Hi Ravi! Welcome!
I'll try to answer your question. It's a good one. I'll start with my own opinion and try to support with the Word of God and writings of the Church.
I believe that Christ died for all in order that we may all be saved and obtain eternal life. That is the destiny God wants for all of us. By His grace we are saved. He works in many ways to bring us to Him. For someone who has not heard the Gospel, I think that God provides the means for them to come to know Him, even if it is in a partial way due to their circumstances. How they respond to His call (i.e., to His grace) determines whether they are saved from sin or not. God reveals the truth to us all in His own way and in our own unique circumstances, and for those who have never heard the Gospel message, they will be culpable for how they respond to the truth He reveals. For instance, someone who has never heard of Christ can still live a righteous life and will be judged by a just God mercifully if they live in love and in the truth that they have come to know. God's grace is not limited only to those who have heard the Gospel through the Church. Of course, the grace available to those ignorant of the Gospel has already been won by Christ. If they are saved, it is always through Christ, even if they have not heard His name. God can prepare them for the Gospel.
Here are a few passages that my help explain what I mean.
Jesus had healed the blind man. Later, the Jews drove the blind man out because he bore witness to Jesus' healing.
John 9: 35-41
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ 36 He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ 37 Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ 38 He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him.
39 Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ 41 Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see,” your sin remains.
Here Jesus tells the Pharisees that if they were blind (I read this to mean ignorant) that they would not have sin.
Here's another:
John 15: 20-25
20 Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21 But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. 25 It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, “They hated me without a cause.”
Jesus says, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. " Because they have heard the truth, they are now not ignorant anymore and are guilty of rejecting it. This implies that someone who has not heard the truth cannot be guilty.
Romans 1: 16-26
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith. 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions.
In my opinion, Paul is talking about those who have not heard the Gospel, yet know in their hearts what is morally corrupt and are thus "without excuse." Here, I think that ignorance of the Gospel still means one is bound to follow their conscience as God writes it on their heart. I think this is known as "natural law." For instance, the idea that the murder if innocents is evil is a law that seems to be universal among various cultures and throughout time.
Romans 2: 9-16
9 There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11 For God shows no partiality. 12 All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.
Here I think that Paul is telling us that even those who have not heard the Gospel know instinctively in their hearts what is right and wrong and will be judged by God accordingly. They may not know about Christ's saving act on the Cross to free us from sin, but they can still cooperate with the grace God offers them and live righteously. In this way, they are acting on the faith they have, even if that faith is missing the whole truth of the Gospel message.
Here are some Catechism quotes that may help:
1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.
1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin."59 In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.
1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.
1793 If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.
1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.
So if one is ignorant of Christ, and their judgment is flawed through no fault of their own, they may not be culpable for the sinful acts they commit and thus may not be commiting sin since they do not know it is sinful. A child cannot sin because they do not yet know the difference between good and evil. Yet, there is a moral law that is instinctive to most humans by which those who are ignorant of Christ will still be judged at the end.
One more quote from Pope John Paul II's encyclical REDEMPTORIS MISSIO (1990) that might be appropriate.
29. Thus the Spirit, who "blows where he wills" (cf. Jn 3:
, who "was already at work in the world before Christ was glorified,"[43] and who "has filled the world,...holds all things together [and] knows what is said" (Wis 1:7), leads us to broaden our vision in order to ponder his activity in every time and place.[44] I have repeatedly called this fact to mind, and it has guided me in my meetings with a wide variety of peoples. The Church's relationship with other religions is dictated by a twofold respect: "Respect for man in his quest for answers to the deepest questions of his life, and respect for the action of the Spirit in man."[45] Excluding any mistaken interpretation, the inter religious meeting held in Assisi was meant to confirm my conviction that "every authentic prayer is prompted by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in every human heart."[46]
This is the same Spirit who was at work in the Incarnation and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and who is at work in the Church. He is therefore not an alternative to Christ, nor does he fill a sort of void which is sometimes suggested as existing between Christ and the Logos. Whatever the Spirit brings about in human hearts and in the history of peoples, in cultures and religions serves as a preparation for the Gospel[47] and can only be understood in reference to Christ, the Word who took flesh by the power of the Spirit "so that as perfectly human he would save all human beings and sum up all things."[48]
Moreover, the universal activity of the Spirit is not to be separated from his particular activity within the body of Christ, which is the Church. Indeed, it is always the Spirit who is at work, both when he gives life to the Church and impels her to proclaim Christ, and when he implants and develops his gifts in all individuals and peoples, guiding the Church to discover these gifts, to foster them and to receive them through dialogue. Every form of the Spirit's presence is to be welcomed with respect and gratitude, but the discernment of this presence is the responsibility of the Church, to which Christ gave his Spirit in order to guide her into all the truth (cf. Jn 16: 13).
This is not to say that the Gospel message should not be spread so that others can remain in ignorance and thus cannot sin. That would not be charitable on our part and to be truly free, our brothers and sisters who are ignorant of Christ must hear His saving message.
I hope this helps. As I said, I have stated my opinion, but hopefully it is in line with what the Church teaches. Let me know if anything I said doesn't sound correct or is confusing.
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