Post-Trent, over a dozen Popes have infallibly declared the doctrine taught in St. Alphonsus' Theologia Moralis to be safe and irreformable, reaffirming also this specific doctrine by their own authority. Pope St. Pius X for example teaches Baptism of Desire is an act of perfect love of God, or contrition, and everybody knows contrition, combined with the desire to do all that God wills - through the operation of the actual sacrament in desire - effects justification but not necessarily the remission of the entire debt of punishment. Hence, those saved by baptism of desire will as a rule go to purgatory.

Here lies the Cushing error of believing there are known de facto exceptions to EENS as if we could ever see the dead. Instead of being hypothetical, BOD becomes an "exception to the rule". Only God can possibly know if there are souls ever saved by baptism of desire. What we know is that all are required to enter formally enter the Catholic Church for salvation and there in only ONE God -revealed Baptism and that of water. No exceptions. There is no particular case of the baptism of desire that we know of in 2014. Neither do we know of any case of a non Catholic saved in invincible ignorance.

You do not care, then, what over 15 Christian centuries unanimously understood St. Ambrose to mean, you'll just make up another "interpretation" of your own.

Also, you completely missed the point. Ladislaus made the argument that justification when received for the first time must necessarily and intrinsically remit all debt of punishment also, so that a soul justified and saved thus does not go to purgatory. But this is false, and disproven by the passage in Innocent II where St. Ambrose is cited, and correctly understood. The Pope commands that prayers and sacrifices be offered for the deceased person, saved by baptism of desire.

You likewise misunderstood the proof that St. Ambrose' funeral oration is not "easily capable" of other interpretations. First, because, even in the portion you cite, St. Ambrose says if martyrs are washed in their own blood, his piety and desire have washed him also. Second, because St. Ambrose actually prays for Valentian's soul, which he would never do if Valentian had just received water baptism, since those baptized on their deathbed go to heaven without purgatory. This proves he was in purgatory, had been saved by the baptism of desire, and not by water baptism, exaclty as traditionally understood. Your novel "interpretations" do not stand.

Likewise, we know of countless martyrs saved by baptism of blood, like St. Emerentiana, so this is no mere hypothetical. The Fathers are unanimous that souls are saved by baptism of blood, and condemn those who doubt the salvific efficacy of the same, among whom you unfortunately wish to include yourself.

Notice carefully what St. Alphonsus says in Theologia Moralis "it is de fide that souls are saved by baptism of desire". No ramblings about "hypotheticals". This is what over a dozen Popes have infallibly approved and commanded to be taught in Catholic seminaries as absolutely safe and irreformable, meaning all Catholics are free to hold and teach it, and none to refuse and condemn it.

Pope St. Pius X follows St. Alphonsus in his Catechism word for word, as Pope St. Pius V follows St. Thomas word for word in the Roman Catechism, as in Trent, but you have no problem attacking and condemning the doctrine taught by them.

You Feeneyites cannot truthfully say, We have only passed on what we received. You cannot say, We have only held the doctrine we were taught. The only thing you can truthfull say would be something along the lines, We made it up as we went along. The very fact that you say "easily capable of interpretations other than" shows that you Feeneyites are reckless innovators, despisers of Tradition and lovers of novelty.

You do not care, then, what over 15 Christian centuries unanimously understood St. Ambrose to mean, you'll just make up another "interpretation" of your own.

St. Ambrose elsewhere (cf. quote from Cantarella) taught that not even righteous catechumens can be saved if they die without Baptism.  There's some historical evidence to suggest that Valentinian may have been killed precisely for having adopted the orthodox Christian faith, and so it could be that St. Ambrose was speaking about a Baptism of Blood, rather than one of Desire.  Finally, you need to recall that, unlike today, where details emerge quickly due to telecommunication, the details surrounding Valentinian's death were probably sketchy at best and weren't known in the beginning.  Could it be that there was hope that someone might have baptized him as he lay dying?  Any of this could be what St. Ambrose meant.  Have you ever stopped to think why the people were weeping bitterly at the news of Valentinian's death if they believed in the Baptism of Desire "dogma"?  It's precisely because the same St. Ambrose emphatically taught the necessity of Baptism for salvation, something with almost no one, except for the evil "Feeneyites," REALLY believes anymore despite some hollow lip service they pay because they heard it said somewhere that Catholics are supposed to believe that.  St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, were they alive today, would recognize the "Feeneyites" as their fellow Catholics and would denounce the vast majority of Cushingites as Pelagian heretics.

There is not enough time in the day to refute the Dimondite errors doing the rounds on this thread.

I wasn't asking you to do this.  I was asking you to limit the discussion to the point made in the OP.  We don't need yet another treatise promoting the BoD pseudo-dogma.

So let's address the only place where you respond to the original point.

So what is Innocent III teaching in the letter cited on this thread? He is saying that, this soul will not fall into hell, but will "fly" to heaven. As for "without delay", there was an error that said no soul will enter heaven until the last judgment, but be in an eternal limbo-like state until then. Cardinals and others later than Innocent III fell into that error, and that is what Innocent III appears to be teaching against.

So when he means "without delay", he must have meant, "as opposed to having to wait until the Last Judgment".  Complete speculation, pulled out of your posterior, that's an absurd stretch of the obvious meaning of the term "without delay".  That's all you've got.

In addition to this passage from Innocent III, you have the syllogism put forward by the Dimond brothers that's never been refuted.

Major:  There can be no initial justification without spiritual rebirth.  de fide.
Minor:  Spiritual rebirth involves (as the term implies) being put into a state wherein nothing can delay entry into heaven (i.e. all sins and punishment due to sin are forgiven). de fide

Conclusion:  Initial justification must happen in such a way that all sins and punishment due to sin are forgiven. proxima fidei

Conclusion:  St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus were wrong.  proxima fidei.

But you Cushingites cling with white knuckles and raging clenched teeth to this absurd notion that St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus could never have been wrong about anything.  Why?

Because, AT THE END OF THE DAY, you've got NOTHING, NIL, NADA, to establish BoD except "authority".  I've never seen a single theological argument, not one, ever, which demonstrates how BoD derives from other Catholic doctrine.  In addition, there's no Patristic consensus that would show it to have been revealed.  Au contraire, you can find about 6-7 Church Fathers who reject it and only one or two who SEEM to hold it.  So the Anti-BoD Church Fathers OUTNUMBER the pro-BoD Church Fathers by any count.  Yet liars like Fr. Laisney state that there's "unanimous consensus" of the Church Fathers in favor of BoD.  Consequently, it's NOTHING BUT SPECULATION.  It's made up.  Which is why you get a different explanation for it for each person who believes in BoD, 95% of which explanations involve one heresy / error or another.  BoD has NO GOOD FRUITS, only BAD FRUITS.  There's absolutely nothing to back it up.  It's based on a speculation rooted in nothing but emotional considerations.  It's pseudo-theology.  If God has chosen to save some people this way, then He certainly hasn't revealed it to us through Public Revelation.

There is not enough time in the day to refute the Dimondite errors doing the rounds on this thread. I really do not currently have the means, ability or inclination to refute this all over again, but this thread contains enough temerarious accusations against the Doctors of the Church and the Popes who specifically approved their teaching and made it their own to compel me to respond.

1. First, to the bizarre claim that the Magisterium has never taught that Baptism of Desire supplies the remission of sins but not necessarily the remission of the entire debt of punishment, the other letter (Dz. 388), possibly penned according to some scholars by the same Innocent III clearly teaches this, saying the soul invalidly baptized who was saved by Baptism of Desire is in purgatory, since it is for this reason alone, that prayers are necessary for him.

So what is Innocent III teaching in the letter cited on this thread? He is saying that, this soul will not fall into hell, but will "fly" to heaven. As for "without delay", there was an error that said no soul will enter heaven until the last judgment, but be in an eternal limbo-like state until then. Cardinals and others later than Innocent III fell into that error, and that is what Innocent III appears to be teaching against.

2. Second, it is also indicated in the passage in St. Ambrose. Throughout Christian history, for centuries everyone understood that Valentian was saved by obtaining justification through desire. Fr. Feeney was the first to speculate otherwise, claiming that Valentian had received actual Baptism. But this is disproved by the passage itself, which says that the mysteries were not solemnly celebrated (which in the case of someone actually baptized, they would be), and St. Ambrose prays for his soul at his funeral (which all understood one does not do, either for those actually baptized, or for martyrs), proving again he was in purgatory. Finally, St. Ambrose says "if martyrs are washed in their own blood, his piety and devotedness have washed him also".

3. Third, contrary to Feeneyite absurdities, the Roman Catechism and the Fathers of Trent follow St. Thomas in describing Baptism of Desire almost word for word. Exactly like him, they distinguish between adults and infants, giving the same illustrations and Scriptural examples. They say infants have no other means of salvation than actual Baptism, and so will be lost if they die, thus the danger of dying and going to hell is present. For adults, this same danger is not present, because adults can obtain grace and justice through their intention to receive baptism, combined with repentance for past sins, when it is impossible to be washed in the "salutary waters" of baptism without their own fault. This clearly teaches these persons will not be eternally lost, and thus pre-emptively condemns Feeneyism in all its forms.

4. To the ridiculous but anticipated objection that this is not infallible, it is answered that the Roman Catechism clearly shows us the mind of the Tridentine Fathers. If they taught us there that adult souls can be saved through the desire of baptism, that is obviously what they intended to define in Trent. If only solemn definitions will be admitted, there are two easy proofs of this doctrine from the same.

First, that voto never refers to a disposition in receiving the actual sacrament, voto always refers to the reception of the sacramental effect in desire. This proves that where Trent talks about the voto of Baptism, it is defining the Baptism of desire. In Trent itself, voto in reference to penance and the Eucharist refers to the perfect contrition and the spiritual communion, as even Feeneyites concede. I challenge anyone to prove that voto ever refers to a disposition anywhere. All your errors come from a lack of knowledge of St. Thomas, or in some cases even of Latin. Pope St. Pius X warns you that you cannot understand even the language in which the Church proposes Her dogmas if you are ignorant of St. Thomas. If you don't know in other words what voto means in St. Thomas, you won't know what it means in Trent.

5. Second, where Trent clearly defines dogmatically that the sacraments necessary for salvation are necessary in fact or in desire. It proscribes that "without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God ... the grace of justification". Clearly proving, again evident in the Latin, that the grace of justification can be received in desire for two sacraments. Again Feeneyites admit this in the case of penance, but absurdly deny the plural proves that the grace of justification can be received through the desire of both sacraments necessary for salvation, namely in Trent baptism and penance.

Again, contrary to the errors above, the Roman Catechism specifically says elsewhere that in penance, we recover the grace of Baptism. Proving once more that the proper grace of Baptism is naught other than the grace of justification. It is a plainly condemned error, in the canons of Trent, that pretends that the grace of justification necessarily and intrinsically remits also the entire debt of punishment. Not even Feeneyites can contest this. After teaching this doctrine in the Roman Catechism, St. Pius V proscribed the errors of the heretic Michael Baius that the remission of sins can only be obtained in the laver of baptism, and that charity in catechumens cannot avail toward this end.

Post-Trent, over a dozen Popes have infallibly declared the doctrine taught in St. Alphonsus' Theologia Moralis to be safe and irreformable, reaffirming also this specific doctrine by their own authority. Pope St. Pius X for example teaches Baptism of Desire is an act of perfect love of God, or contrition, and everybody knows contrition, combined with the desire to do all that God wills - through the operation of the actual sacrament in desire - effects justification but not necessarily the remission of the entire debt of punishment. Hence, those saved by baptism of desire will as a rule go to purgatory.

Great post as usual, Nishant!  Let's say a prayer for their conversion so they will hear it.

Thanks, Ambrose.

Ladislaus, I really am busy and so cannot promise I will have the time in future to see this one through, but will make at least one more post for the sake of completion. Your ideas and those of the Dimonds on this point are totally in error, and novelties, and very dangerous both to you and to the unwary who may read. I will prove what I say from the dogmatic teaching of the Church.

First of all, you owe an apology to St. Alphonsus, he expressly cites the Apostolic Canon of Innocent II as the authority on which he bases his teaching, that BOD does not remit all debt of temporal punishment. You may disagree, but you have no right to say he made it up. That canon teaches that prayers and sacrifices are necessary for the person departed, and cites St. Ambrose as proof. So you are mistaken about both, you may not agree this dogmatically settles the point, or still think this contradicts Innocent III, but you have no right to go around saying the temerarious things against the Doctors of the Church that you have been saying thus far.

You are only a step away from the lunacy of Ibranyi, or even the Dimonds, who think St. Alphonsus would have been a heretic if he had read their material and not "recanted". You have rightly condemned such views in the past, but you are tottering on the edge of teh same. I am trying to help you see that.

1. Since you will not admit anything other than a dogmatic statement, we will start with the same. The last time we discussed this, you made the shockingly heretical statement that "there can be no such thing as a justification which does not remit all temporal punishment due to sin". You are an intelligent man, and that you would make such an errorshowed how much the Dimonds had distorted your mind, it evinced a heretical misunderstanding of the nature of justification.

This was out-and-out and undeniable heresy, but you called it a doctrine that was proxima fidei. True,you admitted it when it was pointed out, and modified your statement, showing that you were not obstinate. But people have been banned from teaching the Faith after making even materially heretical statements as you did, as for example the heretical Peter Abelard was by Innocent III.

I should have pointed this out then, but I refrained from doing so, as I did not want to hurt you and hoped you would reform yourself, but you have only become more obstinate in your error rather than less since then, so I should have rebuked you for your own good. You know that what I relate regarding the earlier thread is the truth.
 
You also confidently asserted many times St. Robert never understood the passage in Trent to mean that baptism is necessary in fact or in desire, until I showed you that he did. I point this out to you now not to hurt you, dear Ladislaus, my friend, as that is never my intention, but merely so that we may all have a healthy humility and see our own fallibility. We are not teachers of the Faith, we ought to be students studying the holy Faith from those approved and authorized to teach us. It is a sinful and scandalous thing to say and believe the things you have learned to say and believe from Dimonds, that teh Doctors of the Church made up things. And that we, blind and dull compared to them, can read and understand these same dogmatic texts better than they.

2. You think you have evaded heresy above simply by adding "initial" to justification. But you have not, your statement is still heretical, and falls under the anathema of this canon.

If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.

Trent does not distinguish between the reception of justification and its recovery as you and the Dimonds do, it simply condemns the heresy that the reception of justification in any case by some kind of necessity always intrinsically involves the remission of all debt of temporal punishment.

This canon combined with the other that says the sacraments or the desire of them and not faith alone is necessary to obtain the grace of justification proves infallibly

(a) The grace of justification can be received through the desire of two sacraments, which can only be the sacraments that intrinsically effect justification, and thus are necessary for salvation, namely baptism and penance. Alternately, this canon dogmatically defines that justification can be both received and recovered through the desire of the respective two sacraments.

(b) The grace of justification, contra your claim, does not ever necessarily imply the remission of all debt of temporal punishment. Moreover, it is condemned and heretical to think or claim that it does.This is a Protestant heresy, and the heresy they used to do away with the need for purgatory altogether.

3. What about the passage the Dimonds wrest? The only thing that passage says and can be made to say is that in true baptism where we are really buried with Christ, we receive the complete remission of all guilt and punishment. In no way does it imply that the reception of justification necessarily blots out all debt of temporal punishment, and Trent dogmatically condemns such a view.

I gave you three reasons last time why Trent is speaking primarily of the reception of justification for the first time in the canons above, to which you did not reply. For e.g. the condemnation of faith alone, which the Protestants understood to refer to justification first received. The other canons of Trent condemn faith alone largely in the context of the reception of justification rather than its recovery.

Also, when Trent is speaking about the similarity and difference between baptism and penance, it says penance according to the holy Fathers is a "laborious kind of baptism", so that no one can regain baptismal innocence by the mere reception of this sacrament without many tears and labors on his part. It does not therefore in any way indicate a substantial difference between the reception of justification and its recovery, but on the contrary, attributes the entire difference to the power of baptism over and above the power of penance, which sacrament requires labors and tears in addition to supply what the sacrament of baptism intrinsically effects. But just as contrition is necessary outside the confessional whereas attrition suffices within it, the sacrament received in re and in voto can have different effects. So you are mistaken, the Dimonds are wrong, St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus are right, as are St. Pius V and St. Pius X and all the other Popes who approved what these Doctors taught and affirmed it by their own authority. It is only ignorance or obstinacy that causes you to oppose your "authority" to theirs.

4. I ask you also to explain the other point you never explained on that thread, which is the docuмented historical fact, available through any history of the acts of Vatican I, which you are well aware of, that the Fathers of Vatican I authoritatively interpreted Pius IX's Encyclical as proof of baptism of desire, and even prepared a dogmatic statement of their own to their effect. They also followed Pius IX in explaining the true meaning of EENS, that no one can be saved who "dies culpably separated from the Church". Such persons do not have any kind of desire to enter the Church and so do not belong in any way to the Church, neither in re or in voto. Those who refuse baptism have neither Baptism nor the desire thereof, and so cannot be saved. This is Thomism, going back to St. Ambrose and beyond, to Christ and the Apostles, believed for millenia, which has only good fruits. This condemns Feeneyism, which is a novelty, and has no good fruits.

This they explained after teaching the Baptism of Desire, as you know. This means you are wrong about Trent, as the episcopate agreed with the Pope that the contrary was revealed and definable. Pius XII said the fact that the episcopate agrees with the Pope that the Assumption is definable means that the doctrine is already binding even before the Pope goes ahead and defines it.

You ought to submit to this judgment, as you had said elsewhere you would submit to Vatican I's dogmatic judgment, if you had had doubts about papal infallibility before the Council. Submit first, and fully understand later, you said yourself. That is the Catholic way. Do you still believe that? Do you still believe that if you knew for certain Pius IX and the Fathers of Vatican I considered the opposite of what you believe to be dogmatically definable, you would retract your doubts? If yes, explain why you do not.