This is a very good post, Neil.

Chances are the hypothetical catechumen does not even exist in reality anyway.

Nothing in the citation you quote from Ott implicitly refutes the Church's doctrine concerning baptism of desire.

Happenby: The Church's teaching on baptism is not dependent on fallible theologians or saints, but on the infallible magisterium, the popes, and without doubt, the Council of Trent. "If anyone says that true and natural water is not necessary for baptism and thus twists into some metaphor the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, let him be anathema."

Reply: All the canon you quoted means is that the sacrament of baptism requires real water, and that the “water” spoken of by Our  Lord cannot be understood metaphorically.

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

Canon V: You have to have baptism for salvation.  
Canon II. You have to have water for baptism.  
The definition of metaphor: A metaphor states that one thing is another thing. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/metaphor/

Since the canon rejects metaphors, saying that bod will save makes the person saying it, anathema.
Bod, by definition, is not baptism, and it cannot save.  These canons are iron clad against bod.    

The separate question of whether a person can obtain the salvific effects of baptism – i.e., translation into the state of justification by the infusion of sanctifying grace – without receiving the sacrament in re, is treated in another place.  

When discussing the sacraments in general, the same Holy Council teaches:

CANON IV.”If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification;-though all (the sacraments) are not indeed necessary for every individual; let him be anathema.


If anyone says the sacraments are not necessary unto salvation (not all are necessary, but at least one is); Or says that without the sacraments, and, without the desire for the sacraments, men obtain through faith alone the grace of justification, let him be anathema. Both desire for the sacraments, and the sacraments themselves, are necessary for justification.  Anathema to anyone saying otherwise.  

It goes on to explain that the salvific effects of the Eucharist, Penance, and Baptism can be obtained by desire.  Concerning baptism, we read:

 "And this translation (to the state of justification), since the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be effected, without the laver of regeneration, at least in the desire thereof, as it is written; “unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.”


The "or" in Trent includes "laver of regeneration" and it includes "desire".  The sacrament "laver of regeneration" is necessary, and it cannot be had without "desire for it".  If one concludes that the "or" means "either/or" then that means one can have justification with laver of regeneration, by desire only, but then that means one can get justification with the "laver of regeneration", but without desire for the sacrament.  And we all know that is false.  Further, if you can have justification with laver of regeneration, but without desire, and you can have justification with desire but without laver of regeneration, then we can have justification without either, "desire" or "laver of regeneration", courtesy of the "or".  Patently false.  

The "or" in Trent's quoted statements includes the necessity of "desire" and the necessity of the "laver of regeneration"  because it says this: you cannot have justification without...
Without what?  You cannot have justification without the laver of regeneration, or without the desire thereof.  You need both.  If we read it the way bod'ers suggest, acting as though the "or" is not inclusive in a sentence written in the negative sense, using the word "without" then we need neither, making the sentence renders both laver of regeneration and desire as unnecessary for justification.

      

The above teaching has always been understood as meaning the desire for baptism can suffice for salvation, provided that the person makes a supernatural act of faith combined with a perfect act of charity.  Two quotations will suffice, both of which are from doctors of the Church:

Bellarmine: “But without doubt it must be believed that true conversion supplies for Baptism of water when one dies without Baptism of water, not out of contempt, but out of necessity… For it is expressly said in Ezechiel: If the wicked shall do penance from his sins, I will no more remember his iniquities... … Thus also the Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 4, says that Baptism is necessary in fact or in desire.

St. Alphonsus: “But baptism of desire is perfect conversion to God by contrition or love of God above all things accompanied by an explicit or implicit desire for true Baptism of water, the place of which it takes as to the remission of guilt, but not as to the impression of the character or as to the removal of all debt of punishment. … Now it is de fide that men are also saved by Baptism of desire, by virtue of the Canon Apostolicam De Presbytero Non Baptizato and the Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 4, where it is said that no one can be saved “without the laver of regeneration or the desire for it.”

Just as a baptized person in mortal sin can obtain the salvific effects of Penance (infusion of grace and remission of sin) by means of an act of perfect contrition, so too can one obtain the salvific effects of baptism by a perfect of contrition combined with supernatural faith.  

In condemning the errors of Fr. Feeney, the Holy Office wrote:

“In His infinite mercy God has willed that the effects, necessary for one to be saved, of those helps to salvation which are directed toward man's final end, not by intrinsic necessity, but only by divine institution, can also be obtained in certain circuмstances when those helps are used only in desire and longing. This we see clearly stated in the Sacred Council of Trent, both in reference to the sacrament of regeneration [i.e. baptism] and in reference to the sacrament of penance.”

Here we have the Magisterium itself interpreting the above citation from Trent as teaching that the salvific effects of baptism can be obtain by “desire and longing”. This is not merely the teaching of a theologian, or even of a doctor of the Church, but of the Magisterium.

Many more quotations could be provided, but these should suffice for any Catholic of good will.


The canons of the Church make it clear that water is necessary for baptism and baptism is necessary for salvation.  The saints cannot contradict these truths no matter how hopeful their sentiments.  

Catholic Encyclopedia: “What is the essential factor or formal cause of our supernatural adoption? This question was never seriously mooted previous to the scholastic period. The solutions it then received were to a great extent influenced by the then current theories on grace. Peter the Lombard, who identifies grace and charity with the Holy Ghost, was naturally brought to explain our adoption by the sole presence of the Spirit in the soul of the just, to the exclusion of any created and inherent God-given entity. The Nominalists and Scotus, though reluctantly admitting a created entity, nevertheless failed to see in it a valid factor of our divine adoption, and consequently had recourse to a divine positive enactment decreeing and receiving us as children of God and heirs of the Kingdom. Apart from these, a vast majority of the Schoolmen with Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure, and preeminently St. Thomas, pointed to habitual grace (an expression coined by Alexander) as the essential factor of our adopted sonship. For them the same inherent quality which gives new life and birth to the soul gives it also a new filiation. Says the Angel of the Schools (III:9:23, ad 3am), "The creature is assimilated to the Word of God in His Unity with the Father; and this is done by grace and charity. . . . Such a likeness perfects the idea of adoption, for to the like is due the same eternal heritage."  This last view received the seal of the Council of Trent (sess. VI, c. vii, can. 11). The Council first identifies justification with adoption: "To become just and to be heir according to the hope of life everlasting" is one and the same thing. It then proceeds to give the real essence of justification. "Its sole formal cause is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just.”  … From what has been said, it is manifest that our supernatural adoption is an immediate and necessary property of sanctifying grace. The primal concept of sanctifying grace is a new God-given and Godlike life superadded to our natural life. By that very life we are born to God even as the child to its parent, and thus we acquire a new filiation. This filiation is called adoption …”