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Author Topic: Council of Florence: a final nail in the coffin of BoD  (Read 21109 times)

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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Council of Florence: a final nail in the coffin of BoD
« Reply #55 on: February 20, 2025, 11:40:42 AM »
This story seems to prove that this girl was in a true good will and God did not permit for her to be damned. I guess that's what should happen to every person of good will?

Again, you need to snap out of deciding what "should happen to every person [you decide might be] of good will".  We know that God is perfeclty Just and perfectly Merciful, and no one will be dealt with "unfairly".  If our perception is that something might SEEM unfair to us, we reject that thinking, and we most certinly don't draw theological conclusions from our emotional reaction to things.  That's not theology.  Theology starts with revealed truth, and then we apply reason to those truths and draw out greater detail from them logically.

We know that God is Love and that He is all Just and all Merciful.  We know what He has revealed, that there's a Heaven and there's a Hell and there's a Purgatory.  We know that He taught that the Sacrament of Baptism is necessary to enter into the Kingdom of God, "water and the Holy Spirit".  I'm sure there's a ton of detail that He did not reveal, such as Limbo of the Infants, and we can try to speculate.  But we can never start second-guessing specific scenarios and decide it would be "unfair", and therefore we're going to make it so that Baptism isn't necessary like He said.

Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Council of Florence: a final nail in the coffin of BoD
« Reply #56 on: February 20, 2025, 11:42:39 AM »
Well, as I said, who knows? Nobody. The only thing for sure is that in this world, the mother can take some type of comfort knowing her baby is not suffering.

We've heard stories about saints in heaven and damned souls in hell visiting the living, and the living seeing purgatory, hell and heaven etc., but nothing whatsoever about anyone visiting or seeing Limbo, or anything about souls in Limbo at all, nothing at all. We really know nothing about it outside of knowing that Limbo exists.

Right ... there's all kinds of detail that we probably know next-to-nothing about, and I think God chose not to reveal them for some very good reasons, i.e. where if people didn't keep focus on Heaven vs. Hell, many more would be lost, so excessive detail would be a distractron from souls being saved.


Re: Council of Florence: a final nail in the coffin of BoD
« Reply #57 on: February 20, 2025, 11:58:03 AM »
Again, you need to snap out of deciding what "should happen to every person [you decide might be] of good will".  We know that God is perfeclty Just and perfectly Merciful, and no one will be dealt with "unfairly".  If our perception is that something might SEEM unfair to us, we reject that thinking, and we most certinly don't draw theological conclusions from our emotional reaction to things.  That's not theology.  Theology starts with revealed truth, and then we apply reason to those truths and draw out greater detail from them logically.

We know that God is Love and that He is all Just and all Merciful.  We know what He has revealed, that there's a Heaven and there's a Hell and there's a Purgatory.  We know that He taught that the Sacrament of Baptism is necessary to enter into the Kingdom of God, "water and the Holy Spirit".  I'm sure there's a ton of detail that He did not reveal, such as Limbo of the Infants, and we can try to speculate.  But we can never start second-guessing specific scenarios and decide it would be "unfair", and therefore we're going to make it so that Baptism isn't necessary like He said.
What you say is true and I do not say the opposite. When I speak of people of good will, I speak of those who are ontologically of good will, not according to my perception, but according to the Truth. And the question is whether people of ontological good will are necessarily saved or not. I have simply tried to give an example but God alone knows who is truly of good will. 

Offline Tradman

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Re: Council of Florence: a final nail in the coffin of BoD
« Reply #58 on: February 20, 2025, 12:43:10 PM »
Can we believe that anyone who sincerely wants, I mean sincerely, to be saved, would necessarily be saved? Will this person receive baptism sooner or later? Or is it possible that even this person will be damned, for lack of predestination? For example, let's take a Novus Ordo guy who sincerely practices his faith and thinks he is baptized but in reality is not, because the priest invented a formula, but he does not know it, how can this person receive baptism if he thinks he is already baptized? This is worrying, isn't it?

I didn't see this question answered the way I would answer it, so let me explain how I came to understand BOD: I sat outside of a busy restaurant the day I realized there is no salvation outside the Church.  All those people coming and going and it seemed by the way they dressed, or went about, were largely unconcerned about their eternal souls. The knot in my gut grew and excluding all judgement, it came to me that hoping for BOD was the perfect way to relieve me of doing everything I could for them, i.e. really praying for them to get Baptism, or working with some of them to get Baptism (a much more intense love of neighbor and duty than just hoping they squeezed through with BOD). I knew accepting EENS at face value and outright rejecting BOD demanded more serious prayer, or following more closely the days of fast and abstinence, doing corporal works of mercy etc.  Because BOD is uncertain at best (no outward sign), or non-existent at worst, hoping in BOD is evil because such a "hope" doesn't help souls, rather, it insidiously placates the conscience and often undermines zeal for love of neighbor.      

Re: Council of Florence: a final nail in the coffin of BoD
« Reply #59 on: February 20, 2025, 12:50:38 PM »

I didn't see this question answered the way I would answer it, so let me explain how I came to understand BOD: I sat outside of a busy restaurant the day I realized there is no salvation outside the Church.  All those people coming and going and it seemed by the way they dressed, or went about, were largely unconcerned about their eternal souls. The knot in my gut grew and excluding all judgement, it came to me that hoping for BOD was the perfect way to relieve me of doing everything I could for them, i.e. really praying for them to get Baptism, or working with some of them to get Baptism (a much more intense love of neighbor and duty than just hoping they squeezed through with BOD). I knew accepting EENS at face value and outright rejecting BOD demanded more serious prayer, or following more closely the days of fast and abstinence, doing corporal works of mercy etc.  Because BOD is uncertain at best (no outward sign), or non-existent at worst, hoping in BOD is evil because such a "hope" doesn't help souls, rather, it insidiously placates the conscience and often undermines zeal for love of neighbor.     

You are 100% right.