Invincible Ignorance and the Requirement to Become Catholic
"Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to heaven." - Pope St. Pius X
One issue you see among Traditional Catholics are people regularly veering into Feeneyism, or the idea that one must be a formal member of the Catholic Church, to get to heaven. I sympathize with where they are coming from, as many have endured great hardship to become Catholic and have endured various persecutions as a Catholic for the Faith. No one wants to feel like what they have done is for nothing, or that they could have had it easier remaining as a Protestant or in some other religion that perhaps their parents or spouse shared. On the other hand, it is all too common for Catholics to profess modernist ideas of salvation within the Church, such as that being a baptized Christian or being a good person are all that matters. The truth prevents heresy and also sets the heart and mind at ease.
Firstly, we must affirm that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church (CCC 846). There is not only no other way to heaven but Jesus Christ, but the Catholic Church is the only path He gave to get to heaven. As the Catechism says:
“Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council (Vatican II) teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”
Many people do know the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God, and do ignore it. They often refuse because it would be inconvenient. They might have to give up a sinful lifestyle, or they could jeopardize their relationship with their parents and spouse. These people surely sin mortally and it is impossible for them to be saved unless they repent and join the Church. This number is much greater than you probably think. Additionally, there are many thousands of people that are on the periphery of knowing that the Catholic Church is the true faith, but ignore logical next steps and “mute” the Holy Spirit because they don’t want to follow the truth to where it will lead, because where it might lead would be very inconvenient. It’s not likely any such people can be saved either, as they are not following the truth revealed to them by God.
Jesus Christ only started one Church, led by St. Peter and the Apostles. Only the Catholic Church has a reasonable claim to be this Church (Orthodox notwithstanding, but they don’t have the Sign of St. Peter at the moment - “where St. Peter is, there too goes the Church”). Only the Catholic Church teaches the Bible infallibly, and it’s frankly unreasonable and ignorant to assume, contrary to all evidence, that one can divine Christian doctrine perfectly from reading the Bible on one’s own, critical doctrine or otherwise. It’s also foolish to assume an all-knowing, all-perfect God would leave people without a Magisterium and head shepherd on earth following the Apostles. Yet, people insist on “sola scriptura” being true, or if they are Eastern Orthodox, accept a state where the Orthodox can’t even completely agree on what a valid baptism is. So I do not believe invincible ignorance is as prevalent as we might think, although I do not think Orthodoxy is on par with Protestantism by any means.
I also believe that invincible ignorance needs to encompass one being truly ignorant of things that would lead to concluding the Catholic Church is the true faith if they explored them. Someone sticking their head in the sand and refusing to read the Church Fathers or consider certain Catholic arguments, even at the urging of the Holy Spirit, might not be truly invincibly ignorant, because they blaspheme the Holy Spirit by refusing to follow where He leads. The Holy Spirit helps minimize invincible ignorance, and we are not normally privy to how a person has been led by the Spirit. This blasphemy becomes the “unforgivable sin” if they persist in it until death.
We have to consider the flipside of this. The kind grandmother in Kansas who is a salt-of-the-earth Baptist lady and loves Jesus Christ sincerely, and follows Him to the maximum she understands, even if she has some silly ideas that spring forth from simple ignorance. Or the Muslim Pashtun man in the mountains of Afghanistan who is truly a gentleman of goodwill, and helps and shows love to all strangers, even an American soldier whose very presence jeopardizes his life and the life of his family members. He likely never hears the true Gospel of Jesus Christ his entire life, but follows God fully as revealed to him and his conscience, which leads him to reject behaviors his local Imam says are acceptable.
God wills all men to be saved, and gives everyone a fair shot. If a person goes to hell forever, they will not be able to say “this is because God did not give me enough grace as the Elect.” While more or less graces are given to individuals, and even nations and cultures, God’s grace is always sufficient, and not just in a superficial way where a person has a chance to be saved but God hardly calls after them. When we say that someone born in rural Hindu India is damned just because of certain circumstances of life, we make God out to be a villain, and disparage the Holy Mother Church, as we make our religion look callous like Calvinism or certain more fatalistic sects of Islam.
As Catechism 847-848 says regarding “extra ecclesia nullum salus,” or the doctrine of “no salvation outside of the Church:”
This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation” (quoting, Lumen Gentium, 16). Although in ways known to himself God can lead those, who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men” (quoting Ad Gentes, 7, another document from Vatican II).
God only holds people accountable for what they know. If someone does not know that the Catholic Church is the true Church, and seeks God with a sincere heart, and is moved by God’s grace to follow their conscience, they may be saved. The conscience is a gift to all mankind that gives every person a shot at heaven. It convicts them of sin, and leads them to necessary contrition, especially if they do not ignore it and have not driven the Holy Spirit out of their lives altogether via sin and willfully ignoring their conscience.
While some modernist heretics ignorantly interpret this to mean all religions are somehow equally good paths to heaven, some traditionalists don’t like this truth either for reasons I mentioned early on in this article, and because they think other religions are easier. This belief that there is an easier way to heaven than Catholicism is in and of itself heretical and debased. It is believing that a person with no Eucharist (at least in the case of the non-Orthodox), no confessional, and incomplete doctrine has it easier than someone with all those graces. It is basically calling these graces “curses.” It is similar to taking the attitude of the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
People who claim to be traditionalists but hold these attitudes expose that they want to sin. They are silently jealous of people who sin, and think that their adherence to the faith is a burden instead of freedom. We have freedom from sin, and righteousness is liberation, not a difficult yoke. Sin is the yoke. The sacraments are joy. Being a slave of Christ is a joy, and being a slave to sin is hell on earth.
No one without the sacraments of the Church is better off. Furthermore, even if they are mystically united to the Catholic Church through faith and charity, their souls are in constant, profound danger without the truth of the Church. They can be “knocked off their perch” easily. Making an act of perfect contrition is not as easy as going to confession, though not entirely impossible as some might make it seem either. The doctrines of demons are ever-present in the non-Catholic’s life, and if followed can easily lead them down a path of damnation.
For example, look at Protestants who believe in the demonic doctrine of “once saved, always saved,” particularly low-church Evangelicals and Baptists. They don’t have the supporting doctrines regarding sin that John Calvin taught, or proper ideas of “signs of reprobation” that Calvin espoused. Thus, it’s easy for them to just fall into a sin like pornography, and never get out, because they don’t see a need to do so, even if they know it’s wrong. Some become full-blown antinomian heretics and believe they can do whatever they want as long as they “prayed the prayer.” This is no blessing friends, these doctrines are curses. These people know what they do is wrong and gravely sinful, and ignore it, usually unto death.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.” It also says in Revelation 21:8 “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
My friends, this does not only apply to Catholics. These verses apply to all humankind. If a person is of good will and mystically united to the Catholic Church, they would not be doing these things. There might be extreme extenuating circumstances for an astonishingly small number of people due to childhood experiences, but these are clear signs of reprobation. We can tell people with full conviction that if they do these things, they will go to hell. The kindly Baptist grandma and the generous Pashtun man I mentioned early won’t be doing these things either.
So if you are a Catholic, and you see someone fornicating and having a good time enjoying sin, not only should you not envy their state, but you are right to assume they are not people of good will, and they are clearly in no way going to heaven based on their fruits. Remember, the law of God is inscribed on every human heart. God pleads with every human to turn from their wickedness. Anyone doing these things is ignoring God, even if they do not believe in Him. Pure logic can deduce these sins aren’t natural and/or are not charitable.
When I first became a Catholic, I assumed that for much of my life as a Protestant, including as a Protestant teenager and college student, that I was saved because I was infallibly ignorant of the Catholic faith. While I indeed was infallibly ignorant, and I was infallibly ignorant of what constituted a valid marriage because my wife and I originally “married” at a city hall, I was not infallibly ignorant of other things. I knew fornication was wrong and I committed it anyway, gleefully. I had zero intent not to fornicate if a decent opportunity presented itself. Likewise, I knew it was wrong and sinful to get black-out drunk, but I would do it anyway sometimes with my friends. Because I didn’t have the graces of the Catholic faith that demand one receive the Eucharist without the stain of mortal sin on their soul, and I had “once saved always saved” or “OSAS” type beliefs, I was certainly in a bad spot.
God gave me sufficient grace to know what I was doing was wrong, and I could have halted it and turned back at any time, but I did not. And if I had went to hell, I would have known for sure that I deserved to be there, because while I did not have the entire Gospel, I had enough truth that refusing God was my choice. I had enough grace to give me the ability to leave grave sin (even if I did not have means such as the Rosary, God would have given me some means if I turned from sin earnestly. Freedom might not have came immediately, but God would see a contrite heart and send aid, as He hates sin and wants to enable the repentant, everywhere).
There is no need to embrace the heresy of Feeneyism, and neither is there any reason to believe that believing in invincible ignorance lets non-Catholics off the hook. If anything, you should be immensely thankful that you have all the graces of the fullness of the faith, and are not in a position of extreme precariousness as almost all non-Catholics are. The truth should make you more thankful to be a Catholic, and more zealous to evangelize, so that others might have the full arsenal of Christianity through the graces and truths of the Catholic Church.
We know not all Catholics will be saved. As our Lord Jesus said in Matthew 7:13, “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” As St. Paul said, in Philippians 2:12-13 “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Almost all the Saints who speak on the topic attest few will be saved. I personally believe the vast majority of Mass-attending Catholics will indeed be saved, but many people call themselves Catholic and don’t attend Mass, and only 1.4 billion people out of 8.2 billion are Catholic. Roughly 2.6 billion people are any kind of Christian. If not all professing Catholics are saved, how much less other professing Christians, especially Protestants? There are Catholics who live Godly lives, but fall from their secure position by chasing mortal sin, or even willingly choose sin in their final days after living for God for years, rejecting God’s grace of final perseverance. Non-Catholics are even more likely to do such things.
If we do not tell someone the Catholic truth, we commit an act of hatred, or at least non-charity. Only a ghoul would have all this truth, and not want to spread it. And people who do not think it is important to spread it, and attempt to convert the entire world to Catholicism, probably do not understand what they have is special, or have a low view of the Holy Eucharist, as well as other things such as the Rosary/Prayer Rule of the Theotokos (sort of an Eastern Catholic/Orthodox “Rosary,” which is very similar but predates the Rosary by hundreds of years). You show you value the Eucharist and these other blessings by never envying sinners, never being jealous of a prodigal child like the asinine older brother from the Parable, and by working to evangelize others to the Catholic faith.
