Expert: Marco - 12/10/2008

Question
I would like to know if people of other religions can go to heaven because i have a friend who is of another faith and he isn't a bad person from my perspective. So just wondering thanks

Answer
Dear Tony,

I am catholic and I believe that also non-catholics can go to heaven, but some considerations must be done.
First of all, I would like to point out  that some people may not be catholic because they have never known catholicism; some people may have in their heart a good concept of God, but they do not know that the God they believe in is the God of the Catholic Church.
In heaven there are only catholics, but most of us will not go directly to heaven; we will pass through Purgatory; Purgatory is an addictional phase in the afterlife, necessary for those who die without being perfectly sanctified.
Nobody can in fact go to heaven without being perfectly sanctified.
God loves us infinitely and He desires to lead each of us to the eternal life  and to the true happiness. But God is perfectly Holy and Good; God cannot tolerate evil because evil is uncompatible with His good and holy nature.
So, we cannot go to heaven as long as we are not completely purified from our sins and sanctified.
Our sanctifcation is necessary for us to go to heaven.
God desires to sanctify us, but He has given us a free-will, so God needs our consent in order to purify and sanctify us. God respects our choices and therefore God cannot santify those who do not want to be sanctified and purified, those who do not want to stop sinning, those who do not want to live a holy life.
These are those who go to hell.
So, those non-catholics who truly love God in their heart (even if they do not know that the God they love is the God of the Catholic Church) will go to Purgatory and in Purgatory they will understand that the God they love is the God of the Catholic Church.
 
I would like to report some verses from the Bible.

I Timothy 4:10 (and for this we labor and strive), that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and ESPECIALLY of those who believe.

(My emphasis). The implication here is that there is also salvation for those who do not believe.


1 Pe 1:17 And if you address as Father the one who without partiality judges according to every man's work, then pass the time of your stay on earth in reverent fear.

Jesus says that only those who DO the will of God shall go to heaven:

Mt 7:21 Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
7:23 And then I will declare to them, I never knew you: depart from me, you who work iniquity.

Observe that Jesus says "depart from me you who work iniquity" and NOT "depart from me you who do not believe".

Besides Jesus repeatedly said that those who keep His commandments are those who love Him;

John 14:15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
14:21 He who has my commandments, and keeps them, he it is who loves me: and he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, If a man loves me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him.

Nobody can go the the Father but by Christ; this does not mean that those who are led to the Father by Christ are aware of their being led by Christ.
In fact, Christ can lead to the Father also people who never heard about Him, if these people desire to live a holy life.
These people unawarely love Christ, and when they will meet Him in the afterlife, they will know that they have unawarely loved Him.
Also Paul spoke about the possibility to be saved for Gentiles who lived before Christ.
Ro 2:14 For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves.
2:15 They show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or perhaps defending them.)
2:16 On that day God shall judge the secrets of men through Jesus Christ, as my gospel proclaims.

Our salvation does not follow from a formal acceptation of Christ; we must accept Him in our heart; some people may have accepted Him in their heart, even if they have not consciously known Him.

Those who reject Christ will not be saved.
The question is: what does it mean to reject Christ?
Christ said that all those who keep His commandments love Him; if they love Him, it means that they do not reject Him, even if they may have doubts about the catholic faith.
Some people may reject the catholic faith because they have not correctly understood it.
Some people may reject the catholic faith because they have been disinformed
(this is the case of many protestants who reject the catholic faih on the basis of the many false anticatholic prejudices purposely diffused by many protestants).
In other words, the fact that a person rejects the catholic faith does not necessarily implies that he rejects Christ; this person may believe in the true love and the true righteousness, without understanding that this is the christian concept of love and righteousness.

I would like now to report some verses from the Cathechism, where the official teachings of the Church are reported.

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?[335] Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council 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.[336]
847 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.[337]
848 "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."[338]


I hope this may clarify to you the position of the Church about salvation of non-catholics.

Please ask again, if you need further clarifications,

Yours in Christ,

Marco.

PS I think that faith cannot come only from logic, because to have faith in God means to trust and love God.
I think however that logics and science prove the existence of our soul and the existence of  God and that there are many rational arguments strongly supporting the christian faith.
The explanation of these aguments is rather long and Allexperts allows only to give short answers. You can find such arguments  in the following site

http://xoomer.alice.it/fedeescienza/englishnf.html

where  I analyse the incongruencies of the materialistic conception of the mind, on the basis of our present scientific knowledges about brain and matter.
This analysis points out how the laws of physics  prove that the   brain cannot generate consciousness, which existence implies  the presence in man of a unbiological/unmaterial element. The problem of consciousness is then strictly connected to the one of the existence of the soul and, consequently, the existence of God.
In the first article entitled “Mind and brain...” you can find a general discussion of the mind and brain problem from a scientific point of view.
In the second article entitled “Scientific contraddictions in materialism”
you  can find an explanation of the fundamental inconsistencies of  the  typical arguments used by materialists, such as the concept of emergent, macroscopic or holist property, complexity, information, etc.
In the section called “FAQ: answers to  visitors' questions” you can find the answer to many typical questions, such as "Are there any scientifically proved miracles?", "Does the existence of the universe imply the existence of God?", "Can science explain God?", "Can science establish which is the true religion?", "Can science explain consciousness in the future?", and many others.