Can people of non-Christian religions go to heaven? What does the Church say?

Q:  Dear Father John, I am confused. Jesus said he is the way the truth and the light, but the Church has moved away from believing salvation lies only in the Church. Even learned people in the Church (my Spiritual Director included) now say that God is bigger than we can comprehend so we need to be open to the possibility that God is calling even those outside the Church. It makes the line very gray as to the purpose of evangelization. Can you comment? Thank you.

A: I hope that the answer to this question will be simpler than you might have thought. This question has generated reams of theological speculation, argument, and even bitter diatribes. In fact, it became so problematic back in the eighties and nineties that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under the leadership of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, actually published (with the full approval of Blessed Pope John Paul II) a thorough treatment of the issue, which you may want to read (give yourself some time and a full pot of tea; it is a rich, but somewhat long and somewhat dense). The document is called Dominus Iesus.

Christ and Bridges

The short answer to your question is this: Anyone who ends up in Heaven is a member of the Church. Heaven is communion with God, it is being a fully mature member of his family. The only bridge to Heaven is Christ – he is the only Savior, and only his self-sacrifice on the Cross opened the gates of Heaven and atoned for human sin. I believe that all the “learned people in the Church” you refer to in your question would agree with those statements. If they don’t, well, you will have to ask them to explain to you how they understand numbers 846 and 847 of the Catechism.

Now, in theory it is possible to cross a bridge without knowing the name of that bridge. You can even cross a bridge, in the fog, for example, without realizing that you are crossing a bridge. This is an image that can help us understand how a person could be saved, could enter heaven and become a full member of God’s family for all eternity, without being a Catholic here on earth. The condition for that, according to Church teaching, is that the person in question, through no fault of their own, “do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church” but even so “seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they see it” (Catechism, #847).

Our Limits and Our Calling

Obviously, you and I are incapable of judging whether some are seeking God with a sincere heart, or whether their non-membership in the Catholic Church is “through no fault of their own.” Furthermore, through God’s Providence, we have come to know the name of the bridge; we have been given, by the sheer gift of God’s grace, the wisdom “for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” The greatest act of love we can make towards our neighbor is to share that faith with those haven’t yet received it, or who have lost it. As Pope Benedict XVI affirmed in his first public homily as Pope: “… the purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men… There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.” This is the meaning behind what the Church has always called – and still calls – the “missionary mandate” (Catechism #849): “Having been divinely sent to the nations that she might be ‘the universal sacrament of salvation,’ the Church, in obedience to the command of her founder and because it is demanded by her own essential universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men.”

Means vs Ends

The main point of recent discussion about these truths has to do more with the way we approach this missionary mandate, not its validity. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has made a concerted effort to reach out to people of other religions in a respectful way – respecting them as people, respecting the search for truth and salvation that their religion represents – and not with a condemning tone.

A few years ago, I wrote a couple of short essays on the subject of a Catholic’s view of non-Christian religions, and of non-Catholic Christians. They are available for reading and downloading here. You may want to read them over and reflect on them.

But make no mistake about it. Although we are called to respect all people and their search for religious truth, Jesus Christ alone remains the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and all salvation comes from him “through the Church which is his Body” (Catechism #846).

Why would the Church recommend that we meditate on such horrible things as hell and the last judgment?

Q: Dear Father Joseph, why would the Church recommend that we meditate on such horrible things as hell and the last judgment (aren’t there four things.)? Anyway, if there is a benefit to doing such a thing, what would that look like?

A: “The Last Things”, or “Eschatology” is the subject that deals with the ultimate truths of our existence. Often called “The Four Last Things,” the number can vary. They are death, judgment, heaven, and hell, but we can also include purgatory and the final judgment. Some add the resurrection of the body and the end of the present world to complete the picture.

Your comment that they are horrible would apply to hell (at least inasmuch as it is the greatest definitive disaster that could befall man), but I would not qualify the others with the same adjective. Death is not humanly attractive – and our nature shies from it – but it is a necessary step in order to get to heaven. The same can be said of judgment and purgatory. For those in friendship with God, these are not to be feared. Although awe-inspiring and even painful they lead to eternal bliss, and we can consider them as purification for our sins.

I think many avoid these themes because they make us feel our limitedness and our necessary dependence on God. They prick our conscience and shake us out of our comfort zone. Most of all, however, they make us suffer because we often lack faith and trust in God’s love and mercy. We contemplate only our sinfulness and misery and realize that we cannot cause our own salvation. It is a scary thought. We are totally in the hands of God and his compassion. Nothing we can ever do can make us worthy of heaven. It is his gift, his grace (albeit, a grace he offers to all and, once accepted in faith, a grace that we can expand upon and gain merit with).

Contemplation of this nature, based on fear and without faith, is never recommendable. It will do little good; it will only make us agitated and worrisome.

If, on the other hand, we meditate on these realities based on the sureness of God’s love for us, the panorama changes. Death becomes a sacrifice I can present to God just like Jesus did… my last and most profound offering: my life.

The judgment may reveal my sins, but more importantly it will reveal God’s loving care and constant presence in my life – the almost infinite graces he has showered on me and the glories he has worked through me.

Purgatory becomes a place to grow in ardent love for him. I find myself not quite ready, with too many imperfections. I want to cleanse myself and enjoy God fully with no limitations. I “purge” myself; I sacrifice myself as fast as I can so that I can enjoy that final embrace.

Heaven is indescribable. Think of it as the sum of the most intense desires of your heart, all of them, all together. Multiply that by infinity and then grasp it in one act of love that will never pass. It is too hard to find the words.

Hell… definitely not a good subject. But the thought of it can lead us to wake up and shed our spiritual sloth. The children of Fatima were granted a vision of hell from our Lady, and it turned them into ardent apostles of prayer. Christ himself mentions it in the Gospel for those who would rather not take the narrow path but instead choose the wide and easy one. He mentions the fire that is never extinguished and the worm that dies not. This is not just a scare tactic to get us to worry, but as the Catechism says, “a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny… and at the same time, an urgent call to conversion” (CCC, 1036). I think that is the reason we should contemplate the eternal truths: they give meaning to our lives. They get us to pull our heads out of the sand and realize what life is really about and where we are heading. They turn us back to God and teach us to value him and his things above all else. God is not a bookkeeper, keeping track of our faults and sins and waiting for the proper moment to cut us down and cut us off. He is a loving God who loved us so much that he sent us his only Son to show us the way to him. Meditating on the last things enables us to grow in love for him and his mercy.

Finally, it is good to remember that the Fathers of the Church and the Popes have always recommended the awareness of (or the contemplation of) these Last Things. A couple of quotes from John Paul II and Benedict XVI can give us ulterior reasons for this contemplation.

To preach a version of Christianity which benignly ignores, when it does not explicitly deny, that our ultimate hope is the ‘resurrection of the body and life everlasting’ (Symbolum Apostolorum) runs counter to Revelation and the whole of Catholic tradition. More vigorous preaching and catechesis on eschatological themes is needed in order to eliminate confusion regarding the true nature of Christian life and of the Church’s unfailing hope in her Lord who is ‘the resurrection and the life…’

While many prefer to avoid these ultimate questions and some are tempted to think of salvation as a right and as a foregone conclusion, the Church must continue to remind people of the awesome reality of human freedom, the price of salvation (cf. 1Cor. 7: 23) and the riches of divine mercy (cf. Eph. 2: 4). In doing so the Church is defending the worth and dignity of every individual against all efforts to trivialize human existence” (John Paul II to the bishops of the United States on May 28, 1993).

“Unless we take (the eternal truths) into account, we cannot work well for the earth… When one does not know the judgment of God one does not know the possibility of Hell, of the radical and definitive failure of life; one does not know the possibility of and need for purification. Man then fails to work well for the earth because he ultimately loses his criteria, he no longer knows himself – through not knowing God – and destroys the earth” (Benedict XVI to parish priests of Rome on February 7, 2008).

Yours in Christ, Father Joseph Burtka, LC