In the present economy there is no other way to communicate that life to the child who has not attained the use of reason. Above all, the state of grace is absolutely necessary at the moment of death without it salvation and supernatural happiness—the beatific vision of God—are impossible. An act of love is sufficient for the adult to obtain sanctifying grace and to supply the lack of baptism; to the still unborn or newly born this way is not open

Dear Ladislaus, if you're seriously going to contend that Pope Pius XII is on your side on this one, please offer some sort of explanation for the above.

The correct way to think of it is - just like a baptized Protestant child before the age of reason is only materially united to the heretical sect in which he received baptism, but is formally united to the Catholic Church, so too is the case for all the baptized who are in only material heresy.

The passage you cite is talking about those who are heretics and schismatics, formally.

This is the passage in MCC which the Holy Office cites, and it already implies that those baptized by desire can be interiorly in a state of grace.

We ask each and every one of them to correspond to the interior movements of grace, and to seek to withdraw from that state in which they cannot be sure of their salvation.[196] For even though by an unconscious desire and longing they have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer, they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church.

196. Cf. Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, 13 Sept. 1868: Act. Conc. Vat., C.L.VII, 10.

The citation of Pius IX also confirms the meaning.

As for your question to me about the Society vis-a-vis the Resistance on Vatican II, I think Bishop Fellay's got it entirely right. I wonder if I may ask what you think on Bishop Fellay's comments on religious liberty in the CNS interview. He also made some general statements about the Council and the common understanding of it, in light of some things related directly during the doctrinal discussions.

And this thread has also been derailed from its original intent, as per usual.  This thread was to demonstrate that if you accept Suprema Haec as Traditional then the Vatican II ecclesiology can clearly be understood in a Traditional sense.

You yourself remarked about shoot-from-the-hip sedevacantism.  This here is more shoot-from-the-hip accusations of heresy.

You ask people what's heretical about Vatican II.  Here are the responses.

1) statement that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church
2) statement that the Holy Spirit does not refrain from using non-Catholic Communites as means of salvation
3) ecuмenism (i.e. the notion of partial communion, the notion of separated brethren, the notion that the Church is divided)
4) religious liberty

I'm arguing that these are all perfectly consistent with Suprema Haec ecclesiology and not heretical at all if you don't think SH to be heretical.

Nishant, I'll be very honest.  If someone could convince me that I had to accept SH as binding, authoritative Catholic teaching, then I would have no choice but to accept Vatican II as substantially free from error.  I would cease being a Traditional Catholic.  I would align with the FSSP or one of the Eastern Rites.

There can be no question but that Pius XII believed in Baptism of Desire.

My mistake, Ladislaus. I thought you were trying to make a case against this. Three points in response to what you have said,

1. But your view is still not entirely clear to me. You're saying Pius XII only believed in explicit BOD, but that Suprema Haec's formulation, on the other hand, allows implicit desire and implicit faith? Is that correct?

But Pius XII speaks of the desire as being implicit in an act of love.

Please explain what is the difference between Pius XII, "An act of love is sufficient for the adult to obtain sanctifying grace" and SH, "when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God"?

Both seem to say pretty much the same thing to me. Love is in the will and anyone who makes an act of perfect love of God manifests a desire to conform his will entirely to that of God. Please explain why you think Pius XII is speaking only of explicit BOD when he speaks of an act of love.

The way we understand what Pius XII says is that those who obtain remission of sins through an act of love will necessarily be in an uncertain state as to whether their sins are forgiven, whereas upon the reception of the sacrament itself, they can have a greater degree of certitude of the same.  

2. As for Vatican II and Bishop Fellay, remember there are still effects of the Council plaguing the Church that need to be urgently addressed. That is why even after the Roman authorities stated that they did not believe that there was a right to error, as we thought they did, still Bishop Fellay said there is an urgent need to return to the traditional principle of the confessionally Catholic State and religious tolerance rather than religious liberty. (This better expresses that a false religion is but an evil which may sometimes be tolerated in the interest of a greater good, but not in itself a good to which a right is owed, and therefore affects the extent to which heretical sects proselytise in Catholic lands to a great extent)

So what must be done? The Vatican needs to remind States that they have a duty to be confessionally Catholic, rather than tell Catholic States to become pluralist or agnostic as it did, and also to tell heretical sects that they need to convert, rather than tell heretical sects that they in themselves are means of salvation, so there is no need to convert, as it for the most part is still doing. Forget Protestants and schismatics, the Vatican and many modern churchmen even tell Christ denying Jews and Muslims that the Church is not interested in converting them, only wants to dialog as equals, even grovels that it may be granted this.  

3. This to me and to most of us so obviously does not follow from the possibility of BOD, and even if I agree with what you say about ecclesiology, I don't think you will argue it follows from that that we don't need to tell Jews and Protestants that they need to convert. Will you?

BOD is an extraordinary means of receiving the sacramental effect of baptism. Like with the sacrament of penance, traditional teaching maintains the objective obligation to receive the sacrament remains even in those who have obtained remission of sins through an act of love or contrition. Nobody, nobody at all, can presume to dispense from that obligation, without sin, without very grave sin.

That is why we traditional Catholics can't be indifferent to this, and need, respectfully, to question certain practices today that continue to be justified in the name of the Council. But in doing this, the question of how the indefectibility of the ecclesia docens has been preserved in the Conciliar era can't just be ignored, as it is by some of those who constitute the Resistance to the Society's approach.

Religious liberty and ecuмenism and its consequences for the Church today, these are the big issues of Vatican II.

Love is in the will and anyone who makes an act of perfect love of God manifests a desire to conform his will entirely to that of God. The way we understand what Pius XII says is that those who obtain remission of sins through an act of love will necessarily be in an uncertain state as to whether their sins are forgiven, whereas upon the reception of the sacrament itself, they can have a greater degree of certitude of the same.  

To the BODer the unclear, like that one line above from Mystici Corporis, they make "clear" according to their own desires. The clear dogmas like Florence below,  which requires no explanations, they deny and say it does not mean what it CLEARLY says:

How can anyone hope to convince a typical BODer about anything, when they ALL believe that this CLEAR DOGMA below does not mean that for salvation one has to explicitly believe in the Incarnation (Christ) and the Trinity. Is there any dogma that is clearer? It is the infallible unanimous opinion of the Fathers (clearly expressed in the Athanasian Creed), and not a Father, Doctor or Saint has taught otherwise. Yet ALL the BODers deny it, for they believe that someone can be saved who has no explicit belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation (nor explicit desire to be baptized, nor martyred, nor to be a Catholic.

Quote

Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Sess. 8, Nov. 22, 1439, ex cathedra: “Whoever wishes to be saved, needs above all to hold the Catholic faith; unless each one preserves this whole and inviolate, he will without a doubt perish in eternity.– But the Catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in the Trinity, and the Trinity in unity... Therefore let him who wishes to be saved, think thus concerning the Trinity. “But it is necessary for eternal salvation that he faithfully believe also in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ...the Son of God is God and man...– This is the Catholic faith; unless each one believes this faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.”

Major:  I please God and can save my soul by a "good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God"? (even in the embracing and pursuit of objective error)

Minor:  I have a right to please God and to save my soul.

Conclusion:  I have a right to this "good disposition of soul". (even in the embracing and pursuit of objective error)

Objectively, every man has the obligation to learn the truth, inform his conscience by truth, and be guided by the obligations truth imposes upon one's conscience.

Subjectively, a person in inculpable ignorance of his true obligations can still obey what his conscience judges to be true and right, but only on the condition that he is willing to obey the truth once he learns of it.

Yes, the only way DH can be read as not meaning a right to chose error is to separate the subjective from the objective.  And this trend towards subjectivism has been around since the early Renaissance, and it's been building momentum.  Bishop Williamson used to trace its history brilliantly for us at the seminary.

What you have to say is that you have a right to freedom to choose (subjective) but not the right to freedom to choose error (objective).  Or, in other words, you have a right to choose subjectively, but error has no right to be chosen.  You have to turn religious liberty into a purely subjective thing.  In other words, you have the right to the freedom but not a right to the object of that freedom (if it's error).  So the object of the freedom becomes an accident to the freedom itself.  So the object of the freedom becomes separated from the act.  So the intellect becomes separated from the will.  So religious liberty applies to the act of the will in choosing but not to the act of the intellect in embracing the error.

So the right belongs properly or essentially to the will in the act of making a choice, but only accidentally to the object of the will, the thing chosen.

Yes, you're right on the first part. Whereas the traditional principle of religious tolerance, as elucidiated by Pius XII was much simpler, and easier to apply as well, "First: that which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality objectively has no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated. Secondly: failure to impede this with civil laws and coercive measures can nevertheless be justified in the interests of a higher and more general good. Before all else the Catholic statesman must judge if this condition is verified in the concrete—this is the "question of fact." In his decision he will permit himself to be guided by weighing the dangerous consequences that stem from toleration against those from which the community of nations will be spared, if the formula of toleration be accepted."

But it is my opinion that Trent actually put the notion of implicit Baptism of Desire to rest.  If you look at how Trent treated Confession, you'll see that the initial draft wanted to state that fallen Catholics could be restored to a state of justification by perfect contrition alone, but the Pope intervened to add that this must be accompanied by a desire to receive the Sacrament of Confession.

If you are willing, Ladislaus, I'd like to discuss this in greater detail. The reason is that the traditional understanding of Trent has been the exact opposite, namely, that desire can be implicit in an act of contrition or a simple act of love of God. Not one source reads it otherwise, and I think this can be proven from the text of the Council itself, taken together with the Catechism as well.

This is the relevant part you are speaking of,

"The Synod teaches moreover, that, although it sometimes happen that this contrition is perfect through charity, and reconciles man with God before this sacrament is actually received, the said reconciliation, nevertheless, is not to be ascribed to that contrition, independently of the desire of the sacrament which is included therein" (Denz. 898)

These three parts, then, are so intimately connected with one another, that contrition includes the intention and resolution of confessing and making satisfaction ...

Nay more, the same Prophet declares elsewhere that, as soon as we have conceived this contrition in our hearts, our sins are forgiven by God: I said, I will confess my injustice to the Lord, and thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin. Of this truth we have a figure in the ten lepers, who, when sent by our Lord to the priests, were cured of their leprosy before they had reached them; which gives us to understand that such is the efficacy of true contrition, of which we have spoken above, that through it we obtain from the Lord the immediate pardon of all sins ...

Contrition, it is true, blots out sin; but ... This is a degree of contrition which few reach; and hence, in this way, very few indeed could hope to obtain the pardon of their sins. It, therefore, became necessary that the most merciful Lord should provide by some easier means for the common salvation of men ...

if the sinner have a sincere sorrow for his sins and a firm resolution of avoiding them in future, although he bring not with him that contrition which may be sufficient of itself to obtain pardon, all his sins are forgiven and remitted through the power of the keys, when he confesses them properly to the priest.

This St. Alphonsus and several others read to mean that an act of contrition by itself contains an implicit desire for the sacrament of penance. Do you disagree?

Moreover, since you have mentioned confession, it provides an obvious example of where we are excused from some specific obligations, on the condition that we have a truly universal will to do everything that God has commanded.

For example, we are obliged by divine law under pain of sacrilege to confess all our mortal sins in number and kind, so much so that if we deliberately neglect to  do this, we not only cannot obtain forgiveness but have added the guilt of sacrilege. But, so long as we have a universal will to confess all our sins, we are excused from confessing some specific sins, if it really is inculpably beyond our ability to remember them.