A Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, and an atheist walk into a coffee shop...

[Catholic_Lady]

We have our moral laws that we believe we should follow. But no where in church teaching will it say we shouldn't be kind and respectful to those who don't (and as I've shown you, it says the opposite), nor should we claim to know or judge the state of soul of another person. So again, showing tolerance and affection to non Catholics is not contrary to my faith. There is no ulterior motive. We are taught to treat others with respect because every person has inherent human dignity.

Do you, as a Catholic, believe that there is inherent human dignity in each person *and* that the taint of unrepentant mortal sin -- which includes such benign offenses as unbelief or anything else -- warrants the penalty of eternal suffering for that person should they die?  How do you reconcile the two concepts, the inherent human dignity, as you called it, and the torment that they supposedly deserve for being, well, human?

A very fair question. 

It may sound extremely simplistic to say "if you are in a state of mortal sin when you die, you go to Hell", and to leave it at that without fully explaining what exactly that means. Truth is it goes much deeper than that. That line does not give justice to the complexity and depth of this issue.  

First the important thing to understand is that for a sin to be "mortal" it needs to meet certain criteria. Circumstances play a huge role, and it's crucial that the person who commits the serious sin, does so with full knowledge and consent of the will. In short, for a serious sin to become a mortal sin, it needs to be a deliberate rejection of God. Those who do not believe that God exist cannot fully reject Him in that same sense, because how can you fully and deliberately reject something you don't believe exists in the first place? That's where we equate God with goodness and love. We believe God IS goodness and love. So if a person rejects those things by choosing to be bad, hateful, hurtful people, they are rejecting God. That schism is what Hell is and it is chosen by the person himself by choosing to reject goodness and love, thus rejecting God, who is those things. 

It is also important to note that while the CCC says rejecting/denying belief in God is a sin, it quickly says "The imputability of this offense can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances." We recognize that it can be outside of a person's control if they genuinely just don't think God is real.     

As for more about Hell, I wrote a thread about it here:  http://atheistforums.org/thread-35781.html

Hopefully this helps explain how we reconcile inherent human dignity while also believing there is such a thing as Hell.