The core beliefs and the enshrined practices of Roman Catholicism deeply concerned the reformers 500 years ago, and those same concerns remain largely unalleviated for contemporary Protestants today, problems that we still see in the latest teachings of the Pope, and even in the most up-to-date version of the official Catechism of the Catholic Church.

It all leads to a question over whether a devout Roman Catholic can be genuinely saved. It comes from a listener named Jimmy. "Hello Pastor John, a close friend of mine passed away recently. He was a great man, a good friend, a mentor to many young men like myself, and a devout Catholic.

Will I see my friend in heaven, or does his theological views make this impossible? Can I rightly experience Paul's sorrowful yet always rejoicing mantra? Or was my friend merely a devout husband, a wonderful friend, and a good man?" In other words, do you believe devout Catholics can be genuine Christians?

Before I answer that specific question, let me lay out again the reasons we should be seriously concerned with Roman Catholic teaching, and that at numerous levels, its contradictory stance toward Scripture that produces, I think, a kind of religion which I fear has led many people astray, even into destruction.

And I do not mean that Roman Catholicism has a corner on that kind of misleading teaching. There are lots of brands of so-called Christian tradition that have damaged people by the errors that they represent. So let me give you six examples of what concerns me about Roman Catholic teaching, and that I think we should be very concerned about and steer clear of.

First, we should be concerned that the Roman Catholic Church elevates the authority of the Pope and the church councils, when speaking in their official capacity as teachers of the church, to the same level as Holy Scripture. This has led many Roman Catholics away from a personal engagement with the Scriptures into a reliance on the church, even though the church is fallible, when they ought to be relying on the Scriptures, the very Word of God inspired and written.

Number two, I'm concerned, we should be concerned, that the Blessed Virgin Mary—and I have no problem calling her that—is elevated to a position in practice where she mediates between the people of God and the Son of God in a way that undermines the direct priestly ministry of Christ between his people and God.

This elevation of Mary beyond anything in the Scriptures, based solely on church tradition, distances the people of God from the enjoyment of personal fellowship with Jesus and the kind of relationship and assurance they might otherwise enjoy with him. Third, we should be concerned about the teaching of baptismal regeneration, the idea that an appropriate putting of water on the baby's head by the very work of the water—ex operae operato, by the very operating of the thing itself—by the very work of the water in the priestly act causes a change in the nature of the baby from lost in original sin to saved through regeneration.

This notion has produced, I would say, untold, ill-founded confidence in the people of God who have little or no personal faith or relationship with Christ or love to Jesus, and yet because of their baptism believe they are heaven-bound. Fourth, we should be concerned about the offering of so-called indulgences, which the very present pope himself—not in some distant 16th century past—the present pope himself has offered in our day.

It involves certain kinds of pilgrimages or special buildings or special payments which one can perform or attend so that an indulgence is granted by the pope which provides forgiveness of sins. This is an appalling detraction from the absolute uniqueness of the death of Christ as the provision for sins and personal faith as the means by which that provision becomes ours.

Fifth, we should be concerned about the confusion over the doctrine of justification by grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone, through faith alone, to the glory of God alone. The Roman Catholic insistence that justification consists in the infusion of righteousness, which as our own virtue qualifies us to be accepted by God, is not the same as the biblical doctrine of God becoming 100% for us in the moment when by faith we are united with Christ so that his blood and righteousness alone become the ground of that acceptance.

Sixth, we should be concerned about the centrality of the mass in the Roman Catholic practice in which the bread and wine are actually transubstantiated. They become the physical body and physical blood of Jesus so that the Lord's Supper takes on a power of salvation by the entering of the blood and the body of Jesus into us, which it never was intended to have in the Bible.

It misleads millions of what's happening there. And finally, we should be concerned about the doctrine of purgatory in which a person after death may be given another chance of bearing some punishment so that finally they can make their way to heaven after doing appropriate penance there. The Bible holds out no such hope for those who die in unbelief.

It is not found in the Scriptures. Now, having waved a flag of concern for those seven matters of Catholic belief, my answer to the question, nevertheless, is yes. I think there are genuine Christians who are devout and inconsistent Roman Catholics—devout in the sense that they are earnest and serious, sincere, and inconsistent in the sense that their true heart embrace of Jesus is better than their mental ideas or doctrines.

If a person has a genuine encounter with the living Christ and recognizes the depth of human sinfulness and the hopelessness that we're in without grace and without Christ, and sees in Jesus the substitute that God provided to bear our punishment and provide all we need for acceptance with God, and that person throws himself on the mercy of Christ, despairing of all self-reliance, and cherishes Christ as his supreme treasure and hope for eternal life, that person will be saved, even if many doctrinal ideas are confused or erroneous.

In other words, it is possible for a person's heart and his essential grasp of Christ to be far better than the structures of his doctrinal framework, and we may all be very, very thankful for this. Amen. I am thankful for this, and all without diminishing those seven corrupting doctrines that we must continue to oppose today.

Thank you, Pastor John. And, Jimmy, thank you for the very good question, and thanks for listening to the podcast. You can stay current with the Ask Pastor John podcast episodes on your phone or device by subscribing to us in your preferred podcast catcher app. If you want to search our past episodes in our archive or send us an email of your own, even questions over other Christian traditions and how their beliefs and practices measure up to the Bible, you can do all of that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well, on Friday, we're going to talk about joy. We talk a lot about joy in God here at DG and on the podcast. It's at the core of what we do. So how closely connected is the full experience of our joy in God to the charisma, the gifts of the Spirit outlined by Paul in the epistles of the New Testament, like in 1 Corinthians 14, where he talks about the gifts of tongues and prophecy?

What is the relationship of those gifts to our fullest expression and fullest enjoyment of our joy in God? That is the next question. Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke, and we will see you on Friday. 1 Desiring God 2 The Joy of God 3 The Joy of God 4 The Joy of God 5 The Joy of God