The Catholic Church denies the possibility of either post-mortem repentance or a temporary hell, and most Catholic theologians have regarded universal salvation as an impossibility. Pope John Paul II wrote that the “silence of the Church” was “the only appropriate position” on the question of whether any particular person was saved or lost.
Bell also speculates that some non-Christians may reach salvation through a type of implicit or unconscious relationship to Christ. The Catholic Church accepts this notion as a possibility, in instances where individuals have failed to receive the Gospel message by no fault of their own.
John Michael Talbot, a Catholic recording artist with close ties to the evangelical world, told CNA that all Christians must be careful in approaching the subject of death, judgment, and the afterlife – particularly those who rely upon “scripture alone,” without the Church's definitive teaching authority.
Talbot, who left evangelicalism and founded a Franciscan brotherhood, described many contemporary evangelicals as feeling “a hunger for something less legalistic, more mystical and intellectually rich,” than the “rather shallow answers” they are often given in response to questions about salvation and judgment.
But Talbot said Bell, and other like-minded evangelicals, “lack the full set of tools to find those deeper answers” – which Catholics are given through “sacred scripture, apostolic tradition, and the magisterium [sic], or teaching authority, of the church.”
He indicated that Catholic teachings on salvation could provide more definitive answers to the kinds of questions that led Bell to write “Love Wins.”
“Those who have never had the good news of Jesus written on their hearts by the Spirit are only responsible for what they know,” Talbot said, paraphrasing what the Second Vatican Council taught in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.
“Therefore,” he stated, “those who are not Christians may be saved.”
Link to full article, here at CNA.
If JMT sounds familiar, it's probably because his act is inspired in part by the work of a child predator and fellow folk musician, Peter Yarrow. What does Peter Yarrow have to do with Talbot? Neither one of them should be consulted for Catholic teaching, and it's certain that neither should be left near Catholic children either.
Don't get us started on Gandhi...
