Fatboys…this is very Catholic in teaching. Baptism can be by water, but also by desire and blood (martyrs).
We are hopeful that an all loving God would offer salvation to all that have not known him. This includes babies but also non-Catholics who either do not know Christ through no fault of their own and/or who have an improper understanding of Christ and do not baptize with the correct words of baptism and understanding of the Trinity. The latter would include the LDS.
Also, the thief was not only forgiven by Christ but served his penance on the cross having been crucified, his legs broken. There is certainly an amount of mystery to Christs words. “On this day” can be interpreted multiple ways…God is beyond time so what is a “day”? The words themselves “on this day”, with emphasis on the word day changes the meaning, similar to “truly truly I say to you”, it can be taken as a point of emphasis. Also, I understand that the greek text does not have a comma…someone else can explain more fully. Always remember that God is beyond time and is not limited. He can be simultaneously, here today, yesterday, tomorrow and 10,000 years from today … and a day to God can be a million, billion years for us.
Below is the Haydock commentary:
Ver. 17. I will not leave you again; be not in a hurry to touch me; you shall all have this pleasure. I will remain with you some time, before my ascension. Announce my resurrection to my apostles. You shall see me again. This is the interpretation most modern commentators put upon this place. Others suppose, that Magdalene imagined he was risen from the dead to live with men as before, like Lazarus. He addresses these words to her to disabuse her of this notion. (Calmet)
Augustine of Hippo is very similar in one of his homilies
- Forasmuch then as we could in no way have had this blessedness by which we see not and yet believe, unless we received it of the Holy Ghost; it is with good reason said, “It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.” By His Divinity indeed He is with us always; but unless He had in Body gone away from us, we had always seen His Body after the flesh. and never believed after a spiritual sort; by the which belief justified and blessed we might attain with cleansed hearts to contemplate the Very Word, God with God, “by whom all things were made,” and “who was made Flesh, that He might dwell among us.” And if not with the contact of the hand, but “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness;” with good reason is the world, which will not believe save what it sees, convinced of our righteousness. Now that we might have that righteousness of faith of which the unbelieving world should be convinced, therefore said the Lord, “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye shall see Me no more.” As if He had said, “This shall be your righteousness, that ye believe on Me, the Mediator, of whom ye shall be most fully assured that He is risen again and gone to the Father, though ye see Him not after the Flesh; that by Him reconciled, ye may be able to see God after the Spirit.” Whence He saith to the woman who represents the Church, when she fell at His Feet after His Resurrection, “Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to the Father.” Which expression is understood mystically, thus. “Believe not in Me after a carnal manner by means of bodily contact; but thou shall believe after a spiritual manner; that is, with a spiritual faith shalt touch Me, when I shall have ascended to the Father.” For, “blessed are they who do not see, and believe.” And this is the righteousness of faith, of which the world, which hath it not, is convinced of us who are not without it; for “the just liveth by faith.” Whether it be then that as rising again in Him, and in Him coming to the Father, we are invisibly and in justification perfected; or that as not seeing and yet believing we live by faith, for that “the just liveth by faith;” with these meanings said He, “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye shall see Me no more.”
Thomas Aquinas commentary as well
enlargingtheheart.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/thomas-aquinas-i-have-not-yet-ascended-to-my-father-that-is-in-your-heart/
Remember that doubting Thomas did touch Christ on another appearance after his resurrection and before his ascension to the right hand of God. So it wasn’t simply that Mary Magdelene could not physically touch Christ (or “cling to him”).