Criminy.  44 replies to this?  

I am sorry not to respond, I'm not running away from my own statement.  I am researching a massive series of articles I plan to write on NFP, one of these days.  I'm now wondering if NFP is not the great "secret heresy" of our time, because it snuck in under the radar before the shock of Vatican II.  

BoD and BoB I believe will eventually be defined as Jehanne says.  You must have an explicit vow to belong to the Catholic Church.  It is not just enough to have faith in Jesus Christ, for instance, to vow to become Protestant.  One Pope often quoted by Feeneyites says that even the shedding of blood will not suffice for salvation unless you are within the Catholic Church -- this rules out baptism of blood for those who are trying to be Christian but not Catholic.

Unlike anyone else here, most likely, I was baptized as an adult and have traced all of this in my own soul.  I know that I was reborn as soon as I decided to become Catholic.  Since then Jesus has "known" me.  For two years before that I was just "Christian" and if I had died then, I believe I would have gone to hell.
But if I had died as a catechumen, I think I would have had a good chance at salvation.

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I read an interesting quote from Pope St. Leo the Great.  I can't find it now, I'll try to dig it up again, but he said that if you were baptized by a heretic -- referring to an Arian -- it does not count as a real baptism, but that you don't need to get baptized again even conditionally.  Instead you only need the "laying on of hands" of a real Catholic bishop, in other words, confirmation.

This implictly confirms baptism of desire, because he is saying that someone with an invalid baptism does not need to have it redone.  

Here's a question to make everyone's head spin:  What about someone baptized by a Freemason with evil intent, such as whom lurked in the Church long before Vatican II?  What if someone was baptized by a "jureur" heretic, a French priest who went along with the Revolution?  This would be like being baptized by an Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, etc.

The wrong intent destroys baptism, you know.   Does God abandon all those who had this type of baptism, or has He seen that they DESIRED the waters of baptism and supplied the justification invisibly for them HIMSELF?  

If there were no baptism of desire, heretics could sneak into the Church, as they have done now, and take everyone to hell with them through invalid baptisms, not even needing to bother with tricking them through various false doctrines.  

The irony of all this is that Catholic Martyr, baptized in the Novus Ordo, may not even be validly baptized. Maybe none of us are, since the clergy is essentially kaput.  

I leave you with another quote from Trent I just discovered, the third snippet I've found where it clearly teaches baptism of desire.  This is from Session 7:

"CANON IV.-If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification;-though all (the sacraments) are not indeed necessary for every individual; let him be anathema.

Here's a question to make everyone's head spin:  What about someone baptized by a Freemason with evil intent, such as whom lurked in the Church long before Vatican II?

Sorry to disappoint (sort of :wink:), but such does not make my head spin at all.

How much harm do I do you when I intend to kill you with a handgun, but fail to pull the trigger?  ZEE-ROW.  Such is the harm done by one with the supposed "evil intention" who performs an act contrary thereto.

Is that what they told you at SGG?

This articles says mere externals are not sufficient.  

The Church teaches very unequivocally that for the valid conferring of the sacraments, the minister must have the intention of doing at least what the Church does. This is laid down with great emphasis by the Council of Trent (sess. VII). The opinion once defended by such theologians as Catharinus and Salmeron that there need only be the intention to perform deliberately the external rite proper to each sacrament, and that, as long as this was true, the interior dissent of the minister from the mind of the Church would not invalidate the sacrament, no longer finds adherents. The common doctrine now is that a real internal intention to act as a minister of Christ, or to do what Christ instituted the sacraments to effect, in other words, to truly baptize, absolve, etc., is required.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08069b.htm

Intending to do what the Church does is NOT the same thing as intending what the Church intends.

Quote from: gladius_veritatis

Intending to do what the Church does is NOT the same thing as intending what the Church intends.

It isn't merely a matter of externals.  Which means that it's possible to "fake it."

The condemnation by Pope Alexander VIII against the Jansenists would seem to agree with you Telesphorus.

Baptism is valid when conferred by a minister who observes all the external rite and form of baptizing, but within his heart resolves, I do not intend what the Church does. - CONDEMNED

(now I know why the St. Thomas article was posted!)

It isn't merely a matter of externals.

Please quote my words that say I believe it IS.

Which means that it's possible to "fake it."

Again: HOW would you PROVE such in any given case?

Baptism is valid when conferred by a minister who observes all the external rite and form of baptizing, but within his heart resolves, I do not intend what the Church does. - CONDEMNED

This is like saying that a sane man who shoots his mother in cold blood SHOULD be found guilty, even if he supposedly claimed he internally had a different intention.

How would you PROVE a scenario like the one condemned existed?

"I do NOT intend to pour this water, in this manner, pronouncing these words, even while I, simultaneously, am DOING these very things..." ?%$*@$?