IMPLICIT does NOT mean indirect, subtle, abstract, or hidden.  IMPLICIT means it's assumed based on actions.  (Only God knows if the desire is truly there), but you cannot have an IMPLICIT desire unless ACTIONS are taken so that an OUTSIDE party would assume such.

. . . we have to admit . . . that the testimony of the Fathers, with regard to the possibility of salvation for someone outside the Church, is very weak. Certainly even the ancient Church knew that the grace of God can be found also outside the Church and even before Faith. But the view that such divine grace can lead man to his final salvation without leading him first into the visible Church, is something, at any rate, which met with very little approval in the ancient Church. For, with reference to the optimistic views on the salvation of catechumens as found in many of the Fathers, it must be noted that such a candidate for baptism was regarded in some sense or other as already ‘Christianus,’ and also that certain Fathers, such as Gregory nαzιanzen and Gregory of Nyssa deny altogether the justifying power of love or of the desire for baptism. Hence it will be impossible to speak of a consensus dogmaticus in the early Church regarding the possibility of salvation for the non-baptized, and especially for someone who is not even a catechumen. In fact, even St. Augustine, in his last (anti-pelagian) period, no longer maintained the possibility of a baptism by desire.

The fact that there is minor difference concerning BOD, such as whether it removes all actual sin or not, is beside the point, since they all taught BOD.

Read the quote from Rahner.  Most of the Church Fathers explicitly rejected BoD.  Of those who accepted it, they considered it limited to the catechumen.  So did St. Robert Bellarmine.  That was because they considered the catechumen already an imperfect member of the Church through their profession of faith.  In other words, they had one of the criteria required for membership in the Church, though not all.

This notion of BoD extending to those other than catechumens or those who profess the Catholic faith is nothing but Pelagian heresy.  You continue to hide behind Baptism of Desire to promote Pelagianism, whereas a PROPER understanding of BoD doesn't labor under that difficulty.

But none of you actually care about the rare case of a catechumen who happened to drop dead the day before his Baptism was scheduled.  Your interest is in undermining EENS so that all manner of infidel, heretic, and schismatic can be saved (which is a denial of Church dogma that these CANNOT be saved).

The opinion of three popes and the universal doctor of the Church, vs. one from Fr. Feeney

You are departing from what everyone prior to Vatican II taught simply because the teaching you don't like was never infallibly defined. 

Quote

CANON V.-If any one saith, that baptism is optional, that is, not necessary unto salvation; let him be anathema.

Baptism is necessary for salvation with the twofold necessity of means and precept. Here’s how the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia explains the two:

The salvific effect of baptism is the infusion of grace into the soul. This effect can be had, as the article says, by “an act of perfect charity or contrition, including, at least implicitly, the will to do all things necessary for salvation and thus especially to receive baptism.” I would add to that an act of supernatural faith.  This is the theology of baptism as it was taught prior to Vatican II, and you can read more about it in any pre-Vatican II theological manual. You can also read about it in the 1949 Holy Office letter that condemned the errors of the Feeneyites.

Baptism of Blood in some of those Church Fathers is a bit interesting also.  St. Cyprian, one of the first to mention it, states that those who undergo Baptism of Blood actually receive the SACRAMENT of Baptism.  Now, later authors just assume that this was written in error.  But if you look at another passage from him about BoB, he states that the blood replaces the water while the angels say the words (of Baptism).  In other words, his conception was in fact that this was an alternate means of receiving the Sacrament, with an alternate matter (blood) and form (spoken by angels).  So for him BoB WAS the Sacrament of Baptism.  He did not view this as some kind of magical "exception".

Most BoDers cite BoB as proof of BoD, but there are quite a few examples of Church Fathers who believed in BoB but explicitly rejected BoD.  So the one does NOT in fact prove the other.  They try to implicitly argue, "see, see, an exception" which they imply proves that there are OTHER "exceptions" as well.  But St. Cyprian does not consider BoB to be any exception.

Trent decrees that if you say the sacrament is not necessary unto salvation, then you are anathema. Being Trent's Canon is defined dogma, we are bound under pain of mortal sin to believe this, yet, regardless of your source, you are saying exactly what Trent condemns while using a fallible source which seemingly obviously teaches contrary to Trent.

I am asking sincerely here, do you realize this is contrary to Trent's canon? If not, using only Trent's canon, what do you understand the canon to mean?


I did answer your other points, but this post got so long that I deleted the rest of this post, but we can revisit later if needed.