Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 4:
However clear the case for the Catholic Church may be in itself, it does not follow that every non-Catholic will perceive its force. There are hosts of non-Catholics who have never devoted any attention to the reasons in favor of the Catholic Church, and who would not be willing to do so even if they had the opportunity. Nor can we accuse them of bad will in this matter. Owing to their upbringing the idea of any Church with a divinelygiven teaching-authority is quite foreign to them; and they have inherited many prejudices against the Catholic religion, prejudices only too often confirmed, unfortunately, by the disedifying lives of bad individual Catholics whom alone they happen to have met. The Catholic Church, of course, cannot be blamed for Catholics who do not live up to her teachings. But we can sympathize with Protestants whose only experience of Catholicism is limited in practice to those who profess the Catholic religion only to disgrace it.
Good non-Catholics, who are strictly obedient to their conscience, can be saved; not precisely because they are non-Catholics, but because they are strictly obedient to their conscience. Being conscientious people, were they aware of an obligation before God to become Catholics, they would undoubtedly fulfill that duty.
I hold that all in heaven are Catholics. For the truth there does not differ from the truth God has revealed to us in this world. The Catholic Church does not teach that only those get to heaven who professed the Catholic religion in this life. But if a good non-Catholic does save his soul (or even a bad one, by a miracle of mercy on God\'s part as in the case of a bad Catholic) that non-Catholic will realize in the next life as he did not on earth the truth of the Catholic religion and will then acknowledge it. In that sense, all in heaven, knowing the full truth, will be Catholics; even though on earth, through no fault on their own, some of them belonged to other religions, at least by external profession.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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