Posted on 01/24/2006 4:54:21 PM PST by NYer
ROME, JAN. 24, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A commentary by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, published Jan. 6 in ZENIT, prompted questions about the status of unbaptized children who die.
The topic has been under the consideration by the International Theological Commission, at the urging of Pope John Paul II (see ZENIT, Oct. 7, 2004).
Father Cantalamessa, the preacher to the Pontifical Household, offered these further reflections on the topic.
* * *
Some readers have said that they are perplexed by my affirmation that unbaptized children will not go to limbo but to heaven, which I expressed in my recent commentary on the Gospel of the feast of Christ's Baptism, published by ZENIT News. This gives me the opportunity to clarify the reasons for my affirmation.
Jesus instituted the sacraments as ordinary means to salvation. They are ordinarily necessary and people who can receive them and refuse are accountable before God. But God didn't bind himself to these means. Also of the Eucharist Jesus says: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man you shall not have life" (John 6:53), but this doesn't mean that anyone who has never received the Eucharist is not saved.
Baptism of desire and the feast of the Holy Innocents are confirmations of this. Some may counter that Jesus is involved in the death of Innocents who died because of him, which is not always the case of unbaptized babies. True, but also of what is done to the least of his brothers Jesus says: "You have done it to me" (Matthew 25:40).
The doctrine of limbo has never been defined as dogma by the Church; it was a theological hypothesis mostly depending on St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin and was abandoned in practice long ago and theology too now dismisses it.
We should take seriously the truth of God's universal will for salvation ("God wants everybody to be saved," 1 Timothy 2:4), and also the truth that "Jesus died for all." The following text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church seems to hold exactly the same position:
"As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: 'Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,' allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism" (CCC, 1261).
I don't think that to affirm that unbaptized babies are saved will encourage abortion. People who neglect Church doctrine on abortion are scarcely concerned about other doctrines of the same Church. Even if there were grounds for such a fear, the abuse of a doctrine should never prevent us from holding it.
I must confess that the mere idea of a God eternally depriving an innocent creature of his vision simply because another person has sinned, or because of an accidental miscarriage, makes me shudder … and I am sure would make any unbeliever happy to stay away from the Christian faith. If hell consists essentially in the deprivation of God, limbo is hell!
But is that what he is in fact asserting? His "clarification" first says that we may hope there is a way of salvation for them. In the next paragraph he speaks in the direct indicative, but presumably that is governed by the "hope" modifier of his earlier statement.
He is abandoning limbo, clearly. He is reaffirming the CCC and JPII on "entrust them to the mercy of God."
That's as far as he goes. It may be too far for you. But he is not definitively asserting that baptism is not necessary or that there's a highway to heaven for the unbaptized not yet guilty of actual sin.
To call him a heretic is, in my view, manifestly unjust.
Ratzinger, JPII, and now Cantalmessa are indeed asking that limbo as a solution to the problem be abandoned. They are raising questions about whether original sin condemns to any form of limbo-hell (to use your preferred terminology). None of us is asserting it condemns to Hell-Hell (non-limbo hell).
Clearly Cantalmessa, JPII and Ratzinger do not believe that Lyons II, Florence, Trent, or Pius VI have dogmatically taught that original sin condemns to limbo-hell. They believe the matter is still open.
I have explained how I think they would exegete the passages you and Hermann have adduced to argue for definitive and dogmatic teaching to the contrary.
Before calling them heretics, I would, if I were you, at least consider that their reading of the ordinary magisterium on this point, a looser reading than yours, might be part of the ordinary magisterium, having been put forth by two popes in a row.
They clearly do not consider the matter resolved in their direction because JPII before his death and now Benedict have asked that the ITC take the matter up. They clearly believe that it has not yet been theologically adequately explored. That to me already indicates that they read the tradition, including your four prooftexts, as less than definitively and dogmatically taught.
You are, of course, free to conclude otherwise. But I do think that one ought to refrain from reading Fr. Cantalmessa's "we may hope" and JPII's "entrust to the mercy of God" as a highway to heaven. Perhaps the ITC will recommend such a course and Benedict or his successor may dogmatically and definitively teach such a conclusion. But as of now, they have not done so.
Like I said, I'll accept your "absolutely necessary" if you recognize that, by including under the baptism that fulfills the "absolutely" necessary condition, is included baptism of desire. Including baptism of desire effectively makes baptized all those unbaptized whose parents honestly intended to baptize. It does not cover those whose parents carelessly failed to baptize. If baptism of desire is included, then in effect an awful lot of unbaptized infants are saved because they are not really unbaptized. So your loophole ends up very close to my more expansive approach to the problem.
Are you sure he has not? Does he not presume that those parents and others who are intensely concerned for the fate of children who died without baptism because they had no opportunity for baptism come under the "saltem de voto" clause, the baptism of desire?
This much I grant you--he could have expressed himself far better the first time and clarified better in his clarification. But you read the worst into his ambiguities and I read the best. He has not been as precise as he needs to be, which is evident precisely because some are putting the most negative construction possible on his words and others are putting the opposite construction on them.
And the same thing is happening with regard to the tradition. You and Hermannn and others are reading the tradition in one direction; JPII, Ratzinger/Benedict and Cantalmessa in another direction. The latter could be wrong and you could be right. But Cantalmessa has not been explicitly heretical. We are required by fraternal charity as mandated by St. Paul and St. John in the NT to seek to interpret what our fellow Catholics say with caritas, not to put the worst possible construction on it. That's why the ITC needs to take this up and the ordinary or even extraordinary magisterium needs to be explicit about it. I don't see why it could not have been left more undefined, but residual Jansenism puts pressure from one side and syncretistic liberalism from the other side, so I suppose it has to be taken up. JPII thought so, Ratzinger thought so. But until it is dealt with more definitively, I think some reticence with the label heretic would be the Christian thing to do.
I do not read him as asserting a certainty. "Hope" was his word. This is very close to von Balthasar's "Dare we hope," which the residual Jansenists at New Oxford Review have calumniously turned into an accusation of "universalism." I see an analogy here in the rush to call Cantalamessa a heretic (and, implicitly, comeing pretty close to calling JPII and Ratzinger the same thing). If for no other reason, the word heretic should be shunned because heresy involves pertinacious holding of error and this matter has yet to be fully clarified, so "pertinacious" is a tad premature.
It is impossible for me to see how these are not dogmatic definitions by the Church.
But you missed my point. What they dogmatically teach is directed at (1) Pelagians who deny original sin's gravity entirely, (2) Anabaptists who are effectively Pelagian on this point, (3) those who deny baptismal regeneration (which includes the Anabaptists), (4) or other parents who might carelessly delay baptism because they are closet-pelagians, have been mistaught about baptismal regeneration etc.--in which case the teachers who mistaught them are the target here. So, while these are dogmatic teachings they are dogmatic on the above points but not dogmatic on the theological hypothesis known as limbo. Clearly they touch on it, approach it obliquely, but they do not dogmatically resolve it because they were not intended to do so.
All of what your four prooftexts have to say about the fate of unbaptized infants (aimed at convincing parents who are able to do so, to get their children baptized in a timely manner and to refute any pelagian or non-baptismal regeneration beliefs) are modified by the loophole of "baptism of desire" that covers those infants who die under the very different circumstances of having parents who (1) do believe in baptismal regeneration, (2) do believe baptism is necessary for salvation, (3) wanted to have their children baptized but could not do so through no fault of their own.
And much the same applies to adults who desired to be baptized but were prevented through no fault of their own.
And with widespread abortion the issues is raised in a new way but it is the same issue raised in the early church--the baptism of desire question. The person who procures an abortion has committed a terrible sin and is accountable to God for it to the degree that it was deliberate (with the half-truths and lies spread so widely by false-teachers, the culpability may be shared with those who falsely instructed and lied and denied the information needed to make an informed, deliberate choice). Natural law, conscience probably in most cases means that the mother, even if falsely taught and misinformed may carry at least some level of culpability.
All that is one aspect. But the innocent child here is a different aspect that cannot be ignored. I have no good answer. Limbo was an attempt to deal with it--natural bliss, carentia visionis beatificae. Ratzinger said 20 years ago that he thought it was a theologically inadequate way to deal with it. JPII called for reconsideration of limbo before he died. Whether "baptism of desire" gets extended from parents to grandparents or bystanders (a bystander can baptize an infant in an emergency, so bystanders, nurses etc. as emergency "ministers of baptism of desire" is not an unimaginable solution) or some other way of dealing with it will be eventually proposed, I don't know.
But what is clear is that three or four doctrinal factors have to be somehow brought into relation with each other:
(1) The Church cannot abandon the "necessity of baptism" or baptismal regeneration. Protestants have challenged these teachings and, as your prooftexts show, they have been affirmed definitively.
(2) The Church cannot simply assert a highway to heaven or syncretistic "many paths to heaven" or "do your own thing" or "I'm okay, you're okay" theology. Neither JPII nor Cantalamessa nor Benedict XVI have come close to that.
(3) But recognizing how circumstances beyond the good-willed parent or adult catechumen can prevent access to baptism, the Church cannot ignore the need for some loophole like "baptism of desire."
To assert that innocent children, afflicted with original "sin" alone suffer eternal punishment is a claim that some Catholic theologians have advanced but that has been rejected by the Eastern tradition and has been rejected de facto though not expressis verbis by Western theologians since Anselm and Innocent III and yes, the Big T himself.
Right here we see how ambiguous the tradition still remains--this is the theological ambiguity that Ratzinger was concerned about. You and others insist in good faith that the tradition is clearcut about limbo being part of hell, snuggled up next to Hell and having nothing to do with heaven.
But others, equally in good faith, assert that there's another way to read the same prooftexts: as the tradition, even in your own prooftexts, found more and more ways to minimize the "poena" aspect (distinguishing between poena damnis and poena sensus, introducing carentia visionis beatificae language, introducing "natural bliss") the content of this intermediate state was de facto moving away from Hell-Hell and toward heaven even if they could not bring themselves to delink it from the term Hell entirely.
Yes, of course, Hell consists in alienation from God and loss of beatific vision. But if there is another status that is short of the b.v. but lacks all external torment and is "natural bliss" then just how "alienated" and how "hellish" is that?
So we were left with the situtation of two camps interpreting Limbo almost in opposite ways--associating it closer to Hell-Hell or closer to Heaven. And Aquinas' "natural bliss" etc. made this equivocation possible.
You see things black and white. Limbo is part of hell, cannot be interpreted otherwise; tough luck, but unbaptized infants (lacking even baptism of desire) end up in hell, deprived of the vision of God--people should realize this, get their babies baptized fast, evangelize the world so no one ends up in this horrible fate to which God rightly and justly condemns them because of the sin of Adam and Eve.
Calvin and Jansenius made their peace with such a God, with calling those acts of God, just. But what if, there were some other way to reconfigure this assortment of theological principles? What if the "natural bliss" of Limbo were in fact closer to the Beatific Vision than the "tough line" believed it to be? Deprivation of b.v. moves toward hell, yes; natural bliss moves back toward heaven. Thomas's Limbo is by its very nature ambiguous and has been. You would like to read the tradition in such a way as to make it unambiguously an antechamber to hell. But that simply is not the case--it has been read otherwise.
And this sort of ambiguity is what dissatisfied Ratzinger as a theologian and led to JPII's call to reexamine things. (I assume that JPII's call to do so and his earlier comments at the end of Evangelium Vitae in part grew out of consultation with Ratzinger and undoubtedly others.)
I do not begrudge you your having raised these issues, only the manner in which you have done so--quick on the heresy trigger. I think by raising them (as others obviously have--a chorus of criticism must have led Cantalamessa to issue his "clarification") you do the ITC, Benedict, Cantalamessa and likeminded theologians a service--reminding them to be careful in their theological work not to lapse into a syncretistic "highway to heaven" theology.
But what I dispute is (1) your claim that Limbo and the fate those infants who die without baptism through no fault of their parents has been unambiguously clarified by theologians and councils of the past, and (2) the wisdom and Christian charity of leaping to accuse Cantalamessa (and by implication, Ratzinger and JPII) of overturning past definitive and settled dogma on this matter or, much worse, of heresy.
I would propose that the matter has not been settled, remains ambiguous, and precisely because efforts to address the topic have aroused such a firestorm, needs to be the subject of serious theological exploration.
But if that is true, then the theologians addressing it cannot helpfully enter the discussion with their minds already made up--with the presupposition that the matter has been dogmatically settled by the councils you cite.
And so I would ask that we kibbutzers on the sidelines of the ITC and Benedict's rexamination of the topic pipe down, pull in our horns, and let them give the topic the sort of careful attention it has not yet had, despite it's tangential treatment by councils in the past.
So, once more, can we desist from using the term heretic?
Fr. Cantalamessa never qualifies his theory as being only a "hope." His own word for it is "affirmation." The only time "hope" is used is when he quotes the CCC in his clarification. You can't affirm something that you only hope for: this is repugnant to the meanings of "affirmation" and "to affirm."
Nowhere does Father qualify the children to whom he is referring. In fact he also speaks of the victims of abortion, and here there is often no question of desire on the part of the parents, as both acquiesce in the crime. What he says is:
"Children who die without baptism, as well as people who have lived, through no fault of their own, outside the Church, can be saved ... The fate of children who are not baptized is no different from that of the Holy Innocents, which we celebrated just after Christmas. The reason is that God is love and 'wants all to be saved,' and Christ also died for them!"
These words apply equally to every unbaptized child.
No one has used the word "heretic" on the thread, except you. What was said is that Father's "affirmation that unbaptized children will not go to limbo but to heaven" is heretical, and it is.
You read "baptism of desire" restrictively but acknowledge that "intention of the Church " has been advanced as another way of addressing the problem of the unbaptized subject only to original sin. Could you not at least admit that the tradition has not been fully clarified?
In an earlier post which crossed yours I tried to show how abortion raises new questions that rende ambiguous the incomplete wrestling with this matter. You think things are clearcut. But in abortion they simply are not and cannot be simple. You say there can be no question of desire for baptism on the part of parents in the case of abortion. Really? What about the father of the child when the mother has aborted it? Surely he could desire the baptism of the child when she does not.
Look, you guys can live in your black and white world in which these matters were entirely explored and dealt with in the past, if you wish. I think it's always been a monstrously difficult problem, has never been adequately dealt with, certainly not with T.A.'s limbo, has been addressed tangentially on a number of occasions but never resolved and, given new questions, needs reexamination. The outcome could be a definitive assertion of perennial ambiguity replacing more detailed speculative solutions.
But I do not expect to convince you. Your mind is made up. You know the tradition better than the pope. You see definitive teaching where he does not.
This is not the usual way of using "heretical." When the Church condemns a certain proposition as heretical, is she asserting that whoever put it forth is a heretic? Of course not.
I was just reading today Cardinal Toletus' comments on Pars IIIa q. 68 a. 2 of the Summa and he calls Cardinal Cajetan's theory about the sign of the cross made by the parents supplying for baptism heretical, and then immediately says that Cajetan himself was not a heretic, but a "vir religiosus" who was always prepared to submit to the Church.
I certainly think that I have been clear that theological theories going beyond the consignation of all unbaptized children to limbo are permissible, and I have pointed to that from my first posts on this thread, where I pointed to the teaching of the CCC.
As regards the father desiring baptism for a child aborted by his mother, I did intentionally phrase my objection to exclude that situation: "In fact he also speaks of the victims of abortion, and here there is often no question of desire on the part of the parents, as both acquiesce in the crime."
But I do not expect to convince you. Your mind is made up. You know the tradition better than the pope. You see definitive teaching where he does not.
What we have been saying is definitive is (as Hermann put it):
1) Baptism is absolutely necessry for salvation.2) Everyone dying without Baptism (i.e. in original sin), or also in actual mortal sin is condenmed to hell.
3) Those who die merely in original sin only suffer the loss of the vision of God, whle those with actual mortal sin suffer eternal torments.
You will note that the existence of the limbo of the children is not in that list. Limbo is a theological hypothesis well-founded in dogmatic teaching but not in itself dogmatic (as has been said).
When both me and Hermann have been saying (as he quoted Bishop Hay): "As for what becomes of such unbaptized children, divines are divided in their opinions about it; some say one thing, some another; but as God Almighty has not been pleased to reveal it to His Church, we know nothing for certain about it," I wonder that you claim that we are affirming the limbo of the children as a definitive solution.
Fr. Cantalamessa's statements do away with the necessity of baptism (it's only an "ordinary means") and affirm where there is no certainty. As we've seen on this thread, others certainly do take such words at their face value and believe that all infants dying without baptism are saved.
This is a very monstrous opinion if you would step back and think about it. The eternal fate of infants is left not in the hands of God, but in their parents, so that infants cursed with careless parents are not the beneficiaries of divine miracles, while those blessed with merely misfortunate parents are. Why would a loving God be so capricious?
If baptism of desire is included, then in effect an awful lot of unbaptized infants are saved because they are not really unbaptized.
How is that possible? Infants don't have reason, so they cannot have Baptism of desire, even implicitly, since they cannot make a movement of the will. You are necessarily postulating gratutious physical miracles to counter certainties taught by the Magisterium that could only be obviated by said miracles. That seems quite rash.
Tradition can only be read honestly in one direction.
For who would not detest a crime as execrable as this — a crime whose consequence is that not just bodies, but — still worse! — even souls, are, as it were, cast away? The soul of the unborn infant bears the imprint of God's image! It is a soul for whose redemption Christ our Lord shed His precious blood, a soul capable of eternal blessedness and destined for the company of angels! Who, therefore, would not condemn and punish with the utmost severity the desecration committed by one who has excluded such a soul from the blessed vision of God? Such a one has done all he or she could possibly have done to prevent this soul from reaching the place prepared for it in heaven, and has deprived God of the service of this His own creature. (Pope Sixtus V, Constitution Effrænatam, 29 October 1588)
Statements like that cannot be honestly read to leave open a possibility that salvation is open to the unbaptized.
Baptism of Desire is not a "loophole" to the necessity of the Sacrament. It is a way of receiving the grace of the Sacrament prior to the actual reception of the Sacrament. You are speaking in a very loose way here.
Calvin and Jansenius made their peace with such a God, with calling those acts of God, just.
Right here is the root of all your problems. Damnation and salvation are not "acts" of God. They are acts of man either accepting or rejecting what God gives freely to all.
I said this before, and you ignored it.
At death, everyone comes into the presence of God, and is bathed in His divine energies, most especially the energy most constituitive of His Being, His Love, for "God is Love" (1 St. John 4.16). God's Love is experienced by us as fire, for "Our God is a consumming fire." (Hebrews 12.29). This is why we pray:
"Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende." - "Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love." (Roman Missal, Alleluia Chant, Pentecost)
And:
"Ure igne Sancti Spiritus renes nostros et cor nostrum Domine; ut tibi casto corpore serviamus et mundo corde placeamus." - "O Lord, set aflame our reins and our hearts with the fire of the Holy Spirit, that we may serve Thee with a chaste body, and please Thee with a pure mind." (Roman Missal, Prayers Before Mass).
Having been transformed in Christ through divine grace infused into the soul, the blessed see in this fire of Love as the Light of Glory, the vision of Almighty God. "In Thy light we shall see light." (Psalm 35.10)
On the other hand, being deformed in sin, the damned die an eternal death being burned in this same fire. The suffering of the damned is not caused by God, for God loves them and gives them the same light He also gives the blessed. Rather, the different quality of their existence, their suffering, is caused by themselves, having kept themselves apart from Him, and worsening their own first seperation through further crimes.
From this, the middle condition of the unbaptized innocents becomes obvious. They are not wicked, since they are not deformed in actual sin. Therefore, they do not experience the Fire of Love as eternal death out of their own hatred of God. They are also not good, since they exist deprived of grace by their very nature, therefore they cannot see God in His Light since nothing unites them to God. God is not depriving them of Light, they simply do not exist in a condition that would allow them to enjoy it, just as we here on earth cannot see it while clothed in sinful flesh.
Seen this way, its silly to speak of God doing things to them, depriving them of heaven, etc. God deprives no one of anything. Everyone dies, and God reveals Himself to everyone, and the result of this experience for their soul determines their eternity.
To speak of somehow saving all the unbaptized infants means that God must actively intervene to make them accept grace. But this completely destroys the notion of salvation as a gift we either accept or reject by our actions, and makes it something God can impose upon us even against our will or without our will, or by forcibly modifying our will. God then is imposing love of Himself upon us, which is a contradiction, since love must be free, not forced. The very grounding of why we are free and in the image of God is so that we can love if we so choose. Love cannot be imposed.
*The properties of the soul are will, intellect, and memory. How can an infant be said to have those properties in sufficient amounts to make a choice?
I am confident, literally without reason (mine is an irrational Hope; but, that is the virtue of Hope) that God saves unbaptized infants. So what if I can't supply the theologizing justifying that? I still don't see how that makes me a heretic; especialy when I see the actions of our Popes.
Look, I really respect you and gbc but I think your personal opinions about this matter are off the mark. I also predict (again without any evidence) the Magisterium will tell each side to cool it. That has happened in the past on controversies about Grace.
That said, I will step aside and remain lurking. Y'all are far better qualified to argue this out
Let me see if I catch your drift. It's my way (your way) or the highway? Next time I see Pope Benedict I'll let him know that he had better call his mom.:)
Seriously, of course tradition can and has been read in different directions. You are claiming that the matter has been definitively laid to rest. It's so obvious to you that it has. I do not doubt that you sincerely believe this.
But Ludwig Ott didn't think so. JPII didn't think so. Cardinal Ratzinger didn't think so.
I have to bow out of this now. My day job's cries for rescue have become not merely insistent but earshattering. The new prooftexts you adduce suffer from the same weakness I pointed out before. But I won't waste your time repeating myself.
I do, however, sincerely and fervently hope that the souls of the unbaptized infants not guilty of actual sin are in heaven by the mercy of God, regardless of the means by which God achieves that end. If, should I reach heaven by God's infinite mercy, I discover that they are all in hell, I'm sure I will then, and only then, understand why they are there. For now, I must profess my ignorance, indeed, inability, to understand, why they necessarily and beyond all doubt must definitively and dogmatically be held to be held captive in hell.
I readily admit that no adequate theological explanation of what for sure happens to them within the parameters of God's mercy has yet been presented, certainly not by me. But I, for one, cannot speak with assurance that they are all in hell, not even in the "natural bliss" of Limbo.
Nescio, helas, nescio nesciens, verumtamen scio tantum misericordiam Christi. Viva PapaRatzi.
This is a good example of how people can read the same sentence and conclude that it has very different meanings. You read it as containing an "only" and proceeded to exegete it as minimizing baptism. I read it without the "only" and exegete it as praising and elevating baptism while at the same time allowing exceptions. You and Hermann read the prooftexts and the tradition on "necessity of baptism" in a very restrictive way, though you graciously permit the CCC's softer line a voice. Your reading may, of course, be correct. But others have read it differently. Notice that I don't insist on my reading or the highway. My entire position is not that my reading is the only possible reading of these texts but that so far no definitive reading of these texts on the points at issue here has been given by the magisterium. I appeal to Ratzinger's claim in the early 1980s for support. But you have chutzpa, I must admit--you are not afraid to tell the man to toe the line.
As far as I can see, to say that baptism is the ordinary means of salvation is perfectly orthodox and is not incompatible your and Hermann's prooftexts about the "necessity" of baptism. But if I keep going I'll have to go back over my exegesis of those texts and words like "necessary" and we'd be going in circles and you probably have better things to do.
Let me see if I catch your drift. It's my way (your way) or the highway?
My drift is that it is dishonest to take straightforward and plain statements from the past and either pretend they don't exist, pretend they say the exact opposite of the clear meaning of the words, or pretend they have no weight because recent theological speculation is somehow more worthy than past magisterial teaching.
There is simply no historical data to support the salvation of unbaptized infants hypothesis prior to certain novel speculations condemned by the Holy Office shortly after WWII. Christian Antiquity had not merely not thought of it, but actually was quite certain of the opposite.
Saying "Baptism is the ordinary means of salvation" implies a known extraordinary means of salvation that is an alternate path.
As the Catechism makes perfectly clear, we are aware of nothing of the sort.
There is only one means of salvation - the Sacrament of Baptism - and this means is necessary as a necessity of means, because without it salvation is impossible. (And Baptism of Desire is not a "loophole" to this, it is another way of receiving the grace of the Sacrament.)
This isn't a matter of "fairness" to Fr. Cantalamessa. He is carefully choosing words with loaded meanings here.
Last point, the speculations of Cardinal Ratzinger in the early 1980's carry less weight than the united opinion of the Philipine Episcoapte, for example, from the same time period to teach Limbo in their instructions on infant Baptism given to their whole country. On the one hand, we are dealing with one German Bishop making private speculations. On the other hand, we have numerous Bishops all teaching the same thing in an official manner to their people. Just because the German Bishop is later elected Pope does not make his earlier speculations suddenly more valid theologically.
I see. So you recognize that in fact the issue has not been resolved by the bishops of the world. Who appointed you to decide the relative authority of the Philipine bishops and the head of the CDF (sorry, he was not just a single German bishop speculating in the corner)?
You are in fact arrogating to yourself the privilege of deciding a controverted matter. You do so by claiming that the tradition is utterly clear. You do not even have the humility to advance your arguments as your best understanding of the issues. You attempt to bind my conscience by declaring that the tradition is irreformably clear.
Luther thought his positions were utterly clear from tradition. So did Arius. It is a simple fact that this has not been resolved and, I'm sorry, in the Catholic Church, Hermann the Cherusker does not get to decide these issues and lecture the Pope about it. And please, are you seriously suggesting that Benedict XVI no longer thinks the matter is unresolved, has changed his mind since the 1980s? Why has he approved the ITC taking up the issue if he no longer thinks the matter unsettled?
Don't you see the irony of your position: you dismiss the opinion of the Prefect of the CDF in the 1980s as mere "private speculations" when he was asserting that a particular issue (Limbo) had never been more than private theological speculation. And now that that Prefect is pope and you wave off his papal approval for renewed attention to the, in his view, unresolved, topic as unimportant.
Sorry, but this dog won't hunt.
When the ITC is done with its work and Benedict XVI or his successor issues a definitive pronouncement, which could well be to say definitively that on this matter we just don't know the fate of the unbaptized infants not guilty of actual sin, then both of us can sign on to it as faithful Catholics.
But since you are so sure of yourself, I sure hope you send your arguments to him so that he can benefit from them and be persuaded by them.
There isn't an issue to resolve. The teaching in the Catechism and by the Magisterium is perfectly clear. We know only of Baptism as a means of salvation, therefore it is very urgent that little children be baptized.
Who appointed you to decide the relative authority of the Philipine bishops and the head of the CDF (sorry, he was not just a single German bishop speculating in the corner)?
He was not acting as head of the CDF, but as a private theologian when he made those comments.
Official instructions to the laity from the heirarchy carry far more weight than the speculation of any one theologian.
Don't you see the irony of your position: you dismiss the opinion of the Prefect of the CDF in the 1980s as mere "private speculations" when he was asserting that a particular issue (Limbo) had never been more than private theological speculation.
Previous Popes condemned those who dismissed Limbo. See the condemnations of the propositions of the Synod of Pistoia. Limbo is much more than private theological speculation. It is the common teaching of the Church, and the consensus of the Church's theologians in their manuals call it a theological certainty. A theological certainty is "A truth unanimously held by all schools of theologians which is derived from revealed truth, but by more than one step of reasoning." To deny it is temerarious, to which the mortal sin of temerarity is attached. "Proportionately grave reason can sometimes justify an individual who has carefully studied the evidence in dissenting from such a proposition; since it is not completely impossible for all the theological schools to err on such a matter, although it would be highly unusual and contrary to an extremely weighty presumption." (Quotes from: "On the Value of Theological Notes and the Criteria for Discerning Them", by Father Sixtus Cartechini S.J.)
Its not as though Limbo was just dreamed up one afternoon by some mad scribbler in a studyhall. It has the weight of all the Fathers who discussed the topic on its side, both east and west, it is endorsed by the schoolmen, both Franciscan and Dominican. It was upheld by the Jesuits. Its denial was condemned by the Pope.
Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally -- and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as prefect of the congregation -- I would abandon it, since it was only a theological hypothesis. It formed part of a secondary thesis in support of a truth which is absolutely of first significance for faith, namely, the importance of baptism.
So he was just a single German bishop speculating theologically.
Father Kelly said turning away from the idea of limbo was part of "the development of the theological virtue of hope" and reflected "a different sense of God, focusing on his infinite love."The Redemptorist said people should not think the changed focus is a lightweight embrace of warm, fuzzy feelings.
"The suffering, death and resurrection of Christ must call the shots," he said. "If Christ had not risen from the dead, we never would have thought of original sin," because no one would have needed to explain why absolutely every human needed Christ's salvation.
The fact that God loves his creatures so much that he sent his Son to die in order to save them means that there exists an "original grace" just as there exists "original sin," Father Kelly said.
The existence of original grace "does not justify resignation," or thinking that everyone will be saved automatically, he said, "but it does justify hope beyond hope" that those who die without having had the opportunity to be baptized will be saved.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0506867.htm
This is pure and outright heretical modernism, a return to Pelgianism, where dogma is turned on its head, and words come to mean the opposite of what they were intended to mean.
Certainly there is Original Grace. But Our Lady alone was gifted with that after Adam and Eve's fall. To say everyone or even many coming into the world have Original Grace, so that the unbaptized might have eternal life if they die without Baptism, is to deny Original Sin, and empty Baptism of its meaning and necessity.
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