PUTTING IDEAS INTO CATHOLICS' HEADS
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
The headline in "The CARA Report," which is published by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, said that "Nine in Ten Catholics Think Salvation Is Open to All." The article was about a survey of Americans who were asked, "Can a good person who isn't of your religious faith go to heaven or attain salvation?"
Evangelical Protestants had the lowest affirmative response, 68%. Non-Christians were next at 73%. Mainline Protestants were at 83%. And Catholics? Fully 91% of them thought that non-Catholics could be saved.
What does this survey tell us? Not much, actually.
Theologically, there is no particular problem with the majority Catholic response. The Church teaches that it is possible for those who are not formal members of the Church to be saved. Christ wants all people belong to the Church he established, but many remain outside the Church because of invincible ignorance. It is possible for such people to gain heaven.
But what proportion of non-Catholics will be saved? The Church hazards no guess. For that matter, the Church tells us nothing about what proportion of Catholics will be saved.
While many people think that nearly everyone will go to heaven, there is no warrant for that in Scripture or Tradition. What little Our Lord implies about proportions is not encouraging. Nowhere does he suggest that the loss of salvation will be a rarity. He refers to getting to heaven through narrow gates, not through widely-opened portals. The way is difficult, not a breeze.
What can be said is that, all things being equal, it is better to be a Catholic than to be anything else. Your odds are improved if you belong to the very Church that Christ established because through it you have fullness of doctrinal truth plus the chief channels of grace, the sacraments. The further you are from the Church, the less of these you have.
What does this mean in terms of proportions? Will most Catholics go to heaven? Will only a minority of non-Catholics? Will almost no one? Will almost everyone? Frankly, we can't know because God hasn't told us.
All we know for sure is that certain individuals are in heaven: the canonized saints. Beyond that we must plead ignorance. It is folly to pretend that nearly everyone goes there--we just don't know. It equally is folly to pretend that almost no one goes there--we don't know that either.
All we can say with certainty is that some people are in heaven and that we would like to join them. Beyond that are question marks.
So, can people of other religions be saved? Yes, says the Church, without really offering more than that general affirmation. Non-Catholics will have to meet the same entrance test as Catholics: Do they die in the state of sanctifying grace? If yes, they will go to heaven, even if with a stopover in purgatory. If no, they will go to hell. It's as stark as that.
The survey reported by CARA tells us that nine out of ten Catholics think other people have a chance to achieve heaven. The problem is that the surveyed Catholics might give quite different answers if they were surveyed after spending an hour with someone who tried to convince them of a particular point of view.
Imagine these Catholics being surveyed in the afternoon but talking in the morning with someone who is a follower of the late Fr. Leonard Feeney. He taught a very strict interpretation of the Catholic teaching that "outside the Church there is no salvation." Some of Fr. Feeney's followers say that if you are not a formal member of the Church, you will not go to heaven. This means that no non-Catholic can be saved. (Other followers of the priest adopt a looser approach.)
Let's say that a Feeneyite of the strictest sort were to talk with the soon-to-be-surveyed Catholics. Most of them, probably, have never sat through a real discussion of religious ideas. It would not be surprising if a fair number of them decided to adopt the strict-constructionist position. The afternoon survey, then, might come up with a far smaller proportion of Catholics who think that other folks can get to heaven.
Or let's assume the morning's speaker is not a Feeneyite but a universalist, someone who believes that everyone or virtually everyone (maybe with Hitler excepted) goes to heaven. If such a person had the Catholics' attention for an hour in the morning, it would not be surprising if the afternoon survey resulted in nearly 100% answering that, yes, non-Catholics can (and surely will) go to heaven.
This is the problem with surveys: When you ask questions of people who have not thought things through, their answers don't mean much. They can be swayed easily. They agree with the last opinion they heard. If you "propagandize" them one way or another, even for just a little while, you can alter their opinions drastically. (Think of the way a crowd, on hearing a firebrand, can turn into a mob.)
HAPPY NEW YEAR--OR ELSE!
This will be my final E-Letter for 2005. I'd write one next week, but our computers guys will be taking well-deserved vacations, and I can't send the E-Letter out without their capable assistance.
The following two weeks I will be out of the country. To the distress of some, I plan to return and should have the next E-Letter to you in mid-January.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' discussion forums at
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
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