DESIRE AND DECEPTION by Thomas A. Hutchinson
Page 56    


The Catechism of the Council of Trent can give us further insight into Trent's teaching on the matter. Unfortunately (and perhaps tellingly) most recent English translations have altered the words dealing in this area. But the 1985 Daughters of St. Paul edition, translated by Fr. Robert 1. Bradley and Msgr. Eugene Kevane and entitled The Roman Catechism suffers from no such distortion     possibly because the vast number of ambiguous Vatican II statements which can be used as footnotes obviate any such need with apparently equally solemn pronouncements. Saving those annotations, though, it is the best and most official catechism in existence. Let us see what it says:

31. The Necessity of Baptism

What we have considered thus far regarding Baptism is all very important. Yet what we must consider now is even more so, viz., its absolute necessity, as taught by Our Lord himself. The law of Baptism applies to all mankind without exception. Unless they are reborn through the grace of Baptism no matter whether they were born of believing or unbelieving parents, they are in fact born to eternal misery and loss. The pastor, therefore, must constantly go back to those oft repeated words of the Gospel: "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (p. 178).

This is an interesting passage indeed; it allows for no exceptions (and "baptisms" of blood and desire are surely exceptions) to the law of baptism. It bears particularly hard on "invincible ignorance," for it will not allow exceptions to made even for those born (and so presumably raised) with no knowledge of the Faith. This attitude is in keeping with what the Catechism calls the Ultimate Effect of Baptism in N. 58 (p.191): “By Baptism the gates of heaven, which sin had closed, are opened to us”.

It is that simple!