Well, that's at the very root of the debate, isn't it?  Some read this passage in Trent as saying without the laver or (at least) the desire thereof, others that both are required.  I find a dozen reasons that the latter is true, but then you did have St. Alphonsus and St. Robert Bellarmine taking it the other way.

Well, Trent says right there in the OP quote that justification cannot be effected without the laver of regeneration. As if to condemn a BOD, Trent goes on to immediately say "or the desire thereof," concluding with the literal meaning ("as it is written") of John 3:5. If justification cannot be effected without the sacrament, then it cannot be effected at all. Seems plain enough to me.

I bring this up because someone mentioned that for justification Trent should have used the word 'and' so we can't go without both the laver AND the desire.

Just trying to find out if there is any doctrine that contradicts this notion of BoD only giving justification but not salvation.

I've come to more of an intermediate position myself.  I believe that there are two basic types of "justification" ...

1) the supernatural justification defined by Trent that's effectively the equivalent of being in a state of sanctifying grace

2) a natural "justification", where the soul is not at enmity with God but still cannot enter the Kingdom.  Such is the state, for instance, of infants who died without Baptism.  They continued to be under Original Sin, but are not in a state of enmity with God and have no stain of actual sin.

I find the so-called "and" reading of Trent to be far more compelling, rendering #1 impossible without actual reception of the Sacrament since its institution after Our Lord's Resurrection.

I hold that #2 is possible even for adults and this is how I interpret the phrase from St. Ambrose about "washed but not crowned" even for martyrs.  These martyrs have any guilty of actual sin removed, i.e. are washed, and basically enter eternity in the same state as souls in Limbo, with some additional natural happiness due to their martyrdom.  I'm also open to St. Cyprian's theory that these are actually baptized by angels, etc. or else a theory that they will be baptized at the Final Resurrection and remain in a state similar to the OT just who were in a state of supernatural sanctifying grace but await its completion by receiving Baptism after they are raised from the dead.  That video from the Dimond Brothers about the OT just being raised back to life in order to be baptized is very compelling, and something I always believed.  And what's to stop God for doing the same thing for unbaptized martyrs and others before the Final Resurrection?  We've had saints like St. Peter Claver do the same.  So why can't God do that very thing also, raise them back up to give them the Sacrament?

St. Thomas wrote that God would go so far as to send an angel to preach the faith to someone who was invincibly ignorant and had placed no obstacles in the way of their salvation by way of sin.  This is how strongly he believed that explicit Catholic faith was necessary for salvation.  Why couldn't this same angel then also baptize the individual?  There is absolutely no need whatsoever to posit "exceptions" for the requirement to actually receive the Sacrament of Baptism.  I love it how many BoDers claim that the denial of BoD means "constraining" God by His Sacraments, while they constrain God by "impossibility".  If you think about it, it's a heretical premise, as we know and also have the teaching of Sacred Scripture that "with God all things are possible".  This reflection is what ultimately convinced St. Augustine to backtrack on his youthful speculation about BoD.

St. Thomas wrote that God would go so far as to send an angel to preach the faith to someone who was invincibly ignorant and had placed no obstacles in the way of their salvation by way of sin.  This is how strongly he believed that explicit Catholic faith was necessary for salvation.  Why couldn't this same angel then also baptize the individual?

Yes, and St Thomas' view is not simply a theory because we evidence and examples (in Scripture) for God working miracles to get people baptized (i.e. St Peter and the miraculous spring of water so the prisoner could be baptized and St Philip finding the eunich to explain the Faith).  Then we have the countless stories of saints who raised people from the dead to baptize them.

There is absolutely no need whatsoever to posit "exceptions" for the requirement to actually receive the Sacrament of Baptism.

Right.  There is not a single "proof" that BOD has happened, except for St Ambrose and Valentinian...and a further reading on this story shows Valentinian was a catechumen who was probably baptized (a common measure taken when persecution was imminent) but just not considered a full member of the Church because he had not gone through the full rites of initiation at Easter.


So BOD is just a theory.

I find it extremely implausible that Trent intends to clearly deal with this question.  Trent could have easily just said “if anyone doesn’t say that desire for baptism is sufficient for salvation let him be anathema” or “if anyone DOES say that desire for baptism is sufficient for salvation let him be anathema”

what seems far more probable to me given the context of Trent as an anti Protestant council is that it was intending to rule against the Prot formulation of sola fide. The way I would take it is, if you don’t believe baptism is necessary AT LEAST in desire you are anathema, in which case neither pro nor anti BOD is being dealt with at Trent 

Bingo.

I've come to the conclusion that the aversion many have to EENS is based on an incorrect and monolithic view of Hell.  People see individuals who seem, at least naturally, to be "good" people, who try their best to please God, say, some Protestants.  Or you hear of noble pagans here and there who live by the natural law and have much natural goodness.  So it's hard for people to imagine a kind-hearted Jєωιѕн grandmother, who perhaps even gave her life for her children, burning in the inferno right next to Joe Stalin and Judas.  But even the Church's EENS definitions say that the degree of suffering individuals endure in Hell is proportional to their actual sins.  I posit that there are many who can be in a state approaching the natural happiness of Limbo, and that natural good deeds can offset the natural punishment do to sin, i.e. that there can be a natural washing of the punishment due to sin, to varying degrees.  In other words, there may in fact be some "Native Americans" living in some "Happy Hunting Ground".

What's important is to distinguish between natural justice and the completely unmerited gift of supernatural life in the Kingdom.

I believe that this post alone would make a lot of people more open to the literal interpretation of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.

Most people who advocate for Baptism of Desire probably do so because of emotional issues.

If we can picture that "good" graceless people can be "kind of happy" in Hell, then this stumbling block is removed and there is no need to come up with a especial kind of baptism to save these people from the torments.

But wouldn't this view tend to take the teeth and terror out of hell? It is precisely the horrors of hell that helps to motivate the sinner to convert and avoid the tortures of hell. Actually I tend to agree with all of this you have written and it makes sense but is it up to us to preach it?

Indeed, there's a pastoral consideration here.  There's some material from St. Alphonsus that's downright terrifying, but St. Alphonsus played both "good cop" and "bad cop".  So, for instance, he'd tell terrifying stories of people who committed just one mortal sin in a moment of weakness and were immediately dragged down to hell.  On the other hand, he'd say that he didn't believe that anyone who simply said the Three Hail Marys each day would ever be lost, saying that God asks so little of us and is trying to find any chance He can to save souls.  I believe he intended to scare the lax.  But I don't believe that God is just waiting behind every bush for people to "slip up just once" so He can pounce, should "ah, I got you," and send them to Hell.  It almost approaches a very poor representation of God, but St. Alphonsus' intent is clear, to scare people straight.

There are two aspects to salvation, the supernatural and the natural.  Supernatural life is a free gift that no one can merit.  In fact, it is beyond our natural capacity.  This is why St. Thomas teaches that infants can enjoy a perfect natural happiness and don't even know what it is that they've lost and do not sense any privation of good, because the supernatural life is not essential to complete fulfillment of our created natures. 

But on the natural level is where the "temporal" punishments of Hell come in, i.e. the actual suffering part, the flames, etc.  And even these are essentially self-inflicted.  When a person dies in a state of being on a trajectory against God, they are actually working against that which fulfills their nature and makes them happy.  So when they come to know the truth, it becomes a torment for them.  I always use the following analogy.  One individual loves going to Mass and praying, enjoys Gregorian chant, and then perhaps also classical music.  Another individual hates going to Mass, hates chant, and can't stand the sound of classical music, but just wants to party, listen to rock music, and enjoy carnal pleasures.  When both of these individuals die, the state in which they find themselves is similar to the former state, and so the soul who became accustomed to the latter experiences torment.  But the cause of the torment is of their own making.  Because they didn't condition themselves to enjoy the beauty and the goodness that is God, the presence of God causes them extreme torment.  So, for one of these worldlings, the thought of an eternity in the presence of God (likened to the sensibilities of the individual who enjoyed Mass, prayer, chant, etc.) is itself a torment.

I'm going to be honest.  I've always found the general depiction of God when the torments of Hell are described to be completely incompatible with a God who is love.  Our Lord taught us to have compassion for the sufferings of others.  Saints were motivated by the virtue instilled by God to care for the sick, to help the suffering, to show kindness, etc.  Can we imagine a saint enjoying the thought of torturing some individual with hot irons?  There's IMO a poor caricature of God in the conception that God somehow actively tortures people, and He enjoys inflicting suffering.  If we saw a human being who enjoyed torturing people, we would consider him a sick, evil, perverted individual.  And yet we project this conception onto God and think it's good and compatible with an all-loving and all-merciful God?  Something there doesn't add up.  No, I hold that the torments souls suffer in Hell in eternity are of their own making ... because God had given them so much capacity for good that the deprivation of that good is what causes their suffering, and the suffering is of their own making.  So the greater capacity we have for happiness, the greater suffering is caused by the privation of those things which make us happy.

I forget which saint or mystic it was, but she was shown Hell.  So this saint had compassion upon the souls suffering in Hell.  [Again, this saint has compassion and yet we imagine that God does not?  This virtue of compassion is inspired by God Himself.]  At any rate, the saint asked God to take a soul from Hell and put it in Heaven.  God did so (not that such a soul could enter Heaven in the sense of the Beatific vision, but most likely this meant going to Limbo).  But the soul immediately began blaspheming and cursing, and was in absolute torment and couldn't stand being there.  So God said to the saint something along the lines of, "See, they don't want to be in Heaven."  So the saint asked God to at least please put him in Purgatory.  So God did that.  This soul then immediately began cursing and blaspheming again, complaining that it was neither here nor there, but in between.  So finally God gave this soul the choice.  You can go wherever you want, your choice.  So the soul dove immediately back into the fires of Hell.  Moral of the story is that souls go where they want to go, and are there by their own choice.  God does not torture them like some sick twisted murderer (like Mao or Stalin, etc.)  That does God such a terrible injustice to portray Him like that.  No, God created us in His image with such a great capacity for happiness that any privation of that capacity causes extreme suffering ... the same way that any other privation of a due good causes us suffering.

But, to come full circle, people have such hard hearts that, if explained that way, the vast majority of the masses would go to Hell.  This fear of Hell, I dare say, has saved more souls than direct love of God.  But if you were to try to explain the torments of Hell as above, where it's caused by a privation of the great capacity for good that God has given each soul, in such abstract terms, the masses would all head straight to Hell.  Now, this is not to understate the torture that is Hell.  It's beyond our wildest imagination, just as the happiness that awaits the saved, or even the souls in Limbo, is beyond our wildest imagination.  And the two are flip sides of the same coin.  We were created with such a great capacity for happiness that we also have, as a corollary, that much more capacity for suffering, due to a deprivation of that happiness that God intended for us.  So Hell truly is a torture, but it's not the same as saying that God is standing there effectively serving as the Torture in Chief.

But wouldn't this view tend to take the teeth and terror out of hell? It is precisely the horrors of hell that helps to motivate the sinner to convert and avoid the tortures of hell. Actually I tend to agree with all of this you have written and it makes sense but is it up to us to preach it? Are we treading into an area that does not belong to us in order to solve a problem--but in doing so we are really causing another problem, too? And I think it's a big problem. We could cause a lot of damage to the traditional belief in the doctrine of Hell and to lukewarm souls if we are not extremely careful here; lots of tact and prudence and understanding of a soul is required if we use this explanation. I think it should not be preached as a general, casual solution to the topic in question. I can just hear some people I know say "well, if what you say is true about the different degrees of hell, I'll take my chance and maybe end up on the top shelf from the flames that are far below me." I know this is flippant but there are those who, given an inch, will take a mile. All I'm saying is that our Catholic Faith is meant to be a challenge and this lessens that challenge unless we are very, very careful. If I were to employ this solution or remedy to the present argument in a conversation I think I would immediately insert the doctrine of the fewness of the saved to kind of counteract any spirit of self-complacency my listener might have. And interestingly enough, the fear I have about the mitigation of the fires of hell causing the loss of souls is the same fear I have with the dangerous and common false notion people have of BOD--there is little or no spirit of working out "our salvation in fear and trembling", i.e., salvation is not an urgent matter, hell is not so fearful a place after all. And yes I understand the two pains of hell. The pain of loss doesn't instill fear in  many, even though it is the greatest of pains. Now, we diminish the pain of sense by suggesting that even adults who die in mortal sin may not suffer a lot? I believe it--I just am confused at the moment as to how to preach it so there are no misunderstandings in my listener. Such a topic, IMO, cannot ever be covered well in a few minutes. So, meditation, prayer to the Holy Ghost, and a thorough hashing out of this subject must be employed to prevent damage to a soul. I like what Saint Thomas wrote to use for this sort of thing: "Distinguish and you will not fall into error".

I agree. It might be dangerous to speak to people who are ignorant about the faith like this.

The safest course is obviously to be a good, baptized with water, Catholic, and I think that is what we should counsel people to do.

Those who choose to take other courses in life are running a serious risk of ending up in Hell, in the very lower parts.