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What is the teaching of the Fathers and the Doctors? Some Fathers deny that there is any case in which a man could be saved without the actual reception of the water of baptism (with the exception of the martyrs alone). But most of them agree in saying that there is one case, and only one case, when a man could be saved without having been actually baptized with water. It is the case of a catechumen who confesses the Catholic Faith, who is sorry for his past sins, who is burning with desire to be baptized and to join the Catholic Church, under the authority of the Roman Pontiff, but who, having been kept without baptism by the Church until he has been fully instructed, is overtaken by death suddenly and is incapable of receiving baptism. Such a catechumen, it is believed, can be saved, if he makes an act of perfect charity.

See, this is where the idea fails for me because such a person would never die without the sacrament that God made a requirement for salvation. Because God made it a requirement, He is duty bound to provide it to all whom He intends to save, it's just that simple. Who will accuse God of being awol or shirking His duty at such a critical moment when the eternity of a sincere soul desiring to receive the sacrament is at stake?

When reading such things, does anyone ever realize that the above scenario itself is purely hypothetical with the most disastrous ending possible? The only reason for the scenario is in order to avoid that type of ending and have a happy ending via a BOD. This is the only way this impossible scenario should be understood. 

Whereas were it an actual situation, reception of the sacrament before death is an absolute certainty - but in order to believe this means you must have faith primarily in Divine Providence. Which is to say that in order to believe or even to give any credence at all to the quoted scenario is to either lack faith in Divine Providence, or have none.

There are only two possible outcomes regardless of the circuмstances:
1) God will provide the sacrament and he would be saved.
2) God will not provide the sacrament and he would not be saved.

AMDGJMJ,

That's a whopper of an acronym.

If anything that I said gave you the impression that anything I wrote was in response to you or in some way critical of you, please get rid of the notion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Take care of those boys and God bless you and the little one on the way. May it be a girl, but a cause for rejoicing most importantly in any event. I have four boys and one girl, so . . . I speak from some personal experience.

Take care,

DR

No worries.  I didn't take your response as critical.  I just figured that you were trying to clear Father Feeney's name and I felt kind of bad in case people might take what I had written wrong.  Sometimes things I write come out otherwise than I mean them to when I am pregnant or busy with the boys. 

We actually did find out that baby #3 is another boy.   

Hopefully one day we will have a girl, but for now is seems to be God's will that we have a little band of boys. 

Oh, and AMGJ stands for "ad majorem Dei Gloriam" (for the greater glory of God) and JMJ stands for "Jesus Mary and Joseph".  I grew up writing the full "AMDGJMJ" on top of my homeschooling work and anything else I wrote.   Though it would be on the top middle of my work and look more like this:  

AMDG
 JMJ
    +

The other thing I'm struggling with is people who claim to receive words from God. I often hear from people from prayer groups that this person or that person got this message from God or from Our Lady asking us to do x, y and z. I'm extremely careful with that and remind people, at most, it is private revelation and I am not required to believe in those messages as part of my Catholic faith. But then I hear from protestants claiming that God told him/her this or that. So as with the reasoning above, rain/graces from God can fall on any of us but saying that a protestant received a message from God is just unacceptable to me and quite honestly, it upsets me. In fact, the reason why I'm asking for your opinions is because someone (Catholic too), told be to be prepared because Jim Bakker (protestant personality) said that God told him [insert apocalyptical message here]. What is the traditional way of dealing with this type of "private revelation" to non-catholics?

To put it simply, ignore these messages.

"But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema." - Galatians 1:8