I noticed the same thing: what religion you are (and whether you have one) isn't a guarantee of whether you're a "good person." I have a Catholic friend who spe

I noticed the same thing: what religion you are (and whether you have one) isn't a guarantee of whether you're a "good person." I have a Catholic friend who spends his time complaining, being negative, and mainly serving himself, but then you also have Venerable Fulton Sheen who was also Catholic and an amazing guy. And I know some Lutherans who love Jesus more than many Catholics that I know do. And some non-religious people who are more forgiving than many Christians I know. Just last night I was telling my children about this principle, and explaining the Catholic perspective of it to them: it all comes down to how much love a person has in their heart. And love is naturally selfless and self-sacrificing. The famous hyperbole is "God is love", not that God isn't also God, but that if you have love in you, you have God in you to some extent. And the more a person loves someone, the more they will seek to find out what they can do to please that person and what they should avoid to not offend that person. So there will always be people who love Jesus but don't even know he's God! Because they God's name, which isn't so much a bunch of letters as it is what he stands for: goodness, kindness, gentleness, unity, self-sacrifice, selflessness, mercy, courage, hope, trust, and so on. Anyone who loves these things loves God, even if they've only heard lies about Jesus. They may hate that false version of Jesus, but they love the true one! That's not to say our religion is useless, and that anyone can just "be a good person" without ever belonging to it. But if you want to please someone and give them fish, but didn't know that they hate seafood, they will see and appreciate your good intentions, but also kind of wish you looked further into what they really like and dislike. This is what the Catholic Church is: through it, God told the world what he loves and what displeases him. Not in the hypocrisy of the many non-Catholics out there who go to Mass every Sunday and shout at you for being homosexual. But in her immutable teachings and in her explanations of what she meant when she wrote down the Gospels.