Your claims regarding the fate of unbaptized infants are directly contradicted by the CCC. You are the confused one. You cite from Trent a statement directed against those who deny baptismal regeneration and specificallly against the Anabaptists (my ancestors!)--against those who have plenty of opportunity to baptize their infants and stubbornly refuse and apply it to the question of unbaptized infants who die before any chance of being baptized. For parents deliberately to withhold baptism from children is a bad thing but that's not the same as parents who are prevented by the child's death from baptizing them. The Anabaptists denied that baptism saved from sin, denied that it had power to remove sin and so on and so forth and for that reason refused to have their children baptized.
You and I may have had this discussion before--at least I know I've been over this ground on a FR thread. Look at Denzinger 410 (Innocent III) in which he speaks of deprivation of the vision of God, poena damni rather than poena sensus. When I said unbaptized infants are not damned to hell I meant Hell-Hell-Hell (poena sensus). The "hell" you refer to with Lyons II is the same as Limbo and Thomas Aquinas considered it compatible with a state of natural bliss. That is NOT hell in the way most people understand the word Hell and for you to quote Lyons II without pointing that out is disingenous or uninformed.
Now, the reference to "Limbo" (the unequal punishment, natural bliss) in Lyons II and Florence, as well as by Pius VI in response to the Synod of Pistoia--was that dogmatically taught? If you want to consider it part of the ordinary magisterium you may. But it has not been definitively taught as such because in all three incidents the limbus puerorum statements were incidental to more central doctrinal concerns--the efficacy of baptism, anti-Pelagianism etc. Theologians throughout the early Church (most of the Greek Fathers--so much for "the whole of Christian antiquity taught your "to hell with unbaptized infants" doctrine--the Greek Fathers most emphatically did not) and Middle Ages and in modern times have openly speculated about the fate of unbaptized infants and the Church never stepped into choose among the varied positions held by theologians. Lyons II does not teach Limbo--it leaves open a variety of ways of explaining just what punishment, if any, the unbaptized suffer. The one thing that is clear and taught definitively, is that they do not suffer hell in the way that term is normally understood. Exactly what happens to them WAS NOT defined at Lyons or Florence or by Pius VI and theologians have always been free, without being heretics or unfaithful Catholics, to offer a variety of explications of what happens to them. "Very light external punishment" is one (even Augustine advocates this one in Enchiridion, so it's really not even fair to say that Augustine said they were condemned to Hell-Hell); Aquinas's "natural bliss" is another. John Paul II's "entrustment to God's mercy" is another and it fits perfectly within Lyons II or Florence or Pius VI. John Paul II (with Ratzinger supporting him) did not say definitively that they go to heaven, he was not advocating a straight and easy path to heaven, he was leaving things undefined, and so did I. And I don't appreciate being called a Pelagian.
What Ratzinger and JPII were challenging is the over-defintion of Limbo as an antechamber to hell or antechamber to heaven, depending on which theologian you read. They are saying that we just don't know. Period.
We don't know. And the Church has never said that we do know. This is a case in which the Western Church, so often accused of overdefining things, is backing away from a tendency on the part of her theologians to say more about this topic than the Church is capable of saying. Lyons II and Florence and Piux VI stopped short of the brink and now JPII and Benedict are saying, let's move a few yards further back from the brink.
The one thing that is definitively and dogmatically defined is that original sin is not the same as actual sin. The position you defend tends to elide the difference too much.
And they are not Pelagian when they do this. So call off the heresy-hunting dogs, please.
Ping to a very interesting discussion. I don't know if you are following this, but I would be very interested in your thoughts. I've been wrestling with this myself for several years, and am glad to see some heavyweights tackling this issue.
But the Catholic Church most certainly does teach dogmatically, on the basis of St. John 3:5, that, after the promulgation of the Gospel, justification - which is absolutely necessary for salvation, by an absolute and intrinsic necessity of means - cannot be effected without baptism or at least the desire for it (whether formal, as in the case of adults, or virtual, as in the Holy Innocents). This is expressly taught by the Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, chapter 4: "quae quidem translatio post evangelium promulgatum, sine lavacro regenerationis, aut ejus voto, fieri non potest; sicut scriptum est: Nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu Sancto, non potest introire in regnum Dei."
Baptism, therefore, is for all men absolutely necessary for salvation, and so it must be received in fact or at least in true desire for anyone to be saved. This is also laid down clearly both in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (can. 849: "Baptismus, ianua sacramentorum, in re vel saltem in voto ad salutem necessarius") and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (as discussed above).
So anyone who goes around claiming that Baptism is only an "ordinary means of salvation," (as if it were not, strictly speaking, the _only_ means of salvation for men "post evangelium promulgatum") and that unbaptized infants are ordinarily and always saved without the sacraments, is simply not in accord with the Church on this matter.
Neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI have _ever_ taught or even proposed that we can consider all infants dying without baptism to be saved. And clearly they do not believe this either, otherwise they would not urge the grave necessity of baptizing little children: "§1 Parents are obliged to see that their infants are baptized within the first few weeks. As soon as possible after the birth, indeed even before it, they are to approach the parish priest to ask for the sacrament for their child, and to be themselves duly prepared for it. §2 If the infant is in danger of death, it is to be baptized without any delay." (1983 Code of Canon Law, can. 867) "As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God [. . .] 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)
The punishment of original sin is the deprivation of Heaven, the loss of the Beatific Vision. Why would you refer to Innocent III here? He teaches this explicitly in his letter of Jan. 12, 1206 to the Archbishop of Lyons (Denz. 410):
Although original sin was remitted by the mystery of circumcision, and the danger of damnation was avoided, nevertheless there was no arriving at the kingdom of heaven, which up to the death of Christ was barred to all. But through the sacrament of baptism the guilt of one made red by the blood of Christ is remitted, and to the kingdom of heaven one also arrives, whose gate the blood of Christ has mercifully opened for His faithful. For God forbid that all children of whom daily so great a multitude die, would perish, but that also for these the merciful God who wishes no one to perish has procured some remedy unto salvation [. . .] The punishment of original sin is deprivation of the vision of God, but the punishment of actual sin is the torments of everlasting hell.
Now Innocent III clearly teaches that those dying in original sin are punished with deprivation of the vision of God, suffer "damnation" and "perish."
Limbo has always been taught as an annex to hell. "Hell" simply means being deprived of the vision of God. There is nothing wrong with saying that those dying in original sin are condemned to hell. The Catholic Church teaches that there are only two final destinations, heaven and hell: a third place for the unbaptized children is an anathematized heresy.
It has been decided likewise that if anyone says that for this reason the Lord said: 'In my Father's house there are many mansions' [John 14:2]: that it might be understood that in the kingdom of heaven there will be some middle place or some place anywhere where the blessed infants live who departed from this life without baptism, without which they cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven, which is life eternal, let him be anathema. For when the Lord says: 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he shall not enter into the kingdom of God' [John 3:5], what Catholic will doubt that he will be a partner of the devil who has not deserved to be a coheir of Christ? For he who lacks the right part will without doubt run into the left. (16th Council of Carthage, can. 3)
The Greek Fathers also did teach that the unbaptized infants do not attain salvation. The locus classicus for the doctrine of Limbo is St. Gregory Nazianzen's passage in the 39th Theological Oration. The Synod of Diospolis required of Pelagius that he anathematize the doctrine that "that new-born infants are in the same condition that Adam was before the transgression" and also the doctrine "that infants, even if they die unbaptized, have eternal life" (see St. Augustine, On the Proceedings of Pelagius, chapter 65). St. Cyril of Jerusalem teaches "If any man receive not Baptism, he hath not salvation; except only Martyrs, who even without the water receive the kingdom" (Catechetical Lectures, III, no. 10) and similiar passages can be found in all the great Doctors of the Eastern Church.
The Church certainly has intervened on the question of the fate of unbaptized infants. For instance, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office declared in 1958:
The practice has arisen in some places of delaying the conferring of Baptism for so-called reasons of convenience or of a liturgical nature, a practice favored by some opinions, lacking solid foundation, concerning the eternal salvation of infants who die without Baptism. Therefore this Supreme Congregation, with the approval of the Holy Father, warns the faithful that infants are to be baptized as soon as possible [. . .]
It simply is not permitted to teach the "affirmation that unbaptized children will not go to limbo but to heaven."
"As for this man, however, although he acknowledges that infants are involved in original sin, he yet boldly promises them, even without baptism, the kingdom of heaven. This even the Pelagians had not the boldness to do, though asserting infants to be absolutely without sin. See, then, what a network of presumptuous opinion he entangles, unless he regret having committed such views to writing." (St. Augustine, On the Soul and its Origin, I, 12)