Author Topic: Does "baptism of desire" grant the grace of baptismspiritual rebirth? (Read 13073 times)

Cantarella · « **Reply #50 on:** April 24, 2014, 11:58:10 PM »

Quote from: Ambrose

Quote from: Alcuin
Quote from: Ambrose
To deny Baptism of Desire is heresy. For those that reject this de fide teaching of the Church, you place your soul in grave peril.

Is the de fide teaching limited to actual catechumens and martyrs?

The de fide teaching only applies to explicit Baptism of Desire. When the Holy Office explained this teaching in the 1949 letter, Suprema Haec Sacra, it referenced the Council of Trent as teaching explicit Baptism of Desire. It is for this reason that anyone who denies Baptism of Desire professes a heresy against the Faith.

Regarding implicit Baptism of Desire, the Holy Office corrects the Saint Benedict Center for this error against the Faith, but does not accuse them of heresy. The reason is that the Saint Benedict Center in its publication reviewed by the Holy Office had not denied Baptism of Desire itself, rather the Church's teaching on implicit Baptism of Desire.

Msgr. Fenton explains:
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The most important error contained in that article was a denial of the possibility of salvation for any man who had only an implicit desire to enter the Catholic Church. There was likewise bad teaching on the requisites for justification, as distinguished from the requisites for salvation. The first of these faults has been indicated in a previous issue of The American Ecclesiastical Review.[12]

The teaching on implicit Baptism of Desire must be believed as it is both authoritative teaching of the Pope's ordinary magisterium, (Mystici Corporis), and is also certain doctrine as this teaching is taught by the consensus of the theologians.

If a Catholic denies implicit Baptism of Desire as explained by the Holy Office letter, he would objectively commit a mortal sin, but would not be outside the Church.

The real heresy is your obstinate denial of the solemnly defined dogma that the Catholic Faith is necessary for salvation. You believe that non-Catholics can be saved without the Catholic Faith. If such a position is not a heresy, then nothing in the world is a heresy. Hello CMRI brainwash!.

Nishant · « **Reply #51 on:** April 25, 2014, 06:34:16 AM »

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I'll have to dig up the Trent Canons to show this particular emphasis.

Ladislaus, thanks for your reply. In my opinion, in the first place, you have to provide some kind of plausible expanation for why every single post-Tridentine teacher of the Faith missed this for centuries, only for Fr. Feeney, you and others to have come up with five centuries later. All authorities without exception read Trent in the way I'm going to defend, so the interpretation you propose is a novelty.

To answer it critically, from the Council texts itself,

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Compare: "verum etiam eorundem sacramentalem confessionem saltem in voto ... non quidem pro pœna æterna, quæ vel sacramento, vel sacramenti voto una cuм culpa remittitur" (but also the sacramental confession of the said sins, not indeed for the eternal punishment,—at least in desire ... which is, together with the guilt, remitted, either by the sacrament, or by the desire of the sacrament)

(this also answers the third point you made above)

And: "qui voto propositum illum cœlestem panem edentes ... "those to wit who eating in desire that heavenly bread"

With: "sine lavacro regenerationis, aut ejus voto" ... "without the laver of regeneration, or the desire thereof"

In every case, it is evident that voto always refers to the reception of the sacramental effect in desire and never to a disposition.

Secondly, if you're really going to claim, contrary to all this, that the intent of the Tridentine Fathers was otherwise, what is your explanation of Trent's Catechism, where it is written the intention to receive baptism, together with the repentance for past sins, suffices to avail adults to grace and righteousness? Surely you will not deny that this teaches a baptism of desire, especially seeing as it says makes it impossible to be washed in the salutary waters, is referring to the same danger as in the case of infants, i.e. death, and does not speak in the same way it would if it believed these to be eternally lost, as infants are, and as it did for them.

There is a third point, contrary to the view you've espoused here regarding the incomparability of catechumens and penitents, it is Pope St. Pius V's condemnation of Michael Baius' errors, "1031 31. Perfect and sincere charity, which is from a "pure heart and good conscience and a faith not feigned" [1 Tim. 1:5], can be in catechumens as well as in penitents without the remission of sins. 1032 32. That charity which is the fullness of the law is not always connected with the remission of sins." which theologians again have always understood to mean that charity in penitents or in catechumens cannot fail to avail the remission of sins.

Again, in Her Catechisms, the Church makes clear that those verses in Scripture when Our Lord promises to any man who loves Him truly the indwelling of the Holy Trinity, really mean any man, be he catechumen or penitent, saying that in either case love of God and contrition suffices for the remission of sins.

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Don't you think it odd that if Trent were teaching BoD that it was completely silent about BoB?

BoB, as theologians explain is the most perfect form of baptism of desire, because the most perfect act of love, as Jesus Himself said, is to give one's life for God. Martyrdom, says St. Alphonsus, does not act by as strict a causality as the sacraments. Baptism of blood was already unanimously recognized as Catholic teaching, not even the heretic Peter Abelard contested it, and it is again provided for in the Catechism, when it speaks of catechumens who face death due to unavoidable circuмstances before they can receive baptism, which includes them being killed.

I think if you had an appropriate view of the necessary horror of hell, you might be less inclined to say what you are saying. The least pain of even purgatory, it is unanimously taught, surpass all the pains of the present life. We will come back to this, but the slightest pain of sense in hell must necessarily exceed that, and the pain of loss common to all damned adults in its kind is even greater than the greatest pain of sense possible. Moreover, all the blessed in purgatory have the certitude of salvation, whereas all the unfortunate lost have the assurance of eternal reprobation, and the horrible despair necessarily concomitant with it.

Ladislaus · « **Reply #52 on:** April 25, 2014, 09:38:24 AM »

Quote from: Nishant

Ladislaus, thanks for your reply. In my opinion, in the first place, you have to provide some kind of plausible expanation for why every single post-Tridentine teacher of the Faith missed this for centuries, only for Fr. Feeney, you and others to have come up with five centuries later. All authorities without exception read Trent in the way I'm going to defend, so the interpretation you propose is a novelty.

Very few authorities even deal with this passage. God has allowed this to be misinterpreted, for without this notion of Baptism of Desire the crisis in faith that God has willed could not have come about.

None of you has yet attempted to address the substance of why I interpret Trent the way I do. Every single time I lay it out, it's ignored. You just rely upon the fact that others have interpreted it differently. I acknowledge that others have interpreted it differently. I acknowledge that I'm in the minority. Even Father Feeney didn't interpret this differently; he distinguished between justification and salvation. Now let's look at the substance of the argument.

If read your way, Trent condemns the popular theological explanation of Baptism of Blood (the notion that it acts quasi ex opere operato). Trent therefore reduces Baptism of Blood to Baptism of Desire. There's no getting around that. There can no longer said to be "Three Baptisms" but, rather, "Two Baptisms".

Also ignored: If you make the "or" in Trent disjunctive, "either ... or" , then you're saying that the Sacrament can justify without the will, the votum, which is explicitly condemned as heretical in the Canons of Trent.

That passage you cite on Penance only backs up my point. Notice the use of the "vel ... vel" (vel sacramento, vel sacramenti voto), which is an explicit "either ... or". No such construction is used in the Baptism passage.

And the biggest reason is the context of the passage.

By itself it can be ambiguous, read as conjunctive or as disjunctive. No one has addressed this either.

Bob says we cannot play baseball without a bat or a ball.

On the surface (if you didn't know anything about baseball), this could mean that either 1) that we need both in order to play or 2) we can play it with one OR the other. It's not inherently clear.

But what if I do this?

Bob says we cannot play baseball without a bat or a ball because we need a bat and a ball to play baseball.

Immediately disambiguated.

Same thing with Trent.

No one can be justified without Baptism or the desire for it.

Could be read either way.

But Trent immediately disambiguates in the following passage, just as in my baseball example.

No one can be justified without the laver or the will [votum] for it, since, as it is written, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

Notice the analogy. laver:water::will:Holy Ghost. Trent had just spent paragraphs talking about how the Holy Ghost acts to dispose the will in order to properly be justified in the Sacrament of Baptism.

If you could convince me that:

Bob says we cannot play baseball without a bat or a ball because we need a bat and a ball to play baseball.

means that we can play baseball with EITHER a bat OR a ball,

then you could convince me that

No one can be justified without the laver or the will [votum] for it, since, as it is written, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

means that we can be justified with EITHER the Sacrament OR the desire for it.

There's no disputing this. It's obvious. Those who interpreted it differently misunderstood it by drawing a bad analogy with Penance. St. Alphonsus also draws the bad analogy with Penance.

Ladislaus · « **Reply #53 on:** April 25, 2014, 09:49:51 AM »

Quote from: Nishant

BoB, as theologians explain is the most perfect form of baptism of desire, because the most perfect act of love, as Jesus Himself said, is to give one's life for God. Martyrdom, says St. Alphonsus, does not act by as strict a causality as the sacraments.

You're wrong on this. Look it up. BoD/BoB theologians distinguish the two, differentiating that BoD works ex opere operantis but that BoB works quasi ex opere operato. If you read Trent the way you do, one has to reject that explanation of BoB and do as you do, which is to reduce it for a form of BoD. Thus, no longer Three Baptisms, but Two. If you read Trent the way you claim it should be read, then you have to reject the popular explanation of BoB. Which is problematic because several of the Church Fathers who accepted BoB at the same time explicitly rejected BoD.

Ladislaus · « **Reply #54 on:** April 25, 2014, 09:51:57 AM »

Quote from: Nishant

I think if you had an appropriate view of the necessary horror of hell, you might be less inclined to say what you are saying.

You precisely underscore one of my major problems with the reasoning behind BoD, that YOU are motivated by a sense of it being unfair of God to not save people who have not committed actual sin. These considerations are what St. Augustine referred to as leading into a vortex of confusion. I follow the theology, not my own sentimentality or my presumption of what is fair or unfair for God to do.