(November 17, 2017 at 12:34 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: In Catholicism we don't have anything about a loyalty/reward scheme.
With that being said, some protestant denominations believe that all you need to do to "go to Heaven" is to believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and if you are not a Christian you go to Hell. They believe faith alone will get them to Heaven.
We believe it is much more involved/less simplistic than that, and we do acknowledge that a person who is Christian *may* go to Hell, and one who isn't *may not*.
Basically, it depends entirely on the state of your soul. If you are in a state of mortal sin, you go to Hell. That sounds simple enough, but the tricky part is that we have no way of knowing whether or not a person's soul is in a state of mortal sin. We can't even officially say that about Hitler, Stallin, or Mao, for example. Because in determining the state of someone's soul, every single thing about that person is taken into account. And since we can't read minds and see a person's entire life experiences, we can't make any judgements on their soul.
OK this is great news! It means that that we can pick another religion and in doing so can still avoid Hell and go to Heaven if the Catholics are correct. It also means that the whole confession thing starts to make sense. I assumed that if you confessed, then performed a mortal sin and died before your next confession then you were going to Hell. But from what you say it's like a regular cleaning service provided by the Catholic church, much like doing a detox course at a health farm, or getting my armpits waxed on a regular basis when they get too fuzzy. The difference being I suppose that unless I expose myself to a radiation source my life choices won't give me hairier pits.
