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.