What happens to unbaptized babies?

[CameronEmery]

My understanding is that anyone who dies before the age of 8 is saved in God’s Kingdom.

But Jesus called for them, saying, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

What do Catholics believe happens to these children who are not baptized and die? especially if they did not have the opportunity to do baptism by desire because they were too young to understand what the covenant of baptism means?

i don’t want just personal opinion but the doctrine of the catholic church.
it would help if you pointed me to the place in the catechism where they talk about it.
thanks!

 

[1ke]

What do Catholics believe happens to these children who are not baptized and die?

We don’t know, because God hasn’t told us specifically.

What we do know is that baptism is necessary for salvation, ordinarily. What God chooses to do extraordinarily-- that is, outside His sacraments-- is up to Him. Therefore, we trust God in such cases.

i don’t want just personal opinion but the doctrine of the catholic church. it would help if you pointed me to the place in the catechism where they talk about it.
thanks!

vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3M.HTM

 

[Confiteor_Deo]

1ke is correct, we don’t know for sure. In the Baltimore Catechism it says “Persons, such as infants, who have not committed actual sin and who, through no fault of theirs, die without baptism, cannot enter heaven; but it is the common belief they will go to some place similar to Limbo, where they will be free from suffering, though deprived of the happiness of heaven.”

However, the Church says that we may trust in the mercy of God and hope that unbaptized infants are admitted to Heaven through extraordinary means. We can choose to believe either of them as the Church gives us the choice.

 

[Actaeon]

My understanding is that anyone who dies before the age of 8 is saved in God’s Kingdom.

But Jesus called for them, saying, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

What do Catholics believe happens to these children who are not baptized and die? especially if they did not have the opportunity to do baptism by desire because they were too young to understand what the covenant of baptism means?

i don’t want just personal opinion but the doctrine of the catholic church.
it would help if you pointed me to the place in the catechism where they talk about it.
thanks!

As the others have said, the Church has not and has never officially defined the answer to this question.

In contrast to the above, I tend to think of unbaptised babies in the same way I think of those who are invincibly ignorant. God knows their heart and gives them the same choice to accept or reject Him, and then judges them accordingly, with mercy and grace where needed. We can only trust that the Merciful and Just God does right by them, and hope and pray for their salvation too.

 

[z_0101]

CCC: 1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,"63 allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.

 

[CameronEmery]

1ke is correct, we don’t know for sure. In the Baltimore Catechism it says “Persons, such as infants, who have not committed actual sin and who, through no fault of theirs, die without baptism, cannot enter heaven; but it is the common belief they will go to some place similar to Limbo, where they will be free from suffering, though deprived of the happiness of heaven.”

However, the Church says that we may trust in the mercy of God and hope that unbaptized infants are admitted to Heaven through extraordinary means. We can choose to believe either of them as the Church gives us the choice.

Heavenly Father is merciful… consider you had a seven year old child die that you loved but you had never heard of the gospel so they never got baptized. do you consider that that child will never enjoy the eternal happiness that God has prepared for his children? think about it. we don’t even need to have faith that they are saved in the Kingdom because we know it. and the Baltimore Catechism is wrong in that doctrine.

 

[CameronEmery]

Heavenly Father is merciful… consider you had a seven year old child die that you loved but you had never heard of the gospel so they never got baptized. do you consider that that child will never enjoy the eternal happiness that God has prepared for his children? think about it. we don’t even need to have faith that they are saved in the Kingdom because we know it. and the Baltimore Catechism is wrong in that doctrine.

If this comment get’s deleted it will only reflect on the lack of faith the moderators of this site have in the atonement of Jesus, the Christ.

 

[1ke]

we know it

We do not “know” any such thing.

We can hope for it. We can trust in God’s mercy. We cannot **know **it, because that requires revealed truth. God did not choose to reveal exactly how he works extra-sacramentally, nor if and when He does or does not act extra-sacramentally.

 

[bitterhope]

Heavenly Father is merciful… consider you had a seven year old child die that you loved but you had never heard of the gospel so they never got baptized. do you consider that that child will never enjoy the eternal happiness that God has prepared for his children? think about it. we don’t even need to have faith that they are saved in the Kingdom because we know it. and the Baltimore Catechism is wrong in that doctrine.

I agree with you 100%! If babies don’t make it to heaven, none of us stand a chance. And if MY babies are not in heaven then I don’t want to be there either. If God is all good and all loving as we are told then of course innocent children are with Him.

 

[Actaeon]

Heavenly Father is merciful… consider you had a seven year old child die that you loved but you had never heard of the gospel so they never got baptized. do you consider that that child will never enjoy the eternal happiness that God has prepared for his children? think about it. we don’t even need to have faith that they are saved in the Kingdom because we know it. and the Baltimore Catechism is wrong in that doctrine.

I agree with you 100%! If babies don’t make it to heaven, none of us stand a chance. And if MY babies are not in heaven then I don’t want to be there either. If God is all good and all loving as we are told then of course innocent children are with Him.

Free will, people. Even though they are not culpable for personal sin, and we trust that a merciful God would offer salvation to such babies, they still will have the free will to accept or reject God.

It would be unjust of God to save those people against their will, who, even if they had been baptized and lived a full life, would have chosen to reject God anyway. Because we cannot know what the baby would have chosen, we can only trust in our God, who is merciful and just to do what is right.

 

[bitterhope]

Free will, people. Even though they are not culpable for personal sin, and we trust that a merciful God would offer salvation to such babies, they still will have the free will to accept or reject God.

It would be unjust of God to save those people against their will, who, even if they had been baptized and lived a full life, would have chosen to reject God anyway. Because we cannot know what the baby would have chosen, we can only trust in our God, who is merciful and just to do what is right.

Babies are innocent and they are also unable to make choices. Free will does not apply before the age of reason. They are unable to sin. If God would not bring innocents home to Him the rest of us stand no chance. And if He would decide that innocent babies are unworthy I would rather not be in a kingdom like that anyway. What would the point be?

 

[bitterhope]

And if God bases His final judgement upon what He knows we will end up deciding in the future, there is absolutely no point in living through this world. And it makes no sense that we can gain or lose heaven based on future decisions we never were able to make. Predestination is what that would amount to, and from what I understand Catholics are not able to believe in predestination (thankfully).

 

[1ke]

Babies are innocent and they are also unable to make choices. Free will does not apply before the age of reason. They are unable to sin. If God would not bring innocents home to Him the rest of us stand no chance. And if He would decide that innocent babies are unworthy I would rather not be in a kingdom like that anyway. What would the point be?

Babies, like ALL of us, are not innocent. We all have Original Sin. Original Sin deprives us of that which is necessary for the beatific vision: sanctifying grace. None of us deserves Heaven, not one. Not one of us is entitled to heaven. It is a free gift.

God gives us the free gift of sanctifying grace in the sacraments, the first and most important of which is baptism. This is how God established his new covenant, through Jesus in the sacraments.

We do not know if or how God gives sanctifying grace *outside *of His sacraments.

What we know is that sanctifying grace is necessary for the beatific vision.

What we know is that no one has sanctifying grace at conception (save the Virgin Mary who was conceived without Original Sin by a singular grace of God, and for those picky people I will include Jesus, but He is God so… not the same thing at all).

What we know is that the ordinary means of receiving the necessary sanctifying grace is baptism (and for those over the age of reason and capable of mortal sin, post baptismal confession) and the other sacraments strengthen sanctifying grace.

What we don’t know is if or how God extends sanctifying grace to those who are not baptized, infants or otherwise. Because God is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful, we can hope (as in the theological virtue of hope, not the “I hope I get a pony for Christmas” kind of hope).

 

[Todd977]

Until recent decades, it was a widely-held theological speculation among Catholics that babies who died unbaptized were excluded from the Beatific Vision of God after death but enjoyed a state of happiness referred to as the limbo of infants (limbus parvulorum) which was thought to be similar to Abraham’s bosom (the limbo of the Fathers or limbus patrum) mentioned in Luke 16:22. For more info, see the article on “Limbo” in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

 

[Actaeon]

Babies are innocent and they are also unable to make choices. Free will does not apply before the age of reason. They are unable to sin. If God would not bring innocents home to Him the rest of us stand no chance. And if He would decide that innocent babies are unworthy I would rather not be in a kingdom like that anyway. What would the point be?

Free will applies before the age of reason. Informed consent to sin is what is lacking which makes a person incapable of being culpable for personal sin by that point.

And it’s not that innocent babies are “unworthy.” It’s that God does not FORCE Himself on anyone. I would, however, be careful about declaring yourself the arbiter of grace and declaring God’s arbitration unworthy. We do not know that ALL babies are saved, that has not been revealed to us. The best we can say is that we hope they are all saved, and trust in the justice and mercy of God.

Here’s the problem with your position: if God saves ALL babies, indeed, all children… why not abort or murder them all? They’ll all get to go to heaven that way… Except nobody actually believes its better for a child to die than to grow up and risk losing salvation…

And if God bases His final judgement upon what He knows we will end up deciding in the future, there is absolutely no point in living through this world. And it makes no sense that we can gain or lose heaven based on future decisions we never were able to make. Predestination is what that would amount to, and from what I understand Catholics are not able to believe in predestination (thankfully).

Predestination has nothing to do with it. The soul is still able to yearn for God or reject God. And you mistake if you think that because someone dies as a baby that their soul is trapped in the mental performance of a baby. We are all judged. We all choose or reject God.

Also, we reject Calvinistic predestination, while recognizing that by God’s eternal omnipresence we are predestined on the basis of our own free will. From the Catechism:
““To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.” – CCC, 600”

 

[z_0101]

i don’t want just personal opinion but the doctrine of the catholic church.
it would help if you pointed me to the place in the catechism where they talk about it.
thanks!

Asked and answered Post#5

IMHO, this thread has lost its way at this point.

 

[bitterhope]

Well, I’m glad I read this thread. It has helped me realize the answer to what I’ve been struggling with for several years now. The Catholic Church is not in reality the church I was raised to believe it is. The nuns at school and the priest who taught us in catechism class taught us wrong. Yes, I went to Catholic school from k-12 and we had daily Mass at my school. We had religion everyday. They had told us how loving and merciful God is and that the Church was a comforting and accepting guide here in earth. I’ve read enough on CAF and attended enough parishes in several states and a few countries (military family) that I began questioning that reality quite long ago. What I was told has never translated to real life experience. Reading on this site posts that state actual Church teaching and noticing it mirrors the the way Catholics behave towards others in real life experiences makes realize I no longer want to be Catholic. I wish the Church allowed those of us that come to this realization to withdraw our membership, but since it doesn’t I guess I’m just stuck on a technicality.

 

[CameronEmery]

Free will applies before the age of reason. Informed consent to sin is what is lacking which makes a person incapable of being culpable for personal sin by that point.

And it’s not that innocent babies are “unworthy.” It’s that God does not FORCE Himself on anyone. I would, however, be careful about declaring yourself the arbiter of grace and declaring God’s arbitration unworthy. We do not know that ALL babies are saved, that has not been revealed to us. The best we can say is that we hope they are all saved, and trust in the justice and mercy of God.

Here’s the problem with your position: if God saves ALL babies, indeed, all children… why not abort or murder them all? They’ll all get to go to heaven that way… Except nobody actually believes its better for a child to die than to grow up and risk losing salvation…

Predestination has nothing to do with it. The soul is still able to yearn for God or reject God. And you mistake if you think that because someone dies as a baby that their soul is trapped in the mental performance of a baby. We are all judged. We all choose or reject God.

Also, we reject Calvinistic predestination, while recognizing that by God’s eternal omnipresence we are predestined on the basis of our own free will. From the Catechism:
““To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.” – CCC, 600”

ALL babies go straight to the celestial kingdom when they die. I don’t care what any catholic church says unless it portrays God as just and merciful. I belong to the church of Jesus Christ. And I know my heavenly father. And he wouldnt damn a baby to never experience a fulness of joy just because they didn’t get their forehead sprinkled with water before they died. He is a just and merciful God and we will all stand before his judgement bar at the last day. And he will ask you why you baptized your infants and what will you say to him then?.. that you were trying to save them? And he will say, they were already mine. The world had not yet corrupted their heavenly souls. You know and I know that children are sent straight from heaven and do not have the stain of sin until they are TEMPTED as adam, and his wife were, and submit to temptation. Otherwise there is no repentance needed. And no baptism needed for one that is incapable of making decisions. And he has no hard feelings toward a soul that made no mistakes in this life. If you had children, you would 100% agree. Unless you do but you are just more concerned with being right than what is right. If you pray about it, you will get an answer. This is the doctrine of my church and I leave it with thee in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

[CameronEmery]

Well, I’m glad I read this thread. It has helped me realize the answer to what I’ve been struggling with for several years now. The Catholic Church is not in reality the church I was raised to believe it is. The nuns at school and the priest who taught us in catechism class taught us wrong. Yes, I went to Catholic school from k-12 and we had daily Mass at my school. We had religion everyday. They had told us how loving and merciful God is and that the Church was a comforting and accepting guide here in earth. I’ve read enough on CAF and attended enough parishes in several states and a few countries (military family) that I began questioning that reality quite long ago. What I was told has never translated to real life experience. Reading on this site posts that state actual Church teaching and noticing it mirrors the the way Catholics behave towards others in real life experiences makes realize I no longer want to be Catholic. I wish the Church allowed those of us that come to this realization to withdraw our membership, but since it doesn’t I guess I’m just stuck on a technicality.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that you said this! Im not even in the catholic church and i see straight through it. Anyways i love all catholics because they are children of God. And I know I’m not supposed to share this here, but here is an “opinion” that latter day saints have. Its just our view. m.youtube.com/watch?v=9MiF_HKoFr4

 

[Confiteor_Deo]

Heavenly Father is merciful… consider you had a seven year old child die that you loved but you had never heard of the gospel so they never got baptized. do you consider that that child will never enjoy the eternal happiness that God has prepared for his children? think about it. we don’t even need to have faith that they are saved in the Kingdom because we know it. and the Baltimore Catechism is wrong in that doctrine.

The Catholic Church has not definitively said if an unbaptized person that is innocent of mortal sin enters Heaven because we truly do not know. She has given us two possibilities in which we may choose to believe, but has not infallibly declared which is correct. Therefore, anything that is definitively stated on the topic may be considered mere opinion.

Personally, I know God is merciful but I also know that He is infinitely just, so I believe they go to Limbo. I am still undecided on the matter. I greatly revere the Baltimore Catechism and am inclined to adhere to it in this regard.