"Non-Catholic Christian," the Ultimate oxymoron.

To say that one can be a non-Catholic Christian is to say that one can be a "married bachelor," have a "square circle," or "be six-feet tall yet be no more than five feet in height."  It is saying that one can own and not own a Ford pickup truck both at the same time, or be physically located in London and in Paris at the same instance.  It is to say that one can be clinically dead and in perfect, living conscious health both at the same time.  The phrase "non-Catholic Christian" is the ultimate in post-Vatican II ambiguities, one which Pope Benedict XVI, as did his predecessor, fully tolerates.

Of course, nearly everyone (even virtually all Novus Ordo Catholics) will object saying, "You mean that only Catholics are saved?"  "Yes, exactly, such is a revealed Truth."  Our would-be complainant at this point will continue, as did Phil Donahue in an interview on his 1980s show with a fundamentalist Protestant guest, "Do you mean that all Jews, all Muslims, all Hindus, all Buddhists, are going to Hell?"  At this point in the "conversation," two facts must be acknowledged:

1)  It is impossible to prove that any particular individual was not sacramentally Baptized in water at some time during that person's infancy.

2)  It is impossible to prove that a person who was sacramentally Baptized in water during his/her infancy will not (or has not) receive (received) salutary repentance at the moment of his/her own death.

The above two propositions can never, ever be disproved, even for someone who, during their entire post-infant life, claims to be a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Protestant, Orthodox, atheist, agnostic, Aztec Indian, etc.

Consider the Duggars.  As a family, they live some of the Catholic virtues to an extraordinary degree.  While Michelle Duggar did not nurse her infants for as long as traditional Catholic mothers typically nurse their babies, the Duggars have the largest family in America today, something that one would think would be true of some Catholic family.  Likewise, the Duggars adhere to the Catholic moral and natural law.  They do not believe in premarital sex, abortion, gay marriage, artificial contraception (apparently), strictly adhere to traditional men and women's clothing, have a patriarchal family structure, etc.  What more could traditional Catholics ask for or expect in today's World?

Yet, as far as I can tell, the Duggars, as a group, deny revealed Truths of the Christian faith, as well as the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, which, according to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, would make the Duggars heretics and schismatics.  Now, some modernists in the Church will claim that the Duggars are "Christian," citing the Second Vatican Council of the Church.  Of course, the Council did use the word "Christian" for those "ecclesial communities" not yet in "full communion" with Rome, as if there were some sort of half-communion or quarter-communion available to our "separated brethren," kind of like light beer versus the regular stuff.

Of course, as I have pointed out elsewhere, traditional Catholics are not obliged to hold to the inerrancy of Vatican II,  for not only did the Council fail to clearly affirm Catholic Tradition, it also gave the appearance of having contradicted itself; so even if the Council taught without error, it taught poorly.  Even on the question of baptized individuals who deny Catholic dogma and/or Papal Primacy being "Christians," the Council was either being (excessively) charitable and/or was speaking with a "forked tongue."  For if baptized individuals who deny Catholic Truth can be Christians, why, then, does the Church deny the Sacraments to these individuals except if there is a "other grave and pressing need" (Canon 844, 1983 Code of Canon Law), the Sacraments, especially, "Baptism, the gateway to the sacraments and necessary for salvation by actual reception or at least by desire..."? (Canon 849)  (More on "Baptism of Desire" elsewhere!)  If Protestants, Orthodox, etc., are fully Christian, then they are entitled, by divine and canon law, to the Sacraments of the Church, as the Code teaches elsewhere.

I am not, however, defending Vatican II nor the 1983 Code of Canon Law.  What about the Duggars and other good people like them?  Are they destined for eternal Hell, the "fiery furnace"?  Well, I certainly hope that such is not the case, however, if they, as separate individuals, die outside of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, which is one and the same with the Holy Roman Catholic & Apostolic Church, then, yes, absolutely, they are lost for ever and ever, some or all of them without exception.  Their good works and piety will matter for nothing.

Hopefully, even if they are not visibly reconciled to the One True Church before their physical deaths, we can hope that Christ will have mercy on them for their sins and errors, and through the glorious intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the many prayers and supplications of the Catholic faithful, and in virtue of their Catholic Baptisms, will allow them salutary repentance for their sins and heresies, enabling them, at their individual deaths, to pass into Purgatory escaping everlasting Hell.  No guarantees, just a hope, and not necessarily even a "good hope."

Of course, what we can hope for the Duggars we can also hope for every human being who has ever lived.  What the One and Triune God can do for one, He can also do for many.

A message to the Duggars.

You cannot truthfully say that you love Jesus Christ without saying, in the exact same breath, that you also love His Immaculate Bride, His Catholic Church, which is His Mystical Body, nor can you claim to have obedience towards Him, the Incarnate God, without obeying His Vicar, the Bishop of Rome.  And, as Christ is "one and the same thing" with His Catholic Church and with His Pope, Vicar of God, to refuse submission to the Pope is to refuse submission to Jesus Christ, which means refusing to submit to Almighty God.  And, to refuse to partake of the Sacraments of the Catholic Church is to refuse the Gifts which God has given to Us, His Creation, as well as to reject the priesthood which Christ establish through His Apostles (Saint Peter, in particular.)  In other words, to truly love Jesus Christ is to love His Church, which is the Catholic Church, and to accept all that the One and Triune God has revealed through her.

Hell, a not-so-horrible place?!

An "excuse" which the modernists give for not taking EENS in its literal sense ("to be a member of the Mystical Body of Christ is to be a member of the Roman Catholic Church") is that they, the modernists, cannot accept the idea that three-quarters of the World is going to eternal Hell. However, consider what Dante, without any controversy whatsoever, conceived about Hell (from Wikipedia):
First Circle (Limbo) 
In Limbo reside the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans, who, though not sinful, did not accept Christ. Limbo shares many characteristics with the Asphodel Meadows; thus the guiltless damned are punished by living in a deficient form of Heaven. Without baptism ("the portal of the faith that you embrace")[6] they lacked the hope for something greater than rational minds can conceive. Limbo includes green fields and a castle with seven gates to represent the seven virtues. The castle is the dwelling place of the wisest men of antiquity, including Virgil himself, as well as the Persian polymath Avicenna. In the castle Dante meets the poets Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan; the Amazon queen Penthesilea; the mathematician Euclid; the scientist Pedanius Dioscorides; the statesman Cicero; the first doctor Hippocrates; the philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Averroes; the historical figures Lucretia, Lucius Junius Brutus, and Julius Caesar in his role as Roman general ("in his armor, falcon-eyed");[7] mythological characters Hector, Electra, Camilla, Latinus, and Orpheus; and many others. Interestingly, he also sees Saladin in Limbo (Canto IV). Dante implies that all virtuous non-Christians find themselves here, although he later encounters two (Cato of Utica and Statius) in Purgatory and two (Trajan and Ripheus) in Heaven. 
Beyond the first circle, all of those condemned for active, deliberately willed sin are judged to one of the lower eight circles by the serpentine Minos. Minos initially hinders the poets' passage, until rebuked by Virgil. Minos sentences each soul by wrapping his tail around himself a corresponding number of times. The lower circles are structured according to the classical (Aristotelian) conception of virtue and vice, so that they are grouped into the sins of wantonness, violence, and fraud (which for many commentators are represented by the leopard, lion, and she-wolf).[8] The sins of wantonness – weakness in controlling one's desires and natural urges – are the mildest among them, and, correspondingly, appear first, while the sins of violence and fraud appear lower down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Inferno#First_Circle_.28Limbo.29

Perhaps most pagans, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Orthodox, etc., and indeed, most so-called "Catholics" will find themselves in the First Circle of eternal Hell. In the End, the Triune God will give them in the next life what they desired in this life, a natural, "fun-filled" paradise, and the only suffering which they will experience throughout Eternity is the knowledge that they deprived themselves of eternal Heaven, the Beatific Vision.

The true meaning of anathema.

"Pope Zachary (741-52)" said:
"Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N-- himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01455e.htm