Just focusing on Trent doesn't solve anything.  My purpose is trying to understand history so I can show others WHY what Trent said is orthodox and agrees with St Augustine, St Thomas etc.

That right there is the entire problem. Too many people are missing the forest for the trees on this subject. One has to wonder if someone truly has the Catholic Faith if they are going to overlook the definitions of a Council, let alone Trent, in order to reconcile their theory. (Speaking generally, of course, not of you or Lad here).

That's why it's important to cite Vatican I, like the Dimonds always do, regarding this issue. Because Vatican I came about due to centuries of people reading into Magisterial teachings to find some sort of loophole to support their errors.

Pope Pius IX, First Vatican Council, Sess. 3, Chap. 2 on Revelation, 1870, ex cathedra: “Hence, also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and there must never be a recession from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding.”

We have St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus, and even Father Feeney taking it the second way.

We have an advantage over St. Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus, because they didn't have Vatican 1. Meaning it wasn't so clear which decrees were infallible and required the assent of Faith, and which ones did not. Perhaps they mistakenly thought Pope Innocent II's BOD teaching was infallible, and they had to reconcile that with Trent. Now we know it wasn't, and is in fact wrong. Those examples you provided aren't comparable, because they fail to take into account the context of Session 6 chap. 4, particularly "AS IT IS WRITTEN, John 3:5", and the rest of the chapters of the session, which completely ignore "BOD". If a text is ambiguous, we should base our understanding of it on the context.

St. Alphonsus also taught that BOD does not provide the grace of spiritual rebirth/baptism, which Trent says everyone must have to be justified.

Here is Trent's teaching:

Council of Trent, Sess. 6, Chap. 3: “But though He died for all, yet all do not receive the benefit of His death, but those only to whom the merit of His passion is communicated; because as truly as men would not be born unjust, if they were not born through propagation of the seed of Adam, since by that propagation they contract through him, when they are conceived, injustice as their own, SO UNLESS THEY WERE BORN AGAIN IN CHRIST THEY WOULD NEVER BE JUSTIFIED, since by that new birth through the merit of His passion the grace by which they become just is bestowed upon them.”

Here is the teaching of St. Alphonsus that BOD does not remit the liability of punishment due to sin, meaning BOD does not give someone a spiritual rebirth, without which no man can be justified:

St. Alphonsus: “Baptism of blowing is perfect conversion to God through contrition or through the love of God above all things, with the explicit desire, or implicit desire of the true river of baptism whose place it supplies (iuxta Trid. Sess. 14, c. 4) with respect to the remission of the guilt, but not with respect to the character to be imprinted, nor with respect to the full liability of the punishment to be removed: it is called of blowing because it is made through the impulse of the Holy Spirit, who is called a blowing.” (St. Alphonsus, Moral Theology, Volume V, Book 6, n. 96)


So, do you agree with St. Alphonsus that BOD does not give the grace of a spiritual rebirth? Would you then hold that a man can be justified without being born again in Christ, contrary to Sess. 6, Chap. 3?

Another good source to refute "justification by the desire for baptism", is this letter, which states that the spirit of sanctification (justification) is inseparable and indivisible from the water of baptism.

Pope St. Leo the Great, dogmatic letter to Flavian, Council of Chalcedon, 451: “Let him heed what the blessed apostle Peter preaches, that sanctification by the Spirit is effected by the sprinkling of Christ’s blood (1 Pet. 1:2)… For there are three who give testimony – Spirit and water and blood. And the three are one. (1 Jn. 5:4-8) IN OTHER WORDS, THE SPIRIT OF SANCTIFICATION AND THE BLOOD OF REDEMPTION AND THE WATER OF BAPTISM. THESE THREE ARE ONE AND REMAIN INDIVISIBLE. NONE OF THEM IS SEPARABLE FROM ITS LINK WITH THE OTHERS.”

The idea that a man can be justified by simply desiring to be baptized, is to separate and divide the "spirit of sanctification" from "the water of baptism."

I think that there's a misunderstanding of the term justification going on here, as justification is not sanctification.  As for this quote here, the BoDers would point out the word "effected by".  Certainly even with BoD, the Sacrament of Baptism is posited as the cause of the justification ... by those Doctors believed in BoD and were familiar with this quotation.

Just focusing on Trent doesn't solve anything.  My purpose is trying to understand history so I can show others WHY what Trent said is orthodox and agrees with St Augustine, St Thomas etc. 

That right there is the entire problem. Too many people are missing the forest for the trees on this subject. One has to wonder if someone truly has the Catholic Faith if they are going to overlook the definitions of a Council, let alone Trent, in order to reconcile their theory. (Speaking generally, of course, not of you or Lad here).

I totally agree DL. That right there is the entire problem, incredible as it is. 

Being a de fide teaching of the Church, the meaning of Trent's teaching that justification:
"cannot be effected without the laver of regeneration,"
does not change by the adding of the words:
 "or the desire thereof",
because:
"unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." 
 

Ladislaus, can you please answer these two questions I addressed to you? I'm not sure what you mean that sanctification and justification are different things. Could a man be sanctified without being justified, or vice versa?

Justification is a broader term that contrasts with a state of enmity toward God, and it can be a natural state, whereas sanctification refers to being in a supernatural state of grace.  That latter state is a free gift from God.  God could have created Adam and Even without any opportunity for them to be elevated to the supernatural state (sanctification), and had they not fallen, they would have remained in a state of justification, yet without sanctification.

This is why some post-Tridentine theologians held that infidels could be justified, though not saved.

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but it's merely an opinion, and St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus, and even Father Feeney felt otherwise.  You can't confuse your interpretation of the text with dogma itself ... which is something you have a tendency to do.

I am not interpreting what it says because to do so changes it's meaning - as you keep demonstrating.

Even if you read it that way, it's simply untrue that the meaning doesn't change by adding the words "or the desire thereof".  Fathers of Trent didn't add that for no reason. 

The Fathers of Trent added those words to teach that the desire thereof (BOD) does not justify - if you believe what the words say, then you cannot make them mean anything else. The Fathers of Trent likely foresaw there might be those like yourself who did not accept this, which is likely why they concluded with John 3:5, which squashes the idea of any type of a BOD, and does so in no uncertain terms.

 You can't confuse your interpretation of the text with dogma itself ... which is something you have a tendency to do.

But that's literally what you and Pax are doing. And then you appeal to the opinions of these theologians who were themselves reading into the definition of Trent. They were not bound by V1 yet, but we are, so therefore, the point is moot. Trent defines baptism and affirms it with John 3:5, plain as day; but then you keep circling back to a "deeper meaning" regarding justification vs sanctification. 

But that's literally what you and Pax are doing. And then you appeal to the opinions of these theologians who were themselves reading into the definition of Trent. They were not bound by V1 yet, but we are, so therefore, the point is moot. Trent defines baptism and affirms it with John 3:5, plain as day; but then you keep circling back to a "deeper meaning" regarding justification vs sanctification.

I'm doing nothing of the sort.  I've never ruled out this interpretation of Trent as impossible, and certainly would never claim that MY reading of the passage is in fact the dogma.  Stubborn routinely misapplies the notion of "dogma as it is written" to extrapolate from this that his interpretation or reading of the text is = to the dogma itself.  I've never done that.

He's effectively saying that his interpretation of the text = the dogma itself, and that would render St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus heretics for denying that dogma.  Unfortunately, the Dimonds do the exact same thing.

I never said that the readings of Bellarmine, Alphonsus, et al. were dogma, just that they must at least be considered viable interpretations of Trent and possible.  Nor have I said that I necessarily agree with their reading of it.  I'm merely stating that it's a possible interpretation and cannot be summarily dismissed as "contrary to the dogma as it is written", but rather "contrary to the dogma as [Stubborn thinks] it is written".  I've seen him repeatedly butcher and misread one doctrine or dogma after another than then claim that his misinterpretation was the dogma itself.

To have some disagreement about what a particular dogmatic text means is not the same thing as interpreting a dogma in a sense other than what was intended by the Council.  What's being debated here is ... what was intended with these words by the Council?