I admit that the title of this essay might seem a bit provocative, even presumptuous, but in fact it is not. I could as easily have phrased it: Why there are only Catholics in heaven; it amounts to the same thing.
But that is not to say that one has to be a formal member of the Roman Catholic Church on earth in order to get to heaven. Much less do I mean to imply that all Catholics go to heaven.
So what do I mean?
To answer that, it is necessary first of all to understand the nature or essence of what we Catholics mean by the term "heaven." Simply put, heaven is not actually a "place" (in the way we think of places as locations in space and time), but rather the condition or state of spending eternity in the presence of God, the one and only Creator and Source of all that is. All beauty, all truth and all goodness reside (or "subsist") in Him--indeed, that is His very nature: He is, in Himself, absolute and infinite Beauty, Truth and Goodness. Everything else that we might call beautiful, true or good only borrows some finite quality or share of those attributes from God.
To be in heaven means to "see God as He is" (1 John 3:2), which means to have full possession of (or participation in) all of what God is (to the extent that a finite creature can be said to "possess" the infinite). Heaven means full participation in Absolute Goodness, Beauty and Truth. The clouds of ignorance and uncertainty will have been dissipated; the tarnish and dross of misunderstanding and error will have been purged away. The soul's spiritual vision (or knowledge) will at long last be perfectly clear. This is the essence of pure, unadulterated happiness.
In contrast, the essence of hell (also not a "place") is the condition of eternal existence without God, an eternity rejecting God. This is why it is sometimes said that some people are experiencing "hell on earth"--they have already chosen in this life to reject God and to live their lives without Him, as if He didn't exist. If they persist in that rejection to the end and do not repent of it, when they die (since our choices for eternity are fixed at the moment of death), they will get their wish: eternity without God. That is what hell is, and nothing else. It is, in other words, the total absence of all truth, goodness and beauty (leaving in the void only error, evil and ugliness), which can only result in unimaginable misery.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God come to earth in the flesh, established His Church on earth (which by the end of the First Century came to be identified as the Catholic Church) to teach all peoples the truth of His revelation in its fullness for the salvation of their souls (cf. Matt 28:18-20). Jesus proved that He was God by His many miracles, by the perfection of His teaching, and by His absolutely singular act of raising Himself from the dead. And, being God, He has infinite power to accomplish anything and everything He said He would do. He said, on many occasions and in a wide variety of ways, that He would preserve the Church He founded intact until the end of the world. Every other religion or denomination traces its origin to some human person. Only the Catholic Church (in its many Rites) can trace its origin to a divine person: Jesus Christ. (This is not just my opinion; it is historical fact.)
So to be Catholic means to possess (in a dynamic, not static sense), as a member of Christ's Church, the fullness of divine revelation. (The word catholic, incidentally, comes from the Greek word meaning "of the whole" which is often translated "universal." So "Catholic" [one of the four identifying marks of Christ's Church] is an expression of this dynamic fullness of truth and grace.) Now, does anyone in the Church fully understand this revelation, everything about God and everything that Christ taught? No way! Because that teaching is essentially divine (by virtue of its source [God the Father] and its disclosure to us [God the Son and God the Holy Spirit]), it is quite impossible for a merely human mind to grasp it all--or even a part of it--fully. But members of the Church nevertheless possess its fullness in a very real way, even though they don't understand it all, by the virtue of faith. Catholics, therefore, have the fullness of divinely revealed truth and the fullness of the ordinary means of grace [the seven sacraments] necessary for the attainment of heaven, and have the universal mission to share these gifts with all mankind without exception.
But one can be sitting in a gold mine or in a bank vault and still die in poverty. One can own a farm and a warehouse full of food and still die of hunger, if he does not make proper use of what he possesses. Mere membership in the Catholic Church is not sufficient for a person to get to heaven; he must also respond to the grace and act on the truth he is given (i.e. "live the faith") and persevere in it until the moment of death, which can only be done through participation with the grace that God gives freely to all who ask for it. So not all Catholics will get to heaven--some wind up rejecting God in the end, refusing His offer of friendship and adoption.
At the same time, many people who are not Catholics (formally or in the fullest sense) arrive at the end of life madly in love with God and wanting to be eternally united with Him through their cooperation and participation in whatever graces they'd received in this life and by following "the law written on their hearts" (Romans 2:15). Their desire will be fulfilled by their participation in the love of God. They will go to heaven.
We Catholics say that non-Catholic Christians (Protestants, Orthodox and members of other schismatic or heretical groups), people of other religions who seek the truth in sincerity, indeed, all men of good will, have some degree of "imperfect communion" with the Catholic Church. But let's face it, no one's participation in grace is full or perfect in this life. Everyone sins, everyone fails to cooperate in some measure, great or small, with the graces God so lavishly showers upon us. Our communion with God (and therefor with His Church) in this earthly plane is always flawed, imperfect, incomplete. That perfect communion is what we hope to achieve only in heaven. We call the souls in heaven the "Church Triumphant," completely purified and no longer forced to struggle under the burden of temptation and sin.
Those who are in heaven, therefore, (and all those who will eventually get there) will have achieved that fullness of perfect communion with God, will have full and unsullied posession of the full truth about God in all its beauty, and experience and appreciate to the fullness of their individual capacities all the goodness and love that is God. Well, that is what God desires for the members of His Church, His ultimate reason for establishing the Church in the first place: their complete happiness in union with Him forever. Everyone in heaven, therefore, is and will be full and perfected members of His one Church--the Catholic Church--regardless of what they may have called themselves on earth. In heaven, everyone's knowledge and love of God will be perfected in purity, complete and in perfect harmony with the One Truth that is God.
That's why everyone will be Catholic in heaven.
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