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Author Topic: Baptism of Desire not defined dogma, per theological consensus  (Read 39745 times)

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Offline DecemRationis

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Re: Baptism of Desire not defined dogma, per theological consensus
« Reply #15 on: February 19, 2021, 08:09:24 PM »
Quote from: forlorn on February 19, 2021, 07:42:03 PM
Seems a bit iffy. Dogma is what it says on the tin. Sure the context is helpful for understanding what exactly they meant, but you can't use context to make it say something it doesn't either. For example, just because I said "2+2=4" in opposition to people asserting it equalled 3, that doesn't mean you can turn around and say I just said it to condemn the 2+2=3'ers and not necessarily the 2+2=5'ers who came about centuries after my statement. Now, I get that the examples you cited aren't as clear cut as my absurd scenario, of course, but the funny business in the example I gave is exactly the kind of stuff you see modernists try to do with dogma. And it's a slippery slope starting from where you're standing and ending with full-on Vatican 2 "dogma evolves" nonsense.

When Trent says the ceremonies of the Church can't incentivise impiety, it means exactly that. It doesn't refer to any explicit kind of impiety, or to a teaching that all ceremonies are impious, etc. It means what it says: anyone who teaches that the ceremonies of the Church incentivise impiety is condemned. Just because they were making the statement in response to a very specific teaching doesn't mean the dogma refers to only that narrow slice; if the dogma speaks broadly, it teaches broadly.
Exactly. I'd phrase it a bit differently: a decision regarding a specific teaching reaches its conclusions via general principles that are applied. Those principles are of course transferrable to other, later unanticipated situations . . . situations created by modernists, heretics, etc. who then have to avoid the general principles somehow, and they do it by saying, "but that encyclical, council etc. was dealing with x situation, and here we are in y." 

The most glaring recent instance of this was that guy William Albrecht who responded to one of the Dimonds who called into the Reason and Theology podcast and quoted Mortalium Animos and its enunciation of general Catholic principles about the one, true Catholic faith and its necessity and how it precludes joint worship and ecuмenical practices by limiting it to some specific activity that prompted the encyclical. 

Hey, he (they) have to respond somehow I guess. Their noisy nonsense is at least not the confession that the silence from lack of a reasoned response would be. 
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Offline 2Vermont

Re: Baptism of Desire not defined dogma, per theological consensus
« Reply #16 on: February 20, 2021, 06:24:56 AM »
Quote from: Mirari Vos on February 19, 2021, 07:02:05 PM

On the other hand, not a single theologian, post Trent, holds Father Feeney’s position. Subsequently, Father Cekada was right, since, according to you, he said ‘you must accept it under gave sin’ and not heresy. Now, you must admit that the unanimous opinion, post Trent, is that the Church, at the very least, teaches it and since the Church teaches it, we are bound to believe it by our duty of obedience to the Church. Please show me if you think this is incorrect.
Yes, it does appear that this is true although I still think BOD leaves people not knowing whether a person was saved.  It's like what I got from other trads when my father died, "Well, there is BOD....".  I am fairly certain that the Church didn't teach that we could fall back on it with such hope for non-Catholics.  
I'd like to hear Ladislaus' response to your post though.
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Offline Mirari Vos

Re: Baptism of Desire not defined dogma, per theological consensus
« Reply #17 on: February 20, 2021, 07:21:32 AM »
Quote from: 2Vermont on February 20, 2021, 06:24:56 AM
Yes, it does appear that this is true although I still think BOD leaves people not knowing whether a person was saved.  It's like what I got from other trads when my father died, "Well, there is BOD....".  I am fairly certain that the Church didn't teach that we could fall back on it with such hope for non-Catholics.  
I'd like to hear Ladislaus' response to your post though.
Thank you. Here is the way I see it: Anyone who dies outside the visible unity of the Church, with the exception of a catechumen, is considered lost. This is reflected by the Church’s canon law. Only God knows the ultimate fate of those who die. We don’t know who was secretly baptized and we can’t read men’s hearts and who made an act of perfect contrition before he expired. This is why we can’t make an absolute judgment, but we can presume that they are lost.

In the case of the Protestant, who was validly baptized, we can hold out the remote hope that they repented and made an act of perfect contrition before they died. In the case of the unbaptised person who is dying (not a catechumen), is it possible that they asked a nurse to baptize them? Of course. Did this ever had happen? Possibly. Does it happen often? Obviously no.

How about the case of a Jew who was secretly learning the catechism? Wouldn’t he be considered a catechumen? How extremely rare would this be? How about the Protestant who was studying Catholicism and was convinced of it’s truth? You could say that God doesn’t work that way, but ultimately we don’t know since God’s ways are not our ways. Also, it seems to me that one important reason the Church does not allow ecclesiastical burials for those who die outside the Church (with the exception of catechumen who dies before they are baptized) is to demonstrate that it is of the utmost importance for all to join the visible Church.
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Offline Mirari Vos

Re: Baptism of Desire not defined dogma, per theological consensus
« Reply #18 on: February 20, 2021, 07:46:21 AM »
One other thing, BOD is NOT a sacrament. Many people that do believe in BOD mistakingly maintain that it is a sacrament, it is not. It suffices for the sacrament, but it’s not the sacrament itself.
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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Baptism of Desire not defined dogma, per theological consensus
« Reply #19 on: February 20, 2021, 08:49:16 AM »
Quote from: Mirari Vos on February 19, 2021, 07:02:05 PM

On the other hand, not a single theologian, post Trent, holds Father Feeney’s position. Subsequently, Father Cekada was right, since, according to you, he said ‘you must accept it under gave sin’ and not heresy. Now, you must admit that the unanimous opinion, post Trent, is that the Church, at the very least, teaches it and since the Church teaches it, we are bound to believe it by our duty of obedience to the Church. Please show me if you think this is incorrect.

No, this theory that I call Cekadism has no basis in Catholic doctrine.  Theologians are not part of the Ecclesia Docens and even a widely-held opinion has no authority.  It MAY with a bunch of other notes be considered as reflecting the faith of the Church, but that's as far as it goes.

From about the year 400 to 1100, every single theologian held the Augustinian position that unbaptized infants went to hell and suffered some (albeit very mild) pain.  This was first challenged by Abelard.  And the Church ended up siding with Abelard and overturning the Augustinian position.  Did Abelard commit a mortal sin in rejecting that opinion?  No, in fact, he did a great service to the Church in doing so.  BTW, Abelard also rejected Baptism of Desire.

Similarly, it was held unanimously for 1500 years that explicit faith in Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity are necessary for supernatural faith and therefore for salvation.  If ANYTHING would constitute an infallible teaching of the OUM, that would be it.  But it's remarkable how many Cekadists, including Fr. Cekada himself, think it's OK to reject that teaching (held and taught Magisterially for 1500 years) and claim that unconverted infidels can be saved.  So something was infallibly true for 1500 years and then at a certain point in time became infallibly false?

Not only do some sedevacantists exaggerate the scope of infallibility with regard to the Magisterium, but they effectively extend this infallibility even to theologians.  Some have gone so far as to say that everything with an imprimatur on it must be held as certain truth.

This infallibility of theologians is made up out of whole cloth.

Oh, BTW, I defy you to find more than one theologian out of many thousands who rejected the errors of Vatican II.  You had a small handful of Traditional Catholics, but alas none of them were theologians.  So 99%+ of theologians upheld the teachings of Vatican II as perfectly orthodox.
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