In Focus: What Every Catholic Needs to Know about the Church's uniqueness: Our Sunday Visitor

One of the most difficult things for me, as a Catholic, to understand (let alone explain) is the perceived belief that you must be Catholic to go to heaven. Nothing can be further from the truth, however, to many it then becomes cognitive dissonance that the Church is therefore even necessary. The explanation to this question is in this beautiful article. It starts out wonderfully, then keeps getting better as it describes the spiritual relationships different belief systems share with Catholicism, from furthest to closest (my favorite excerpt is included after the link):

In Focus: What Every Catholic Needs to Know about the Church's uniqueness: Our Sunday Visitor:

"1. Matthew 12:30: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (which the Church, the body of Christ, has always understood to imply that “Outside the Church, there is no salvation”), and;

2. Mark 9:40: “For whoever is not against us is for us” (which the Church has always understood to mean “We don’t know where ‘outside the Church’ is”).

This leads to two things. The first is the practical command of Jesus to not judge others. That command does not mean “Be a moral imbecile and pretend that nobody ever says, thinks or does evil.” Rather, it means “Don’t pretend you know somebody’s soul or eternal destiny.” You know neither. So fight crime and jail criminals. But also pray and hope for the salvation of the sinner, and work toward that end.�"