Note: For the sake of full disclosure, I am not Roman Catholic.  To be weaselly, in this piece I am neither saying I fully agree nor fully disagree with Catholic theology as I understand it in these matters.

Photo by Bryant Arnold (http://www.cartoonaday.com)

On May 22 when Pope Francis delivered a homily at the weekly Wednesday Mass, media outlets took notice. The attention grabber was his saying this:

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!”

What made this news was that many reporters thought that Francis was saying something new within Catholicism, that atheists “will be saved” when they die. Well, bad news. That is not what he was saying.  And what he did say about redemption and what it may or may not suggest about atheists afterlife status was not actually new in terms of Catholic thought.

If you want a good basic understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches about life after death, salvation, and damnation, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a good simple place to start (This book is an official summary of the Catholic Church’s teachings). If there is one thing it does not do, it is speak with absolute certainty on which groups of people will live for eternity with God in the redeemed and restored universe and which will not. It speaks of salvation—God’s rescue and restoration of humanity and the world from its brokenness—and of how people may ultimately participate in that, but it does not do so with clear absolutes in relation to the decisions that God will make.

Certainly the institution of the Catholic Church believes in the actuality of hell as an eternal punishment that some may receive, but interestingly the Catechism remains relatively ambiguous on the particulars of it. Catechism 1035 (the Catechism is made up of 2865 numbered paragraphs) states:

“The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.” The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.”

A surface reading of this may seem clear. There is a hell, unrepentant people will go there, and it will be eternal and painful. However, the Catechism qualifies very little of what hell itself actually is or is like beyond saying it is eternal separation from God (i.e. It does not specify whether it is eternal conscious torment, some existence that is a loss of self-awareness and unconscious, or even eternal non-existence) (1033-1036). It also does not offer absolute ways of knowing whom God will determine as being in a state of mortal sin upon death.

Given what is commonly said by many Christians—Catholic and Protestant—it would be understandable to assume that the Catholic Church would think that if a person is not an explicit follower of Jesus who has been baptized, s/he will go to hell when s/he dies (again, the fact that the Pope’s homily made the news speaks to the fact that many folks do assume this and, therefore, thought Francis made some radical break from it). After all, Catechism 1257 does say, “The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation.” So, there is the answer, right? No baptism, no dice. Well…no. It goes on to say, “Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament.” That suggests that there are people who have not heard the Gospel proclaimed, have not therefore been baptized, and yet may still spend eternity in God’s kingdom. In fact, Catechism 1260 says, “Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly, if they had known its necessity.”

At the heart of Catholic thought on salvation is both the belief in “the great mercy of God who desires that all men be saved” (Catechism 1261, cf. 1 Tim 2.4) and in the human freewill capacity to reject God. Catholic tradition did not follow St. Augustine’s direction on believing in predestination and therefore almost has the opposite perspective of a staunch Calvinist; they do not believe God has predetermined who spends eternity with him and who goes to hell. “God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary and persistence in it till the end” (Catechism 1037).

The rub for Christians trying to figure out whether atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, various Jesus people, or anyone else will be saved in the end, is that from the official Catholic point of view, God only knows. The Catholic Church’s teachings seem to suggest that those who explicitly know and follow Jesus are not the only one’s who will be rescued by his life, death, and resurrection. The one who gets to determine where an individual’s will was at, how much that person knew and acted in faith according to what s/he knew, and whether there was “persistence in it till the end” is God. In fact, in all of the talk of the necessity of baptism and repentance for salvation, the Catechism still points to God’s ultimate paradoxical “out clause”: “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but He himself is not bound by his sacraments” (Catechism 1257).  In other words, God will do what God wants to do in regards to rescuing people.

In a Catholic economy of God’s love and work and human freewill, there is a difference between Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection redeeming all of humanity and some human beings considering that freely offered redemption and saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.” The Pope was noting the universal breadth of Christ’s redemption and also encouraging all people, regardless of their faith, at least to meet together in doing good works in the world. But if people were hoping that the new Pope was declaring a theology of universalism, I am afraid they will be disappointed. If folks want that belief, they are not going to find it—at least not today—in the official teachings of Rome.