[Claud]

If I follow the argument, then only those infants that are baptized have this special “indwelling Spirit”, i.e. mostly of western European descent, and the other infants from different religions are out of luck?

That's correct, but with qualifications.

One needs to be baptized to be saved--this is an article of the faith. However, it may not necessarily need to be a sacramental Baptism. We know, for instance, that the good thief went to heaven. We know the Jewish patriarchs are in heaven. And there is one saint, St. Emerentiana, who was martyred before she could be baptized. Catholic tradition says that in addition to sacramental Baptism, there can be Baptism of Blood, where someone dies for the faith before baptized, and Baptism of Desire, where someone who wants to be baptized is prevented for some reason.

Also, I should point out that even those pagans who go to Hell do not necessarily wind up in the fires thereof. If you are familiar with Dante's Divine Comedy, which gives a very Catholic view of heaven and hell, there were a bunch of good pagans like Vergil who were unbaptized but who enjoyed natural happiness in Limbo. Natural happiness meaning a comfortable existence with no pain or anything like that. As opposed to supernatural happiness which is heaven--the beatific vision of God.

I'd argue, then, that what pagans think of as the afterlife of the good--the Elysian Fields, Happy Hunting Grounds and all that--is actually Limbo. Our heaven as Christians is higher and infinitely more noble than that, but I don't think it's doing a pagan any injustice to simply give them what they ask for!

[blue-duncan]

“That’s correct, but with qualifications.”

All the examples you gave were of adults. The question concerns infant baptism. Again I ask , If I follow the argument, then only those infants that are baptized have this special “indwelling Spirit”?

[Mad Dawg]

Because it seems apposite, here's my letter to the dope that wrote the article:

Sir,

You write:

But the issue is simple: If, as taught the Church of Rome, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without “the new birth in baptism” then we are now in hopeless contradiction with the Gospel contained in Holy Scripture.  [I assume you meant to type “as taught by the Church of Rome”.]

A few sentences later you write:

By not telling the Truth we aren’t doing anyone a service.

Let us turn to the Catechism:

§847 This affirmation [that those who know the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ and still refuse to join her “could not be saved”] is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and His Church.:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ of his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience ―those too may achieve eternal salvation. [This is from Lumen Gentium 16]

Later on we read §1258 and §1259 which deal with so-called “Baptism of blood” and “Baptism of desire”.

Then in §1260 we read what amounts to a restatement of §847.  The following quote from Gaudium et spes is of particular relevance:

Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.

I am no scholar. To find this information I merely looked in the index of my Catechism. I found the heading “Baptism”, and then looked for “necessity”, and went to the pages to which the index directed me.  This brief and easy search led me to the evidence that what you wrote about the teaching of the Church is untrue.

Since it is so very easy to find the relevant matter in the Catechism, the untruth you published is, at the very best, an instance of negligence.

May I ask exactly what service you hoped to perform by carelessly promulgating a falsehood?

Yours faithfully in Christ,

[magisterium]

There are several other saints, in addition to Saint Emerentiana, who were catechumen-martyrs. One was Saint Victor of Braga, whose feastday is April 11. There are at least two others, but my ol’ head isn’t coming up with their names just now. ;-)

[Marysecretary]

What about the wailing and gnashing of teeth? That doesn’t sound like limbo to me. Limbo doesn’t sound too scriptural either, Claud.