Invincible Ignorance.
@Jeffrey Ade Apparently, @yuca2111 didn’t understand your clear reference to the Teaching of the Church so named, my dear Brother. Pray for her (or him).
SonoftheSynodalchurch... you love to defend your your fellow liberal canadian "brother" it seems ignorance is contagius.
I never heard that there were many different faiths in purgatory. Would like to see the testimonies by "saints."
1 Peter 3:19 The imprisoned souls Jesus "preached", so Peter himself is one, and believe me, those souls weren’t boy scouts; if im not mistaken St Catherine of Genoa or Siena also speak about it, an unpopular saint around here is St Faustina aswell.
I can shed light on 1 Peter - that is a description of the Harrowing of Hell - when after His death but before the Resurrection Christ opened Heaven to those righteous souls in the Bosom of Abraham and potentially elsewhere in Sheol. Rules work a little differently when you die before Christ even was born.
You're probably thinking of Catherine of Genoa. She wrote on Purgatory. I don't recall her saying that, though, so I can't say anything one way or the other. Do you happen to have a citation?
In Hell you can’t preach, and the Holy Writtings ARE very specific that Jesus PREACH to those souls... The very nature of preaching is to CHANGE hearts to the truth. So no, those imprisoned souls were not in hell.
Well the teaching is that any souls saved are saved through Christ and His Church not through their false religion
It does in that those souls would be grafted on to the Church while not members visibly, but I get what you mean.
If I recall Aquinas correctly, if a soul is utterly ignorant of Christ yet earnestly seeks Him to the best of their ability during life and avoids sin (or somehow makes perfect contrition before death, I guess), then upon death that soul may be saved through the Christ they sought. It is an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish, though, given what human nature is like.
There is also the argument that unbaptized children who die before the age of reason might find themselves in Heaven. I don't think it's a popular opinion, but I think it's an accepted alternative to the Limbo of the Infants.
The main reason extra ecclesiam is pushed hard in traditional circles is because Rahner's concept of Anonymous Christianity really watered down what Aquinas said above to make Catholicism a "privleged" path, not the only one. It's an abuse of the notion of invincible ignorance.