Here’s a truth about a couple of Old Scholar’s lies, from INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION
THE HOPE OF SALVATION FOR INFANTS
WHO DIE WITHOUT BEING BAPTISED*
**You need to check your history a little better. In the 18th century, Pope Pius VI wrote *Auctorem Fidei ***in 1794 condemning the teaching of the church that babies went to hell. He said the teaching was “false, rash, and injurious to Catholic education” because they denied the existence of a place “which the faithful generally designate by the name of limbo for children.”
Limbus Infantium. Pope Pius VI implied that there are two possibilities: that unbaptized infants might spend eternity comfortably in Limbo or they might spend it being tortured in hell. The group called the Jansenists denied the possibility of limbo and Pope Pius VI thought the denial was un-Catholic.
In 1905 Pope Pius X made a definitive declaration confirming the existence of Limbo. “Children who die without baptism go into Limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either, because having original sin, and only that, they do not deserve paradise, but neither hell or purgatory.”
Pope John Paul II in 1992 was reported as unhappy with the doctrine of Limbo and mentioned having it removed from the church’s 1992 catechism. But in 1995, he gave an ambiguous statement implying that aborted embryos and fetuses may be in Heaven or Limbo.
Check your history and see that it was in fact a doctrine but has been changed now. Thank God the RCC finally realized that it was a bad doctrine to begin with.
This theory, elaborated by theologians beginning in the Middle Ages, never entered into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium, even if that same Magisterium did at times mention the theory in its ordinary teaching up until the Second Vatican Council. It remains therefore a possible theological hypothesis. However, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), the theory of limbo is not mentioned. Rather, the Catechism teaches that infants who die without baptism are entrusted by the Church to the mercy of God, as is shown in the specific funeral rite for such children.
- Catholic tradition has constantly affirmed that the Church is necessary for salvation as the historical mediation of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. This conviction found its classical expression in the adage of St. Cyprian: “Salus extra Ecclesiam non est”.[87] The Second Vatican Council has reiterated this faith conviction: “Basing itself on Scripture and tradition, it [the Council] teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it” (LG 14). The Council expounded the mystery of the Church at length: “The Church, in Christ, is in the nature of [a] sacrament - a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of the unity among all men” (LG 1); “Just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men” (LG 8). “Rising from the dead (cf. Rom 6:9) he [Christ] sent his life-giving Spirit upon his disciples and through him set up his Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation” (LG 48). What is striking in these quotations is the universal extent of the Church’s mediating role in ministering God’s salvation: “the unity among all men”, “salvation of [all] men”, “universal sacrament of salvation”.
- In the face of new problems and situations and of an exclusive interpretation of the adage: “salus extra ecclesiam non est”,[88] the magisterium, in recent times, has articulated a more nuanced understanding as to the manner in which a saving relationship with the Church can be realized. The Allocution of Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quadam (1854) clearly states the issues involved: “It must, of course, be held as a matter of faith that outside the apostolic Roman Church no one can be saved, that the Church is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever does not enter it, will perish in the flood. On the other hand, it must likewise be held as certain that those who live in ignorance of the true religion, if such ignorance be invincible (Old Scholar), are not subject to any guilt in this matter before the eyes of the Lord”.[89]
- The Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston (1949) offers further specifications. “To gain eternal salvation, it is not always required that a person be incorporated in reality (reapse) as a member of the Church, but it is necessary that one belong to it at least in desire and longing (voto et desiderio). It is not always necessary that this desire be explicit as it is with catechumens. When one is invincibly ignorant (as Old Scholar is), God also accepts an implicit desire, so called because it is contained in the good disposition of soul by which a person wants his or her will to be conformed to God’s will”.[90]
- The universal salvific will of God, realized through Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, which includes the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation, finds expression in Vatican II: “All men are called to this Catholic unity which prefigures and promotes universal peace. And in different ways to it belong, or are related: all the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ and finally all mankind called by God’s grace to salvation” (LG 13). That the unique and universal mediation of Jesus Christ is realized in the context of a relationship with the Church is further reiterated by the post-Conciliar papal magisterium. Speaking of those who have not had the opportunity to come to know or accept Gospel revelation – even in their case, the encyclical Redemptoris Missio has this to say: “Salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace … which has a mysterious relationship to the Church”.[91]
