A number of years ago a Catholic buddy told me of an actual case of a catechumen who was stricken and killed by a car during his procession into church to be baptized. The BOD crowd might say, "Well, he went instantly to heaven because he desired it." The other side might very well argue, "Well, perhaps he had impure motives in potentially receiving baptism and suffered God's vengeance." I think the story was in American Ecclesiastical Review.
Someone in this thread argued that the Church would never have canonized St. Thomas if his writings contained theological error. The point is - and has been alluded to several times in this thread - the collected works of St. Thomas is twenty-five volumes in Latin. Most of St. Thomas' works have never been been translated into English; and, if I recall from my college days, sixty percent of St. Thomas has never been translated. The whole idea that a voluminous doctor, even of the stature of St. Thomas, could spend his days writing many volumes, without ever falling into error, is ridiculous. The same could be said of the any of the fathers. Even St. Augustine somewhere in his Retractions said, "Formerly I have written that the Good Thief was not baptized, however, I do not know whether the Good Thief was baptized." The very fact that St. Augustine would revisit his own works is proof enough that they might have contained errors.
Topic: The Catechism of the Council of Trent does not teach Baptism of Desire (Read 64609 times)