Is the catholic church a force for good?

[Tonus]

No. They do not all know 100% for certain.
There are those who hope there is an afterlife and yet still doubt. There are those who do not presume their own salvation even if they DO think God definitely exists.
It's not a matter of simply buying your way into heaven by ''good works''.

But earlier you said you "thought the best contender would be laying down your earthly life for your fellow humans with no earthly reward. (ie. no insurance policy payout to your surviving relatives.) Self-sacrifice purely for love, done in the faith that there is an afterlife." And it may not be a matter of buying your way into heaven, but that doesn't mean that someone who sacrifices his life doesn't have that reward as an expectation. I find it hard to believe that a theist can disregard such an important factor in making the decision to offer his life for another, since it's the only difference between him and the atheist. Once you remove it, they're on common ground.

The key point here is the comparison of like with like.
BOTH the atheist and the theist have a life to sacrifice.

Only the biblical theist can act in the belief of a ''bigger picture'' and so I think this answers the Hitchens wager because the atheist (who equally doesnt want to die) cant match that.

If we remove the reward the only true concern is the practical one. And on that level the atheist might even be ahead; it stands to reason that atheists are more likely to consider the practical consequences of their actions, having no mystcial considerations to mind. There is no reason to think that one "cannot" match the other when the circumstances are the same.

I heard one Christian guy, Mark Roberts, suggest to Christopher Hitchens that praying for someone would meet the challenge (atheists couldnt pray with integrity) but that was a stretch because the atheist wants proof that praying is actually ''doing'' something.

So is he admitting that using prayer is a bad test because it wouldn't be possible to prove that it works? And that therefore, it's better to use another option, where the rewards are equally impossible to prove (at least to those who remain behind)?

If the argument is that a person is more likely to sacrifice his life based on beliefs that he cannot validate, but only have, well you've got me there. People have been moved to do some extraordinary things driven by nothing more than self-delusion. Few of them as beneficial as self-sacrifice, I'm guessing.

In the case of giving up ones life for no earthly reward, the consequences of the moral act are secular and tangible. It is irrelevant whether the Christian actually goes to heaven or not.
All that matters is the earthly consequence and that they did something which AFAICT the atheist couldnt justifiably do.

Why do you assume that the atheist would not take the practical choice, given the same end result? If you remove the tangible reward for sacrificing one's life, what is the 'bigger picture' that compels one to act and not the other?

I would love to see an atheist scenario that rebuts my suggested answer to Hitchens challenge. Preferably a scenario which doesnt include naive idealism or unfalsifiable metaphysical ''woo''
or revealed wisdom such as the words ''greater love hath no man"

Well, once you remove the metaphysical "woo" they're both in the same place. Why would you claim that the atheist "cannot" (as opposed to would not) make the same decision? If they both face the same end result and know this, what compels the theist to act, and why couldn't the atheist find the same or better motivation?