Thanks for the links and posts. I had already read that substitute section and I personally understand and affirm the substitutes. Still, the substitutes are not defined dogma. My concern was that a dogmatic statement cannot be altered or contradicted. If that is an accurate translation of the phrase in question, then there are no exceptions, end of story (God would not contradict a defined dogma that He revealed). I understand that the Church and Mr. Ott interpret the dogma differently and I do as well. There are still some ultra-traditionalists who hold to the ‘rigorist’ interpretation, but that is not the view of the Magisterium.
The point is, Ludwig Ott is not some sort of primal font of dogmata. Theologically, he’s a nobody. He got them from somewhere – and there ought to be a citation, but in this case, from the wording, it looks like a mashup of a couple of different things that were promulgated at Trent. Now the Council Fathers assembled at Trent were not fools; they did not decree in January 1547 that “the laver of regeneration or the desire thereof” was what was necessary, and then in March 1547 condemn the idea “that true and natural water is not of necessity for baptism,” without a full understanding that these statements were in harmony.
There are two great risks in proceeding from this point, which must be thoroughly avoided. First, we cannot approach these documents like a Protestant; that is to say, with private interpretation and a
sola scriptura attitude. It is not up to us to investigate dogmatic documents for ourselves, become armchair theologians, and then settle on their meaning. This is the great error of fundamentalist-traditionalists, who say on every question, “I must determine from my own studies what Tradition says, and then I will be able to decide whether the modern Church is in accordance with that truth.” Replace “Tradition” with “Scripture” and you can see the error.
Second, we cannot examine declarations from centuries ago – and, especially, prooftext them --as though they were necessarily written to answer the questions that we are interested in today. If Trent had actually been trying to speak on the topic of whether a catechumen or martyr could be saved through BoB and BoD without having had a literal baptism, then a statement like “true and natural water is … of necessity” might be conclusive. In reality, however, Trent was responding to several centuries of ongoing heresies which held that people could or must be baptized in other ways, including Catharism (which denied that the sacrament was necessary, but had a rite of baptism by fire), Waldensianism (baptism by the spirit), and the Flagellants (baptism by one’s own literal blood shed through penitential scourging).
Trent’s declarations make much better sense viewed in the appropriate historical and theological context. The statement “water baptism is necessary” is a response to the heresies that say that the sacrament of baptism doesn’t exist or that people should be sacramentally baptized in other ways. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of whether catechumens and martyrs can be saved without having
yet had baptism in a non-sacramental process which we metaphorically call “Baptism of Blood” or “Baptism of Desire,” as you can tell by the fact that elsewhere Trent fully acknowledged that truth.
This all, certainly, points to the fact that more precise language could probably have been chosen in drafting the canons of Trent. (Vatican II always comes under fire from ultra-traditionalists for its “ambiguity,” but it certainly has no monopoly on that failing.) Unless Ott is quoting something I’m not aware of, he deserves even more criticism for combining portions of two separate decrees, which ought to be understood in their respective contexts, and presenting them as one.
