St. Augustine, A Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed


https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1307.htm

16. In three ways then are sins remitted in the Church; by Baptism, by prayer, by the greater humility of penance; yet God does not remit sins but to the baptized. The very sins which He remits first, He remits not but to the baptized. When? When they are baptized. The sins which are after remitted upon prayer, upon penance, to whom He remits, it is to the baptized that He remits. For how can they say, "Our Father," who are not yet born sons? The Catechumens, so long as they be such, have upon them all their sins. If Catechumens, how much more Pagans? How much more heretics? But to heretics we do not change their baptism. Why? Because they have baptism in the same way as a deserter has the soldier's mark: just so these also have Baptism; they have it, but to be condemned thereby, not crowned. And yet if the deserter himself, being amended, begin to do duty as a soldier, does any man dare to change his mark?

Pius IX

On Promotion of False Doctrines, 1863

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm

7. Here, too, our beloved sons and venerable brothers, it is again necessary to mention and censure a very grave error entrapping some Catholics who believe that it is possible to arrive at eternal salvation although living in error and alienated from the true faith and Catholic unity. Such belief is certainly opposed to Catholic teaching. There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments.

(. . .)


19.

(. . .)

Let us pray that the errant be flooded with the light of his divine grace, may turn back from the path of error into the way of truth and justice and, experiencing the worthy fruit of repentance, may possess perpetual love and fear of his holy name.

Leo XIII

On Mission Societies, 1880

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13mis.htm

6.

(. . .)

Do men like these pour forth their prayers to God that in His mercy he may bring to the Divine light of the Gospel by His victorious grace the people sitting in the darkness?

Baptism of desire is totally undeniable

Lol no.

The Church made several definitions about the necessity of water baptism. The Councils of Florence and Trent. John 3:5 explicitly defines the necessity of the sacrament.

What you are doing is going with an informed opinion of theologians (and many more heretics), not a definition.

No, on the contrary, the "arguments for [BoD]" are very weak.

Majority of Church Fathers rejected BoD.  We had one (St. Augustine) who tentatively floated the idea in his youth but then later retracted it, and St. Ambrose, who was not speaking about something that could save, but merely wash from sin.  St. Ambrose elsewhere explicitly states that a catechumen, regardless of how many virtues he might have, cannot be saved without the Sacrament of Baptism.  Meanwhile, about 6-7 Church Fathers explicitly reject the notion.

So there's no evidence from the Church Fathers that BoD was revealed.

Now, absent that, the only other way that something can be discerned by the Church as revealed, is if it were something that logically and necessarily followed from other revealed truths, but no such argument has ever been offered.  Instead, there's an "appeal" to the "authority" of St. Augustine and St. Ambrose (except that the former only held the opinion very tentatively and then retracted it, while the latter's opinion is highly debatable) -- and are the other 6 Fathers who rejected it chopped liver? -- and appeals to emotion ("it would seem to harsh"), or the argument of St. Thomas that the Sacraments have visible and invisible aspects (OK, but that doesn't mean that one can be had without the other ... and that is manifestly NOT the case with some of the Sacraments, especially those entailing the reception of a Sacramental character, of which Baptism is one).  There's been no argument that shows BoD follows necessarily from revealed dogma/doctrine.

So how can it be "heretical" to deny what is clearly nothing more than theological speculation and which clearly was not revealed by Our Lord through the Apostles (otherwise, many Church Fathers would have taught it with authority).

Finally, one cannot give the "assent of faith" to a concept or a phrase.  We assent to propositions.  It's strange that there are as many definitions of what BoD is, how it works, what it supplies for and what it doesn't supply for, as there are proponents of BoD.  I find it nowhere defined in the Magisterium so that I know what to believe about it.  In fact, the greatest common denominator of all BoD theory is ... the Sacrament of Baptism is not necessary for salvation, but, you see, that's heresy.

BoD is nothing but emotional speculation.  Even St. Robert Bellarmine succuмbs to this, holding the possibility for a catechumen (not, only a formal catechumen) to be saved by BoD because the contrary "would seem too harsh".  Adding to the confusion, does BoD apply only to catechumens?  St. Robert certainly thought so.

BoD is also predicated upon a heretical premise, namely, that God could be constrained by impossibility from bringing the Sacrament to His elect (the reason St. Augustine fiercely rejected BoD later in life).  BoDers claim that God cannot be constrained by the Sacraments ... and yet somehow hold that He can be constrained by circuмstances that render the Sacrament "impossible".  There's absolutely no reason BoD is necessary.  When God can EASILY bring the Sacrament to His elect, why would He not do so?  We have stories of saints who raised people back to life in order to baptize them.  We have the OT just rising after Our Lord's Resurrection in order to (according to some Patristic tradition) be baptized, so they could enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  God could easily send an angel, not only to preach the faith, but also to baptize.  Or He could have them baptized when their bodies are raised back to life at the final Resurrection.

There's no evidence whatsoever of BoD having been revealed, and there is absolutely NO NEED for it.  Only purpose it has ever served has been to undermine faith in the dogma that there's no salvation outside the Church.  Without BoD, you'd never have gotten Vatican II, since the V2 ecclesiology is predicated upon finding a mechanism to get non-Catholics into the Church.

The only hope a BOD has to work, is without Divine Providence. Go ahead and think about that for a minute.

Precisely.  Having laid out that God's Providence cannot be constrained by "impossibility," I asked a formerly-leading proponent of BoD here why God would will for someone to be saved by BoD instead of simply bringing the Sacrament to them.  He had no immediate response, but then chimed in (based on St. Alphonsus' clearly-erroneous notion) that perhaps God wanted certain individuals to spend some time in Purgatory (as if that could not have been arranged in some other way).

St. Alphonsus' idea that those justified by BoD can retain temporal punishment due to their sins is 1) without any foundation whatsoever and 2) clearly erroneous.  If there is such a thing as BoD, and one accepts that particular reading of Trent that St. Alphonsus had, then INITIAL justification entails a "rebirth", which Trent defines as a complete renewal so that no sin or stain of sin remains.  In addition, St. Alphonsus (incorrectly) cited the text from a Pope about BoD as making it de fide, but then the Pope said that with BoD the soul would enter heaven immediately and without delay.  So, based on St. Alphonsus' own standards, that would make his opinion that souls continue to have punishment due to sin unremitted is ... well, heretical.  But it's not, and neither is rejecting BoD.  St. Alphonsus was simply wrong on the matter.

For some reason, St. Alphonsus had some excessive respect for DeLugo, and therefore listed his heretical opinion that people could be saved without explicit knowledge of Our Lord and the Holy Trinity as "less probable".  No, it's heretical.  This was before the OUM was defined, and so it's understandable, but for 1500 years, the entire Church, and all the Fathers, held universally that explicit knowledge of Christ is necessary for salvation, and if that wasn't an infallible teaching of the OUM, then there's no such thing.  Also, and perhaps St. Alphonsus was unaware of this, the Holy Office condemned the notion that explicit faith in Our Lord and the Holy Trinity were not "necessary by necessity of means" for salvation.

Even for the Catechumenate BOD, who is to say it is "harsh" for God to allow them to die before baptism? It is true that a sin committed by a Christian is far more offensive than the same sin committed by an infidel. It's possible that God knew their sins after Baptism would exceed those committed before, so the best possible outcome is to have them die before that point and suffer the lesser punishment in Hell.


Who are we to question God's Providence in such a case? If anything, BOD is almost a blasphemy as it questions the Divine Wisdom and applies human judgment to these souls who died without baptism.

Indeed, I was rather surprised to find that expression in St. Robert Bellarmine that "it would seem to harsh" to exclude a catechumen who died without Baptism from the possibility of salvation.

This is precisely the line of thinking that St. Augustine said should be rejected "if one wishes to be Catholic" ... with the thinking leading to a "vortext of confusion".  And what do we see here today besides precisely the predicted vortex.

If you wish to be a catholic, do not venture to believe, to say, or to teach that “they whom the Lord has predestinated for baptism can be snatched away from his predestination, or die before that has been accomplished in them which the Almighty has predestined.” There is in such a dogma more power than I can tell assigned to chances in opposition to the power of God, by the occurrence of which casualties that which He has predestinated is not permitted to come to pass. It is hardly necessary to spend time or earnest words in cautioning the man who takes up with this error against the absolute vortex of confusion into which it will absorb him, when I shall sufficiently meet the case if I briefly warn the prudent man who is ready to receive correction against the threatening mischief. Now these are your words: “We say that some such method as this must be had recourse to in the case of infants who, being predestinated for baptism, are yet, by the failing of this life, hurried away before they are born again in Christ.” Is it then really true that any who have been predestinated to baptism are forestalled before they come to it by the failing of this life? And could God predestinate anything which He either in His foreknowledge saw would not come to pass, or in ignorance knew not that it could not come to pass, either to the frustration of His purpose or the discredit of His foreknowledge?