casas (and of course Augustine, St. Elizabeth Seton, Newman and Chesterton, who in mid-life encountered Christ in a much more immediate way)-- they all became solidly committed Catholics after they had a really up-close-and-personal contact with Our Savior Himself. This resulted in their living their whole lives for Jesus Christ Our Lord.
We no longer have a Christian culture. One of the pluses of a "Christian culture" is that many people are exposed to virtuous cultural practices which keep them from reverting to habitual vice, or at least they are culturally "warned" that there is danger in sin, and they are steered by local customs toward the Gospel.
But one of the less-than-good aspects of a Christian Culture is that many people follow along more from conformism or inertia than from conviction. Some people seemingly have to lie sick in a dungeon as a prisoner of war or take a cannonball to the knee before they really realize that God has come with power, God claims them and God ain't into compromise.
I have been a Catholic for 76 years and I've never been told otherwise.....All the Catholics that I know accept Christ as their savior..Catholics were the only CHRISTians for 1,600 years. What would be the point of being a Christian if one didn't believe that Christ was their savior?????