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Isaiah45_9
Guest
So do I (A lot of times less than ten seconds), but your point being?
Do you believe with utmost certainty that unbaptized babies go to Heaven?
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Isaiah45_9
Guest
Right, we are pretty messy ah? Even after receiving the mercy of God we figure out a way to destroy sanctifying grace…
Being that you are Presbyterian (And I am not implying you hold to this belief personally - but assuming you are more familiar with the subject of predestination than the average Jane
), does it sound like double predestination the subject being discussed in this thread?
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fred_conty
Guest
I have an opinion.
One of the seven sacraments of the church is baptism, which is necessary for salvation to rid a person of sin and restore the life of God in a person’s soul. And this is a defined teaching of the church.
But in the Catholic Catechism does state that God is not limited to his sacraments. So the implication of this is rather large. Namely that if God so chooses to take one into heaven without baptism, then that will prevail.
That means that we will never know for sure what happens to unbaptised babies, because the church requires baptism, but God is not limited. So unless the church knows in every instance of God’s decision (so to speak), or unless the church knows in general that all babies go to heaven revealed by God, we will never know for sure either.
But from this we also know that baptism is not required if God so choses.
I believe that is why so many have said they aren’t 100% sure, but are very sure of it. Who can know for sure the mind of God? And yet we do know the divine kindness and mercy.
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10gr8kids
Guest
I think it’s a misunderstanding of who GOD is. He is the Creator and therefor has the right to do as He wishes with His creation. I believe God is merciful, but that means none of us, no matter how small and precious, deserve anything. We all, including babies, are at God’s mercy. I don’t feel right pretending to know the mind of God.
“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”
To clarify, we deserve Hell, but even if I might not be able to say an infant deserves Hell, I can easily say they don’t deserve Heaven. Can you, Isiah, say they deserve Heaven?
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UbiCaritas
Guest
A point which may or may not have been brought up (pardon me, but the thread’s 15 pages long at this point…) is miscarried babies–specifically, babies who through no fault of anyone, die before they can possibly be baptized.
(One can, of course, conditionally baptize miscarried remains since we don’t know at what point the soul leaves the body, but we can assume that at least some–more likely most–miscarried babies aren’t validly baptized.)
The question being–why would God deliberately create someone for the sole purpose of damning him or her to Hell? It makes no sense at all that a loving God, the one who said “let the little children come to me,” would be so sadistic.
As I teach in my baptism classes, we don’t know the destination of the overwhelming majority of souls. That includes those of unbaptized infants. However, we know that they haven’t committed actual sin, and we can hope for, if not be certain of, their salvation.
One could argue at the least that an unbaptized infant deserves Heaven more than those of us who, knowing of God and his mercy, deliberately turn our backs on Him daily through actual sins. Original sin is a hereditary matter, and one which we had no say in acquiring, though we still bear its responsibility until we’re baptized, while actual sin requires at least a certain amount of knowledge of God and/or the natural law, something which we all have. Rather a sobering thought, that.
(One can, of course, conditionally baptize miscarried remains since we don’t know at what point the soul leaves the body, but we can assume that at least some–more likely most–miscarried babies aren’t validly baptized.)
The question being–why would God deliberately create someone for the sole purpose of damning him or her to Hell? It makes no sense at all that a loving God, the one who said “let the little children come to me,” would be so sadistic.
As I teach in my baptism classes, we don’t know the destination of the overwhelming majority of souls. That includes those of unbaptized infants. However, we know that they haven’t committed actual sin, and we can hope for, if not be certain of, their salvation.
One could argue at the least that an unbaptized infant deserves Heaven more than those of us who, knowing of God and his mercy, deliberately turn our backs on Him daily through actual sins. Original sin is a hereditary matter, and one which we had no say in acquiring, though we still bear its responsibility until we’re baptized, while actual sin requires at least a certain amount of knowledge of God and/or the natural law, something which we all have. Rather a sobering thought, that.
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PRmerger
Guest
We don’t know if God sends unbaptized babies to hell.
What is your answer to the question when we are pretty sure God does send someone to hell?
IOW: what do you say when someone asks you “Why would God deliberately create someone (who just killed his entire family because he enjoyed it) for the sole purpose of damning him to Hell?”
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PRmerger
Guest
Why do you agree that there ought to be an urgency to getting our infants baptized?
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PRmerger
Guest
What I think you have demonstrated is a lack of fear of the Lord.
You have been duped and lulled into a complacency that depicts God as a jolly avuncular fellow who’s all, “You’re nice? You’re cuddly? You never thought a bad thing in your life? Well, then, come on in, doll!”
pats the right side of His throne
I think our elder brothers in the faith, the Jews, had a better grasp than you do about the inaccessible majesty and grandeur of God. They did not dare approach the Holy of Holies except through the High Priest, who fasted and prayed exhaustively prior to his entrance.
Now, of course, we have the fullness of revelation through the Incarnation, but it doesn’t dismiss the sheer awesome power of God–and you would do well to reconsider your belief that our finite, tainted, flawed selves can approach the Eternal Throne of Heaven and demand admittance because, hey, we were born…and that means we deserve to be One with the Infinite.
meltzerboy
New member
The person you speak of has committed a heinous act for fun, and perhaps not due to mitigating circumstances such as mental illness or a brain tumor causing violent behavior. That individual has exercised their free will to murder their parents. It was not G-d’s doing, and they were not created by G-d for the sole purpose of going to hell. Indeed it is not believed that G-d damned them to hell; rather, they damned themselves. I would think the situation is quite different from that of a newborn, miscarried, or aborted infant, who has not committed any sin by using their free will since they have surely not attained the age of reason to freely choose. However, if the Church says nothing about whether or not unbaptized babies go to heaven and the matter cannot or should not be inferred by means of Scripture, then so be it: that is the official Catholic viewpoint on the issue, which you have explained very well.
Now another, related question. If a Catholic disagrees with Church teaching (or lack thereof) on the issue, is this regarded as a sin?
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Isaiah45_9
Guest
Why would I want to delay to bringing someone to a life in Christ? A means of sanctifying grace?Why do you agree that there ought to be an urgency to getting our infants baptized?
Not just infants, but people in RCIA that have not been baptized as well.
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Isaiah45_9
Guest
Not at all.
… I have been duped… really… is this the best argument you can offer?
I’d be the first one to concede to many others having a better understanding of God. And prayerfully I can retain this degree of humility.
What is it you say about sarcasm…
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PRmerger
Guest
But the question remains: why did God create a person He knows is going to be condemned to hell?
What is UbiCaritas’ response to this? It is a question oft posed by atheists here.
It depends. One’s culpability is based on how correctly one has been given the teaching, how one understands the teaching, and why one rejects this teaching.
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PRmerger
Guest
Without this sanctifying grace…what happens to this infant?
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UbiCaritas
Guest
We don’t know if God sends unbaptized babies to hell.
What is your answer to the question when we are pretty sure God does send someone to hell?
IOW: **what do you say when someone asks you “Why would God deliberately create someone (who just killed his entire family because he enjoyed it) for the sole purpose of damning him to Hell?”/**QUOTE]
I would say that a lot depends on the circumstances.
Some people know what is right and what is wrong, enjoy doing what is wrong, and do it anyway. Someone who knew it was wrong to kill his family but did it anyway? Well, we don’t know for certain what his final destination was–God, after all, is infinitely merciful, and he may have repented just before he died.
From an academic standpoint, someone who had full knowledge that murdering his family was wrong, had his full faculties at the time (ie, he was not in the midst of a genuine psychotic breakdown in which he honestly thought that dad was Satan, for example), and died unrepentant with that sin on his soul would go to Hell.
(In the case of the family who was murdered by this person, one would assume that the adults and those who have reached the age of reason are responsible–in the case of children, to one degree or another–for the state of their souls at their death. One of our duties as Christians is to be as prepared as we can be to die at any given time.)
On the other hand, a three-year-old, for example, who gives his baby sister a lethal dose of Tylenol because he thinks the pills are “candy” and dies right after that clearly didn’t have the faculties required to understand what he did.
The requirements for committing a mortal sin is that the matter actually be grave matter, that the person know that it is grave matter, and that the person fully consent to it.
In short, there isn’t a hard-and-fast answer to the guy-who-murders-his-family question because there are so many variables.
With miscarried babies, there is no variable. God created them in His image and endowed them with a soul, allowed them to live for a time, and then, for His reasons which we can’t understand this side of Heaven, took them before they could attain salvation through normal means. Period.
I’m sure we’ll agree that they have no guilt due to actual sin. How God chooses to handle the guilt they carry from original sin is up to Him, but as the catechism says, we can hope for their salvation, though not be certain of it–and we can also remember that while God binds with His laws, He himself is not bound to them.
I’ll cite two instances which come to mind to support this idea that unbaptized infants and (while I’m on the subject) righteous non-Christians can be saved, though I don’t claim that they prove it because private revelation never determines dogma.
The first is the story of Maria Jesus de Agreda, a Spanish nun. In the late 16th/early 17th century, Spanish missionary priests began creating missions in the southwestern US. In several instances, when they rode out to meet as-yet-unmet-by-missionary tribes, they were shocked to see a procession of Native Americans coming to meet them At first they were afraid, thinking that this might be some sort of war party, but instead they were shocked when they reached the procession and were asked by the tribal elders if they were “the priests who come to baptize us, like the blue lady promised.” Upon further inquiry, it transpired that a woman in blue robes (which, from the description, sounded like a religious habit) had appeared to them a few years before. She began instructing them in the Catholic faith and life, and told them that in a few years priests would come and would give them the sacraments, but that they must live a good life in preparation for this. By the time the priests came, the tribe understood the basics of the catechism and of the Catholic religion, and they welcomed the priests joyfully because they could offer the sacraments to them. ETA: forgot to finish the story.It was later determined that the “blue lady” was a bilocating Spanish nun named Maria Jesus de Agreda.
The second is a much more recent story which you’ve probably read about in the news. A few years ago, a former abortionist got an audience with the Pope and laid the surgical instruments he used to do abortions at the Pope’s feet. He then told a story: while he was still a very, VERY active abortionist, he had a dream one night in which a man in a black and white religious habit was playing with a large group of children in a field. When he approached them, the children hid behind the man in the habit and seemed terrified of him. The doctor asked the man who he was, and why the children were so afraid of him; he wouldn’t hurt them, he said. The man replied, “I am St. Thomas Aquinas, and these are all the children you have murdered through abortion.” The doctor stopped his abortion practice and converted to Catholicism shortly thereafter. One presumes that the Angelic Doctor wasn’t frolicking about in Hell.
(As I said, I do not offer these as proof–merely as supporting circumstantial evidence, so to speak.)
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UbiCaritas
Guest
We don’t know. They might go to Heaven, and we can hope that we do, but we can’t know for certain. With the sanctifying grace of baptism, they will definitely attain Heaven. Sounds like a powerful argument for early baptism to me.
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PRmerger
Guest
Egg-zactly.
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PRmerger
Guest
PRmerger;12673018:
send someone to hell?
IOW: **what do you say when someone asks you “Why would God deliberately create someone (who just killed his entire family because he enjoyed it) for the sole purpose of damning him to Hell?”/**QUOTE]
I would say that a lot depends on the circumstances.
Some people know what is right and what is wrong, enjoy doing what is wrong, and do it anyway. Someone who knew it was wrong to kill his family but did it anyway? Well, we don’t know for certain what his final destination was–God, after all, is infinitely merciful, and he may have repented just before he died.
From an academic standpoint, someone who had full knowledge that murdering his family was wrong, had his full faculties at the time (ie, he was not in the midst of a genuine psychotic breakdown in which he honestly thought that dad was Satan, for example), and died unrepentant with that sin on his soul would go to Hell.
(In the case of the family who was murdered by this person, one would assume that the adults and those who have reached the age of reason are responsible–in the case of children, to one degree or another–for the state of their souls at their death. One of our duties as Christians is to be as prepared as we can be to die at any given time.)
On the other hand, a three-year-old, for example, who gives his baby sister a lethal dose of Tylenol because he thinks the pills are “candy” and dies right after that clearly didn’t have the faculties required to understand what he did.
The requirements for committing a mortal sin is that the matter actually be grave matter, that the person know that it is grave matter, and that the person fully consent to it.
In short, there isn’t a hard-and-fast answer to the guy-who-murders-his-family question because there are so many variables.
With miscarried babies, there is no variable. God created them in His image and endowed them with a soul, allowed them to live for a time, and then, for His reasons which we can’t understand this side of Heaven, took them before they could attain salvation through normal means. Period.
I’m sure we’ll agree that they have no guilt due to actual sin. How God chooses to handle the guilt they carry from original sin is up to Him, but as the catechism says, we can hope for their salvation, though not be certain of it–and we can also remember that while God binds with His laws, He himself is not bound to them.
I’ll cite two instances which come to mind to support this idea that unbaptized infants and (while I’m on the subject) righteous non-Christians can be saved, though I don’t claim that they prove it because private revelation never determines dogma.
The first is the story of Maria Jesus de Agreda, a Spanish nun. In the late 16th/early 17th century, Spanish missionary priests began creating missions in the southwestern US. In several instances, when they rode out to meet as-yet-unmet-by-missionary tribes, they were shocked to see a procession of Native Americans coming to meet them At first they were afraid, thinking that this might be some sort of war party, but instead they were shocked when they reached the procession and were asked by the tribal elders if they were “the priests who come to baptize us, like the blue lady promised.” Upon further inquiry, it transpired that a woman in blue robes (which, from the description, sounded like a religious habit) had appeared to them a few years before. She began instructing them in the Catholic faith and life, and told them that in a few years priests would come and would give them the sacraments, but that they must live a good life in preparation for this. By the time the priests came, the tribe understood the basics of the catechism and of the Catholic religion, and they welcomed the priests joyfully because they could offer the sacraments to them. ETA: forgot to finish the story.
The second is a much more recent story which you’ve probably read about in the news. A few years ago, a former abortionist got an audience with the Pope and laid the surgical instruments he used to do abortions at the Pope’s feet. He then told a story: while he was still a very, VERY active abortionist, he had a dream one night in which a man in a black and white religious habit was playing with a large group of children in a field. When he approached them, the children hid behind the man in the habit and seemed terrified of him. The doctor asked the man who he was, and why the children were so afraid of him; he wouldn’t hurt them, he said. The man replied, “I am St. Thomas Aquinas, and these are all the children you have murdered through abortion.” The doctor stopped his abortion practice and converted to Catholicism shortly thereafter. One presumes that the Angelic Doctor wasn’t frolicking about in Hell.
(As I said, I do not offer these as proof–merely as supporting circumstantial evidence, so to speak.)
I think with the above you addressed the question: where does someone go after he dies if he has done “A”, under circumstances “B, C, and D”.
My question, though, was: how do you respond to the question: why would God create a person who He knows is going to be condemned to hell for eternity?
It’s the question you posed for babies, and I just extended it to adults.
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Richca
Guest
The INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION conducted a study on THE HOPE OF SALVATION FOR INFANTS WHO DIE WITHOUT BEING BAPTISED in 2005/06. Here is a link to the document vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html
The short answer according to this document and the CCC is that there are “serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved and enjoy the Beatific Vision. We emphasise that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge. There is much that simply has not been revealed to us (cf. Jn 16:12).”
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10gr8kids
Guest
A comment I’ve read several times on this thread, how a baby is so much more deserving of heaven than any of us who have committed actual sin. What about the children who are brought up to hate and kill, would God be more merciful to have allowed them to die at birth. We know there is always hope of repentance, but I wouldn’t think it would be easy in such a situation. What about all the children born into homes that their parents don’t teach them about God, or right from wrong. Even my own children, if I truly loved my children should I not have prayed that they lived long enough that I could hold them, nurture them, and watch them grow. If my children that died in the womb, automatically made it to heaven, and the ones that live may reject God, should I not have prayed that they survived? I often wondered if I was being selfish in my prayers when I begged God to allow my children to live.
This might not make sense to anyone, but it is the thought process I’ve gone through wondering about my children. This is one reason why I believe there still must be some sort of freewill involved with infants. Of course, it’s just my opinion, and I may be way off.
This might not make sense to anyone, but it is the thought process I’ve gone through wondering about my children. This is one reason why I believe there still must be some sort of freewill involved with infants. Of course, it’s just my opinion, and I may be way off.
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Isaiah45_9
Guest
Right. That **is **a far cry from saying they **deserve **hell, is it not?
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