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St. Robert Bellarmine didn't just teach BOD, he taught that the Council of Trent teaches BOD. Is anyone going to say that the words of the Council can't be misunderstood, and at the same time say St. Robert Bellarmine misunderstood them?  Or is anyone willing to claim they understand what the council meant better than St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus Liguori, Suarez, Cornelius a Lapide, and many more who specifically understood the Council to be teaching BOD?

St. Robert Bellarmine, De Baptismo, Lib. I, Cap. VI

Yes, great quote In Principio.

But it must be believed without doubt that true conversion supplies for Baptism of water when, not of contempt, but of necessity some die without Baptism of water.  It is expressly stated, Ezech. 18, if the wicked do penance for all his sins, I will not remember all his iniquities.  Thus also Ambrose clearly teaches in his oration on the death of Valentinian the younger:  Whom I was, he says, about to regenerate, I have lost; but he did not lose the grace which he had hoped for.  Thus also Augustine lib.4. de baptism, cap.22. & Bernard epist.77 & after them Innocent III. cap. Apostolicam, de presbytero non baptizato, whence also the Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 4 says that Baptism is necessary in fact or in desire.

As you say, these giants of the Church not only teach it, but they explicitly say that Trent teaches it. It's there in black and white, but so many members of this forum prefer their own "understanding" of what Trent teaches. How is it possible? It is just incomprehensible to me, it just beggars belief.

The infidel, the pagan? Let it suffice to say, that if they are saved, it is only in and through the Catholic Church.

+St Bellarmine and St Thomas would disagree.  So would Trent.  All 3 of these talk about CATECHUMENS and BOD.  Not pagans, infidels, “good willed” natives, etc.  Only Catechumens.  


What you describe above is more like Rahner’s “anonymous Christian” nonsense and V2’s heretical lumen gentium.  

You definitively exclude the possibility of their conversion, the possibility that they died in God's grace? That is not Catholic. Admittedly, who would want to be in their shoes? But that is beside the point.

This is both stupid and at the same time a slanderous straw man, attributing the opinion that anyone "definitively exclude(s) the possibility of their conversion" to anyone here.  Absolutely NO ONE does this, nor did the poster to whom you were responding here.

What is this emotional drivel that you're trying to pass off as theology?

Entire point of the teaching from Pope Gregory XVI on that other related thread is that while this is possible, unless the distinctions are explicitly made, the general act of "praying for" a departed heretic undermines the Church dogma regarding EENS.  It's incredibly unlikely, and St. Alphonsus said that the chances were miniscule, for someone who lived either outside the Church or in sin their entire lives, to experience a last moment conversion, since that's not how God's Providence normally works.  But no one holds that it's not theoretically possible for this to have happened and definitively excludes the possibility.

Church presumes them lost, and in the external forum treats them as lost.  If we die and go to heaven, and happen to find that such a one was saved in their last moments, then glory to God.  But to try to spin this as if it's something likely or common, or to indiscriminately, without making all these distinctions, claim to be praying for them, is to express the sentiment that there is good hope of their salvation, even if they did not convert to the Catholic faith in their last moments.

There was a decree of the Holy Office under Pope St. Pius X, in response to a question about whether Catholics could say it was possible for Confucius to have been saved, and answer was that Catholics must respond that he was damned, as all infidels are damned.

Bottom line is that the people who speak this way, as you do, don't REALLY believe that there's no salvation outside the Church.  You pay lip service to the dogma because you have to ... after all, it's a dogma.  But that's as far as your belief in it goes.