http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/08Jan/jan22ftt.htm

How Low Can They Go?

A Plea to Pro-Lifers: Do Not Encourage Death.

            The conciliar church has gone pretty low in intimating that unborn unbaptized children go to Heaven. This has not only been a welcome mat for Planned Parenthood and their ilk to continue their deadly agenda, but also encourage mothers to give up their babies to the butchers, for what mother does not want their child to have everlasting life? But they are deceived into thinking such, and, in the process, they doom their unborn offspring and, at the same time, doom themselves if they have not fully repented in the hospital of divine Mercy which is the Sacrament of Penance with a sincere repentance in the confessional. Without Sanctifying Grace, one cannot get to Heaven. Only Catholics adhering to all the truths of the Church founded by Christ, without compromise, can receive these graces and work to keep them. No other faith can provide salvation. Only the Ark of Salvation: the true Roman Catholic Church. No other, and that includes all Pagan and Protestant churches, and yes, the counterfeit church of conciliarism as well. See what the infallible, perennial Magisterium of the Church has to say on the subject below.

        "The Holy Innocents had the fortune of dying/being slaughtered for Christ. Aborted babies are merely slaughtered. Some slaughtered in the womb would be suffering in hell for all eternity had they lived a full life and had an opportunity to lose the sanctifying grace gained at baptism but are spared eternal torment because of the abortion and enjoy a state of perfect natural happiness for all eternity instead. Others had they been allowed to live and been baptized would have gone to Heaven but are now deprived of that Beatific Vision though not through injustice or lack of mercy, for again - Heaven is not a right - it has to be merited and cannot be attained unless one is cleansed from Original Sin."

    On this occasion of Church Unity Octave and, today in particular - the 35th year in which we've had to endure the abominable murderous unjust law of Roe vs. Wade, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone, if you will.

    While Ratzinger has tripped over his heretical tongue quite often lately, including his caving to тαℓмυdic interests, and pandering to Protestants, not to mention his hypocrisy of calling the Jesuits to task while the rest of his cronies continue to scandalize and lose souls. But I wanted to comment about something that came to light last year that has confused several pro-lifers and that was Ratzinger's inference that Limbo may not exist and that unborn unbaptized babies could go to Heaven. How low can you go? I thought. Well, Planned Parenthood was besides themselves writing thank you cards to the Vatican.

    In all seriousness, I think it's vital to set the record straight. I say that because I have witnessed on occasion pro-life counselors "informing" those about to have their babies killed that "there baby will be going to Heaven".

    That statement itself is incorrect for two reasons. One, the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church is that those that die without being baptized - provided they are not culpable of an unforgiven mortal sin go to Limbo - which is a state of perfect natural happiness much like that which Adam and Eve enjoyed before the fall but they do not enjoy the beatific vision. And secondly, simply, definitively and dogmatically put - THERE IS NO SALVATION OUTSIDE THE CHURCH. Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.

    This is, of course, an inconvenient belief for the modernists of our day but this is the truth nonetheless and the truth is what all true Catholics MUST accept in order to stay Catholic for if a Catholic rejects one truth of the faith he can no longer be considered a Catholic but a heretic. Heaven is not a right and one cannot go there unless he is cleansed of Original Sin.

    The Holy Innocents went to Heaven because they died for Christ - some call this a "baptism of blood" though Christ had not instituted the New Covenant need for water baptism yet and therefore the Holy Innocents were Old Testament Martyrs of Christ without the need for Baptism be it of water, "desire" or "blood" as some claim to be possible for salvation.

    Some claim that the Good Thief as can be deducted from his words DIRECTLY to Christ AND further affirmed by Christ's response had a "desire for baptism" - meaning, had he known the need for baptism was necessary for salvation and not been nailed to a cross he would have been baptized if it were at all possible to do so. But again he was again an OLD COVENANT Saint who proved his saving faith directly to Christ's satisfaction and was thusly saved by the same Christ and assured of being taken to "paradise" that day. "Paradise" we must remember is not necessarily the same thing as the beatific vision though this man could very well be enjoying such at this very moment and for all eternity with all the rest of the Old and New Covenant Saints.

    Those inside the Church are all baptized in the ordinary way even those children with protestant parents baptized by a protestant preacher for when you are validly baptized you are Catholic until you reject the faith. The protestant parents who have their babies validly baptized by a heretic have Catholic children without realizing it at least until those children reach the age of reason and consciously and willfully reject the faith.

    The Holy Innocents had the fortune of dying/being slaughtered for Christ. Aborted babies are merely slaughtered. Some slaughtered in the womb would be suffering in hell for all eternity had they lived a full life and had an opportunity to lose the sanctifying grace gained at baptism but are spared eternal torment because of the abortion and enjoy a state of perfect natural happiness for all eternity instead. Others had they been allowed to live and been baptized would have gone to Heaven but are now deprived of that Beatific Vision though not through injustice or lack of mercy, for again - Heaven is not a right - it has to be merited and cannot be attained unless one is cleansed from Original Sin.

    I should not have to be explaining this for I am woefully inadequate but the so-called Church leaders have dropped the ball so I have to do the best I can. My conscience dictates that I MUST share this so I ask you to look not so much at what I write as the authoritative teaching of the Church I will share.

    Some believe that catechumens who die before receiving water baptism go to Heaven as well because they desired baptism and would have received it had they had the chance - and they call this "baptism of desire".

    I have become more and more inclined to disagree with this minority opinion as I have been presented with the teachings of our Holy Mother the Church and the writings of the Doctors and Fathers of the Church. However, I do not damn others who do not see what I have recently learned as I have not seen to my satisfaction yet where a pope solemnly declared that the opinion that there may be such a thing as a "baptism of blood" and or a "baptism of desire" as being condemned.

    I hope with all my heart that, if and when we get a pope, he will solemnly clarify this issue once and for all. Until then, I damn no one for what I consider to be a legitimate possible (however improbable and certainly, not yet, damnable) opinion based upon the writing of Thomas Aquinas and at least one valid Pope, though again, I have been persuaded to no longer hold this opinion myself. Let God deal with the man who lives in a remote corner of the world and lives according to his conscience and avoids mortal sin despite not having the sacramental helps so necessary to persevere in the grace received by Baptism and let us deal with those that cross our paths without damning hypothetical unbaptized saints that walk on water and raise the dead to Hell. Can we not convert souls without forcing them to believe all their dead relatives are in Hell unless they were baptized with water and held the Catholic faith? Is it not enough to inform them that THEY MUST be Baptized and that THEY cannot be saved outside the Catholic Church? Is it completely necessary to force-feed a steak down a baby's throat when they are only ready for milk? Can we not let the wounded reed heal before we give it the full brunt of the weight? Let fellow authentic (traditional) Catholics fight evil instead of each other.

    If you're saying, "oh, John Gregory doesn't know what he's talking about," I might agree with you on some things, but on this I'm going on what holy Mother Church has always professed, and am spot on regarding this. I offer for your examination: His Holiness, Pope Eugene IV, stated in 1441:

    "The Most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, also Jєωs, heretics, and schismatics can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire 'which was prepared for the devil and his angels' (Mt. 25:41) unless before death they are joined with Her... No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ can be saved unless they abide within the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church."
    Pope Eugene IV, Bull Cantate Domino, 1441

    This is an ex cathedra statement and two other infallible declarations that immediately come to mind are Pope Innocent III, speaking from the Chair of Peter at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and Pope Boniface VIII famous infallible decree in 1302, Unam Sanctam.

    Should this not be enough which it must be if you are Catholic here are further affirmations of this dogma from holy men of the infallible Magisterium:

    St. Irenaeus (130-202), Bishop and Martyr: "The Church is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them . . . . We hear it declared of the unbelieving and the blinded of this world that they shall not inherit the world of life which is to come . . . . Resist them in defense of the only true and life giving faith, which the Church has received from the Apostles and imparted to her sons."
    St. Augustine (354-430), Bishop and Doctor of the Church: "No man can find salvation except in the Catholic Church. Outside the Catholic Church one can have everything except salvation. One can have honor, one can have sacraments, one can sing alleluia, one can answer amen, one can have faith in the Name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and preach it too, but never can one find salvation except in the Catholic Church."
    St. Fulgentius (468-533), Bishop: "Most firmly hold and never doubt that not only pagans, but also Jєωs, all heretics, and all schismatics who finish this life outside of the Catholic Church, will go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
    Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604): "The holy universal Church teaches that it is not possible to worship God truly except in Her and asserts that all who are outside of Her will not be saved."
    St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226): "All who have not believed that Jesus Christ was really the Son of God are doomed. Also, all who see the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and do not believe it is really the most holy Body and Blood of the Lord . . . these also are doomed!"
    St. Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), the Angelic Doctor: "There is no entering into salvation outside the Catholic Church, just as in the time of the Flood there was not salvation outside the Ark, which denotes the Church."
    St. Louis Marie de Montfort (1673-1716): "There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Anyone who resists this truth perishes."
    St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), Bishop and Doctor of the Church: "Outside the Church there is no salvation...therefore in the symbol (Apostles Creed) we join together the Church with the remission of sins: 'I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins"...For this reason the Church is compared to the Ark of Noah, because just as during the deluge, everyone perished who was not in the ark, so now those perish who are not in the Church."
    St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori (1696-1787), Bishop and Doctor of the Church: "All the misfortunes of unbelievers spring from too great an attachment to the things of life. This sickness of heart weakens and darkens the understanding, and leads to eternal ruin. If they would try to heal their hearts by purging them of their vices, they would soon receive light, which would show them the necessity of joining the Catholic Church, where alone is salvation. We should constantly thank the Lord for having granted us the gift of the true Faith, by associating us with the children of the Holy Catholic Church ... How many are the infidels, heretics, and schismatics who do not enjoy the happiness of the true Faith! Earth is full of them and they are all lost!"
    Pope Pius XII (1939-1958): "Some say they are not bound by the doctrine which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the credibility of Christian Faith. These and like ERRORS, it is clear, have crept in among certain of our sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for souls or by false science."

    You'll notice all of the above are holy, most of them SAINTS!!! Who would you believe, a Modernist, or these men who are tried and true? I know, it's a duh! question, like "is the pope Catholic." Unfortunately, the answer to the latter is a resounding No! If you are still in 'limbo' in your doubts, then I provide the following from New Advent, which MUST be read in whole to get the full Sainted Catholic picture of the controversy. Coming to conclusions before reading it in its entirety is dangerous.

    II. LIMBUS INFANTIUM

    The New Testament contains no definite statement of a positive kind regarding the lot of those who die in original sin without being burdened with grievous personal guilt. But, by insisting on the absolute necessity of being "born again of water and the Holy Ghost" (John 3:5) for entry into the kingdom of Heaven (see "Baptism," subtitle Necessity of Baptism), Christ clearly enough implies that men are born into this world in a state of sin, and St. Paul's teaching to the same effect is quite explicit (Romans 5:12 sqq.). On the other hand, it is clear form Scripture and Catholic tradition that the means of regeneration provided for this life do not remain available after death, so that those dying unregenerate are eternally excluded from the supernatural happiness of the beatific vision (John 9:4, Luke 12:40, 16:19 sqq., 2 Corinthians 5:10; see also "Apocatastasis"). The question therefore arises as to what, in the absence of a clear positive revelation on the subject, we ought in conformity with Catholic principles to believe regarding the eternal lot of such persons. Now it may confidently be said that, as the result of centuries of speculation on the subject, we ought to believe that these souls enjoy and will eternally enjoy a state of perfect natural happiness; and this is what Catholics usually mean when they speak of the limbus infantium, the "children's limbo."

    The best way of justifying the above statement is to give a brief sketch of the history of Catholic opinion on the subject. We shall try to do so by selecting the particular and pertinent facts from the general history of Catholic speculation regarding the Fall and original sin, but it is only right to observe that a fairly full knowledge of this general history is required for a proper appreciation of these facts.

    1. Pre-Augustinian Tradition

    There is no evidence to prove that any Greek or Latin Father before St. Augustine ever taught that original sin of itself involved any severer penalty after death than exclusion from the beatific vision, and this, by the Greek Fathers at least, was always regarded as being strictly supernatural. Explicit references to the subject are rare, but for the Greek Fathers generally the statement of St. Gregory of nαzιanzus may be taken as representative:

    It will happen, I believe . . . that those last mentioned [infants dying without baptism] will neither be admitted by the just judge to the glory of Heaven nor condemned to suffer punishment, since, though unsealed [by baptism], they are not wicked. . . . For from the fact that one does not merit punishment it does not follow that one is worthy of being honored, any more than it follows that one who is not worthy of a certain honor deserves on that account to be punished. [Orat., xl, 23]

    Thus, according to Gregory, for children dying without baptism, and excluded for want of the "seal" from the "honor" or gratuitous favor of seeing God face to face, an intermediate or neutral state is admissible, which, unlike that of the personally wicked, is free from positive punishment. And, for the West, Tertullian opposes infant baptism on the ground that infants are innocent, while St. Ambrose explains that original sin is rather an inclination to evil than guilt in the strict sense, and that it need occasion no fear at the day of judgement; and the Ambrosiater teaches that the "second death," which means condemnation to the hell of torment of the damned, is not incurred by Adam's sin, but by our own. This was undoubtedly the general tradition before St. Augustine's time.

    2. Teaching of St. Augustine

    In his earlier writings St. Augustine himself agrees with the common tradition. Thus in De libero arbitrio III, written several years before the Pelagian controversy, discussing the fate of unbaptized infants after death, he writes: "It is superfluous to inquire about the merits of one who has not any merits. For one need not hesitate to hold that life may be neutral as between good conduct and sin, and that as between reward and punishment there may be a neutral sentence of the judge." But even before the outbreak of the Pelagian controversy St. Augustine had already abandoned the lenient traditional view, and in the course of the controversy he himself condemned, and persuaded the Council of Carthage (418) to condemn, the substantially identical Pelagian teaching affirming the existence of "an intermediate place, or of any place anywhere at all (ullus alicubi locus), in which children who pass out of this life unbaptized live in happiness" (Denzinger 102). This means that St. Augustine and the African Fathers believed that unbaptized infants share in the common positive misery of the damned, and the very most that St. Augustine concedes is that their punishment is the mildest of all, so mild indeed that one may not say that for them non-existence would be preferable to existence in such a state (De peccat. meritis I, xxi; Contra Jul. V, 44; etc.). But this Augustinian teaching was an innovation in its day, and the history of subsequent Catholic speculation on this subject is taken up chiefly with the reaction which has ended in a return to the pre-Augustinian tradition.

    3. Post-Augustinian Teaching

    After enjoying several centuries of undisputed supremacy, St. Augustine's teaching on original sin was first successfully challenged by St. Anselm (d. 1109), who maintained that it was not concupiscence, but the privation of original justice, that constituted the essence of the inherited sin (De conceptu virginali). On the special question, however, of the punishment of original sin after death, St. Anselm was at one with St. Augustine in holding that unbaptized children share in the positive sufferings of the damned; and Abelard was the first to rebel against the severity of the Augustinian tradition on this point. According to him there was no guilt (culpa), but only punishment (poena), in the proper notion of original sin; and although this doctrine was rightly condemned by the Council of Soissons in 1140, his teaching, which rejected material torment (poena sensus) and retained only the pain of loss (poena damni) as the eternal punishment of original sin (Comm. in Rom.), was not only not condemned but was generally accepted and improved upon by the Scholastics. Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, popularized it (Sent. II, xxxiii, 5), and it acquired a certain degree of official authority from the letter of Innocent III to the Archbishop of Arles, which soon found its way into the "Corpus Juris." Pope Innocent's teaching is to the effect that those dying with only original sin on their souls will suffer "no other pain, whether from material fire or from the worm of conscience, except the pain of being deprived forever of the vision of God" (Corp. Juris, Decret. l. III, tit. xlii, c. iii -- Majores). It should be noted, however, that this poena damni incurred for original sin implied, with Abelard and most of the early Scholastics, a certain degree of spiritual torment, and that St. Thomas was the first great teacher who broke away completely from the Augustinian tradition on this subject, and relying on the principle, derived through the Pseudo-Dionysius from the Greek Fathers, that human nature as such with all its powers and rights was unaffected by the Fall (quod naturalia manent integra), maintained, at least virtually, what the great majority of later Catholic theologians have expressly taught, that the limbus infantium is a place or state of perfect natural happiness.

    No reason can be given -- so argued the Angelic Doctor -- for exempting unbaptized children from the material torments of Hell (poena sensus) that does not hold good, even a fortiori, for exempting them also from internal spiritual suffering (poena damni in the subjective sense), since the latter in reality is the more grievous penalty, and is more opposed to the mitissima poena which St. Augustine was willing to admit (De Malo, V, art. iii). Hence he expressly denies that they suffer from any "interior affliction", in other words that they experience any pain of loss (nihil omnino dolebunt de carentia visionis divinae -- "In Sent.", II, 33, q. ii, a.2). At first ("In Sent.", loc. cit.), St. Thomas held this absence of subjective suffering to be compatible with a consciousness of objective loss or privation, the resignation of such souls to the ways of God's providence being so perfect that a knowledge of what they had lost through no fault of their own does not interfere with the full enjoyment of the natural goods they possess. Afterwards, however, he adopted the much simpler psychological explanation which denies that these souls have any knowledge of the supernatural destiny they have missed, this knowledge being itself supernatural, and as such not included in what is naturally due to the separated soul (De Malo loc. cit.). It should be added that in St. Thomas' view the limbus infantium is not a mere negative state of immunity from suffering and sorrow, but a state of positive happiness in which the soul is united to God by a knowledge and love of him proportionate to nature's capacity.

    The teaching of St. Thomas was received in the schools, almost without opposition, down to the Reformation period. The very few theologians who, with Gregory of Rimini, stood out for the severe Augustinian view, were commonly designated by the opprobrious name of tortores infantium. Some writers, like Savonarola (De triumbpho crucis, III, 9) and Catharinus (De statu parvulorum sine bapt. decedentium), added certain details to the current teaching -- for example that the souls of unbaptized children will be united to glorious bodies at the Resurrection, and that the renovated earth of which St. Peter speaks (2 Peter 3:13) will be their happy dwelling place for eternity. At the Reformation, Protestants generally, but more especially the Calvinists, in reviving Augustinian teaching, added to its original harshness, and the Jansenists followed on the same lines. This reacted in two ways on Catholic opinion, first by compelling attention to the true historical situation, which the Scholastics had understood very imperfectly, and second by stimulating an all-round opposition to Augustinian severity regarding the effects of original sin; and the immediate result was to set up two Catholic parties, one of whom either rejected St. Thomas to follow the authority of St. Augustine or vainly try to reconcile the two, while the other remained faithful to the Greek Fathers and St. Thomas. The latter party, after a fairly prolonged struggle, has certainly the balance of success on its side.

    Besides the professed advocates of Augustinianism, the principal theologians who belonged to the first party were Bellarmine, Petavius, and Bossuet, and the chief ground of their opposition to the previously prevalent Scholastic view was that its acceptance seemed to compromise the very principle of the authority of tradition. As students of history, they felt bound to admit that, in excluding unbaptized children from any place or state even of natural happiness and condemning them to the fire of Hell, St. Augustine, the Council of Carthage, and later African Fathers, like Fulgentius (De fide ad Petrum, 27), intended to teach no mere private opinion, but a doctrine of Catholic Faith; nor could they be satisfied with what Scholastics, like St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, said in reply to this difficulty, namely that St. Augustine had simply been guilty of exaggeration ("respondit Bonaventura dicens quod Augustinus excessive loquitur de illis poenis, sicut frequenter faciunt sancti" -- Scots, In Sent., II, xxxiii, 2).

    Neither could they accept the explanation which even some modern theologians continue to repeat: that the Pelagian doctrine condemned by St. Augustine as a heresy (see e.g., De anima et ejus orig., II, 17) consisted in claiming supernatural, as opposed to natural, happiness for those dying in original sin (see Bellarmine, De amiss. gratiae, vi, 1; Petavius, De Deo, IX, xi; De Rubeis, De Peccat. Orig., xxx, lxxii). Moreover, there was the teaching of the Council of Florence, that "the souls of those dying in actual mortal sin or in original sin alone go down at once (mox) into Hell, to be punished, however, with widely different penalties."

    It is clear that Bellarmine found the situation embarrassing, being unwilling, as he was, to admit that St. Thomas and the Schoolmen generally were in conflict with what St. Augustine and other Fathers considered to be de fide, and what the Council of Florence seemed to have taught definitively. Hence he names Catharinus and some others as revivers of the Pelagian error, as though their teaching differed in substance from the general teaching of the School, and tries in a milder way to refute what he concedes to be the view of St. Thomas (op. cit., vi-vii). He himself adopts a view which is substantially that of Abelard mentioned above; but he is obliged to do violence to the text of St. Augustine and other Fathers in his attempt to explain them in conformity with this view, and to contradict the principle he elsewhere insists upon that "original sin does not destroy the natural but only the supernatural order." (op. cit., iv). Petavius, on the other hand, did not try to explain away the obvious meaning of St. Augustine and his followers, but, in conformity with that teaching, condemned unbaptized children to the sensible pains of Hell, maintaining also that this was a doctrine of the Council of Florence. Neither of these theologians, however, succeeded in winning a large following or in turning the current of Catholic opinion from the channel into which St. Thomas had directed it. Besides Natalis Alexander (De peccat. et virtut, I, i, 12), and Estius (In Sent., II, xxxv, 7), Bellarmine's chief supporter was Bossuet, who vainly tried to induce Innocent XII to condemn certain propositions which he extracted from a posthumous work of Cardinal Sfrondati and in which the lenient scholastic view is affirmed. Only professed Augustinians like Noris and Berti, or out-and-out Jansenists like the Bishop of Pistoia, whose famous diocesan synod furnished eighty-five propositions for condemnation by Pius VI (1794), supported the harsh teaching of Petavius. The twenty-sixth of these propositions repudiated "as a Pelagian fable the existence of the place (usually called the children's limbo) in which the souls of those dying in original sin are punished by the pain of loss without any pain of fire"; and this, taken to mean that by denying the pain of fire one thereby necessarily postulates a middle place or state, involving neither guilt nor penalty, between the Kingdom of God and eternal damnation, is condemned by the pope as being "false and rash and as slander of the Catholic schools" (Denz. 526). This condemnation was practically the death-knell of extreme Augustinianism, while the mitigate Augustinianism of Bellarmine and Bossuet had already been rejected by the bulk of Catholic theologians. Suarez, for example, ignoring Bellarmine's protest, continued to teach what Catharinus had taught -- that unbaptized children will not only enjoy perfect natural happiness, but that they will rise with immortal bodies at the last day and have the renovated earth for their happy abode (De vit. et penat., ix, sect. vi, n. 4); and, without insisting on such details, the great majority of Catholic theologians have continued to maintain the general doctrine that the children's limbo is a state of perfect natural happiness, just the same as it would have been if God had not established the present supernatural order. It is true, on the other hand, that some Catholic theologians have stood out for some kind of compromise with Augustinianism, on the ground that nature itself was wounded and weakened, or, at least that certain natural rights (including the right to perfect felicity) were lost in consequence of the Fall. But these have granted for the most part that the children's limbo implies exemption, not only from the pain of sense, but from any positive spiritual anguish for the loss of the beatific vision; and not a few have been willing to admit a certain degree of natural happiness in limbo. What has been chiefly in dispute is whether this happiness is as perfect and complete as it would have been in the hypothetical state of pure nature, and this is what the majority of Catholic theologians have affirmed.

    As to the difficulties against this view which possessed such weight in the eyes of the eminent theologians we have mentioned, it is to be observed:
        We must not confound St. Augustine's private authority with the infallible authority of the Catholic Church; and if allowance be made for the confusion introduced into the Pelagian controversy by the want of a clear and explicit conception of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural order one can easily understand why St. Augustine and the Council of Carthage were practically bound to condemn the locus medius of the Pelagians. St. Augustine himself was inclined to deny this distinction altogether, although the Greek Fathers had already developed it pretty fully, and although some of the Pelagians had a glimmering of it (see Coelestius in August., De Peccat. Orig., v), they based their claim to natural happiness for unbaptized children on a denial of the Fall and original sin, and identified this state of happiness with the "life eternal" of the New Testament.

    Moreover, even if one were to admit for the sake of argument that this canon of the Council of Carthage (the authenticity of which cannot be reasonably doubted) acquired the force of an ecuмenical definition, one ought to interpret it in the light of what was understood to be at issue by both sides in the controversy, and therefore add to the simple locus medius the qualification which is added by Pius VI when, in the Constitution "Auctoreum Fidei," he speaks of "locuм illium et statum medium expertem culpae et poenae."
        Finally, in regard to the teaching of the Council of Florence, it is incredible that the Fathers there assembled had any intention of defining a question so remote from the issue on which reunion with the Greeks depended, and one which was recognized at the time as being open to free discussion and continued to be so regarded by theologians for several centuries afterwards. What the council evidently intended to deny in the passage alleged was the postponement of final awards until the day of judgement. Those dying in original sin are said to descend into Hell, but this does not necessarily mean anything more than that they are excluded eternally from the vision of God. In this sense they are damned; they have failed to reach their supernatural destiny, and this viewed objectively is a true penalty. Thus the Council of Florence, however literally interpreted, does not deny the possibility of perfect subjective happiness for those dying in original sin, and this is all that is needed from the dogmatic viewpoint to justify the prevailing Catholic notion of the children's limbo, while from the standpoint of reason, as St. Gregory of nαzιanzus pointed out long ago, no harsher view can be reconciled with a worthy concept of God's justice and other attributes. (New Advent, Limbus Infantium)

    Because in many circuмstances telling the mother that the baby she is about to kill is going to Heaven is likely to encourage rather than discourage the mother from having her baby killed as she becomes convinced that she is doing her baby a favor first by sending it to Heaven and secondly by saving it from this cruel world.

    I do not give my opinion but share the facts in regards to what the Catholic Church has always dogmatically taught.

    Whether you want to believe the man who went by the alias of JPII and the present BXVI taught heresy or an erroneous or dangerous personal opinion or was mistranslated is up to you but the CATHOLIC teaching is clear. What the conciliar 'popes' are docuмented to have taught and still teaching ranges from novel to heretical.

    The conciliar heads, like Ratzinger, are universal salvation proponents - this is why they do not try to convert people to the Catholic faith and rarely even use the term "Catholic" in their speeches to non-Catholics. This is why they teach that the Jєωs do not need to be converted, that the Old Covenant has not been revoked and that we should not try to convert the Greek Orthodox. This is why Ratzinger has offered a carrot with the Motu while chopping off the meat of the Mass and leaving nothing but scraps - a heaping full helping of Hegelian hash. That is why his half-efforts to speak out strongly against abortion and sodomy have fallen on deaf ears because he's a paper tiger with no teeth and really has shown no intention to further embarrass all he has fought for in changing the Church to what he fashions, not Christ. I will have another article later this week or next week delving deeper into the fact that the Catholic Church is the only Ark of Salvation and why the current crop of ecclesial charlatans are not Catholic.

    Finally, on this day when we focus on the terrible tragedy of over 50,000,000 innocents slaughtered in the wombs over the past 35 years, I implore you, even if you are not convinced of the Catholic truth to "err" on the side of safety for the sake of the baby's life and ultimately his and his mother's soul!!! If you feel the need to stress the topic stress the need for baptism and how the soul was created to know, love and serve the Lord in THIS LIFE rather than definitively assuring the mother her child is going to Heaven if she does him the favor of having him killed right now! Not only is the child's destiny in doubt, but the mother will have murder on her soul, and, without the Sacrament of Penance and true repentance, she can expect everlasting damnation. Not a pretty picture for all concerned, but that's what Roe vs. Wade and the conciliar compromisers have wrought.

In Jesu et Maria,
John Gregory


            "Catholics who remain faithful to Tradition, even if they are reduced to but a handful, they are THE TRUE CHURCH"
            Saint Athanasius, "Apostle of Tradition" AD 373