Can you explain the Church's position on invincible ignorance? Seems it might shed some light on some of this .
Pius XII wrote, "those who do not belong to the visible Body of the Catholic Church . . . by an unconscious desire and longing they have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer" (Mystici Corporis).
But it is one thing to concede that SOME men by extraordinary means can be saved by Baptism of Desire, and another to say that ALL MEN, each and every one, are somehow united to Christ. This would do away with any need for Baptism at all--even Baptism of Desire. It is the UNIVERSALIST nature of JPII's statement that is so novel.
"because man-every man without any exception whatever-has been redeemed by Christ, and because with man-with each man without any exception whatever-Christ is in a way united, even when man is unaware of it..."
By the way, the passage I just quoted by JPII is a good example of what I meant by his fuzziness of style. Look at how he takes the concept of Christ's redemption of mankind and glides it into another idea--that every individual is therefore united with Christ. He puts redemption in the passive mode so that everybody "has been redeemed"--which is certainly true for all mankind, but certainly not true for the individual who still has got to cooperate with that redemptive act. The Pope skips over this. He elides the genus mankind with each and every individual and leaves the impression that everybody is redeemed already. This is what I mean by his extraordinary lack of clarity. It is all very pious-sounding--but highly ambiguous, seeming more Teilhardian than orthodox.
"because man-every man without any exception whatever-has been redeemed by Christ, and because with man-with each man without any exception whatever-Christ is in a way united, even when man is unaware of it..."