“You alone and your Mother are more beautiful than any others, for there is no blemish in you nor any stains upon your Mother. Who of my children can compare in beauty to these?”
St. Ephrem, Father and Doctor of the Church (Nisibene Hymns 27:8 [A.D. 361])
“Come, then, and search out your sheep, not through your servants or hired men, but do it yourself. Lift me up bodily and in the flesh, which is fallen in Adam. Lift me up not from Sarah but from Mary, a virgin not only undefiled, but a virgin whom grace had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin.”
St. Ambrose of Milan, Father and Doctor of the Church (Commentary on Psalm 118:22–30 [A.D. 387]).
The Latin for stain is ‘macula’ thus Immaculata (thanks C.A.). And so it is perfectly traditional and proper to refer to ‘original sin’ as a stain.
“Unless a man be born again through water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. No one is excepted: not the infant; not the one prevented by necessity.”
St. Ambrose of Milan, Father and Doctor of the Church (Abraham 2,11:79 – AD 387)
Canon 2: Likewise it has been decided that whoever says that infants fresh from their mother’s wombs should not be Baptized. . . let him be anathema."
Council of Carthage
Canon 7: It seemed good that whenever there were not found reliable witnesses who could testify that without any doubt they [abandoned children] were baptized and when the children themselves were not, on account of their tender age, able to answer concerning the giving of the sacraments to them, all such children should be baptized without scruple, lest a hesitation should deprive them of the cleansing of the sacraments. This was urged by the [North African] legates, our brethren, since they redeem many such [abandoned children] from the barbarians"
Council of Carthage V (A.D. 401)
"If, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another.’
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Father of the Church (Letters 64:5 [A.D. 253]).
“[W]hoever says that infants fresh from their mothers’ wombs ought not to be baptized, or say that they are indeed baptized unto the remission of sins, but that they draw nothing of the original sin of Adam, which is expiated in the bath of regeneration . . . let him be anathema [excommunicated]. Since what the apostle [Paul] says, ‘Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so passed to all men, in whom all have sinned’ [Rom. 5:12], must not be understood otherwise than the Catholic Church spread everywhere has always understood it. For on account of this rule of faith even infants, who in themselves thus far have not been able to commit any sin, are therefore truly baptized unto the remission of sins, so that that which they have contracted from generation may be cleansed in them by regeneration” (Canon 3).
Council of Mileum II [A.D. 416]
‘Every soul is enrolled in Adam until it is enrolled anew in Christ; it is impure. . . and because impure, sinful, responsible also for the stain of the flesh with which it is united.’
Tertullian (ca. 160 – ca. 220 A.D.)
–a bit longwinded but worth the read;if anyone here has not read it.It basically reflects a lot of the ideas expressed in this thread.The document finishes up with a positive note of hope that unbaptised infants do go to Heaven.It is my gut feeling or “the sense of the faithful” that limbo is more of a “theological” position than a reality for unbaptised infants.“there are many rooms in My Fathers’House”