Has anyone else mentioned for Josh's benefit that catholic theology contains the concept of "Invincible Ignorance" which essentially means it isn't your fault you didnt know about jesus if you couldn't have known.
Like everything in catholicism it has lots of exceptions and quantifying points, but it essentially means people who lived moral lives but could not have known about the church still have the opportunity for salvation.
One of the difficulties is in culture, where cultures who are invincibly ignorant of the church and believe it is acceptable to, eg. wantonly rape captured women. Committing mortal sins is a disqualifier from the invincible ignorance = salvation, the church does not believe in moral relativism, none of that 'its their culture to abuse women in short dresses'.
Some things to remember when looking at mortal sin are:
- The church does not get to judge how bad something is, only god can do that, and god has perfect knowledge of the situation. They do offer guidance on what Gods take will be though.
- Mortal sin is not strictly defined, it is affected by how bad it was, how aware you were of how bad it was, and how much you wanted to do it.
- Theres a big list of 'grave actions' that could be mortal sins depending on the situation.
- Mortal sins happen, there is always the chance for absolution for those who truly seek to repent.
tl:dr
The ignorant pre collumbian exchange mexicans would not automatically go to hell for not knowing about jesus, but also many of their cultures unashamedly promoted a lot of stuff that probably did not help their standing with God.