Small children - say over two years old - if they die un-baptized what does the church say happens?
Looking at small children, as they get to be old enough to have sinned possibly, as opposed to an infant that has not.
Thanks all,
Marc
Some theologians speculate that there is a place called limbo where infants go if they die without baptism. Theoretically, limbo is an eternal happy place without the Supernatural happiness of heaven. Dr. David Anders was on the radio show Called to Communion recently, and he compared eternal natural happiness to a person who gets to play golf on a sunny day forever. Sure, it might be happy, but we know that’s not heaven because we can imagine that. The Bible says we can’t imagine what heaven will be like.
Some theologians speculate that “baptism of desire” can be applied to unbaptized infants vicariously through the Church’s desire and prayers for their salvation.
In the 1500s, Cardinal Cajetan commented on this: “[C]hildren [who are] still within the womb of their mother are able to be saved…through the sacrament of baptism that is received, not in reality, but in the desire of the parents.” (Commentary on the Summa Theologica III:68:11)
St. Thomas Aquinas also appears to have suggested that it is sometimes possible for infants to get sanctifying grace without baptism: “Children while in the mother’s womb have not yet come forth into the world to live among other men. Consequently they cannot be [baptized], so as to receive the sacrament, at the hands of man, unto salvation. They can, however, be subject to the action of God, in Whose sight they live, so as, by a kind of privilege, to receive the grace of sanctification; as was the case with those who were sanctified in the womb.” (Summa Theologiae Part 3 Question 68 Article 11) Earlier in the book St. Thomas mentions that Mary and St. John the Baptist were sanctified in the womb.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux lived in the 1100s. Some websites say that a couple once asked him what would happen to their miscarried child, and he supposedly wrote back with these words: “Your faith spoke for this child. Baptism for this child was only delayed by time. Your faith suffices. The waters of your womb — were they not the waters of life for this child? Look at your tears. Are they not like the waters of baptism? Do not fear this. God’s ability to love is greater than our fears. Surrender everything to God.”
He Supposedly said this. I say Supposedly because I haven’t found a credible source for it yet. I’ve searched for a published copy of this quote in St. Bernard’s written works and I haven’t been able to find it yet. So far, I’ve internet-searched various words from this quote in an English edition of his letters, to no avail. Then I searched for translations of this quote, using various words that one could expect to show up in all translations, such as “faith”, “love,” and “tears.” I translated those words into French, Italian, and Latin, and used them to search his complete works in all those languages to see if they show up near each other, as they should if this quote exists anywhere. I still haven’t found it, but I probably made some mistakes.
In the future I’d like to make search again, looking for those words in various declensions that create different endings in those languages. They might show up in ways that are grammatically different from what I would expect, and my initial search might not have found them because I might have searched using a different ending than the one he used. There are also several possible spellings of those words in medieval versions of those languages, and there are probably synonyms that I don’t know about that I could also search for. Maybe St. Bernard didn’t use the Ordinary word for “tears” (for example), but a synonym. Or maybe the quote is inauthentic – but I hope not, because it’s beautiful. Someday I hope to find out if he said this, and if he did, in what document he said it.
