Your questions are more interesting than mine.  Just a theory, but i believe that God so loves the world and so badly wants even the wicked to be saved that He sends the Holy Spirit to work on them.  But suppose the Holy Spirit succeeds only so far as having the wicked man turn good, without acknowledging Christ or the sacraments.  Is that enough?   Jesus said "I am the way . . .  No one comes to the Father but through Me," which I take to mean that one must acknowledge Christ as his savior.