Who are "the faithful departed"?

[The_Reginator]

I'll begin with my actual question: Can I rest assured that my dead protestant family members may be part of the faithful departed since they are all baptized? That is assuming, of course, that they died in a state of grace.

Since I came home to the Catholic Church (over 29 years ago) I have been bothered by a specific thing when it comes to my family members who have passed away.

We always pray for "the faithful departed", that through our prayers, etc., their souls may speedily be cleansed so that they may experience the Beatific Vision.
Since I come from a long line of protestants I've generally thought that they are not among the faithful departed, as they never had any faith in God's Church or her sacraments.

Now I read this and have some hope:

We remember specifically the baptized, that is, the faithful: that is why we pray “may the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.”

(Emphasis mine.)

That is from

Why Is Our Eternal Destiny Determined by Our State at the Moment of Death?​

written by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

All my ancestors, as far as I know, were eventually baptized. (My mother, born and raised as a Mennonite, was not baptized until her late 30s as they did not believe in infant baptism. I was six years old before I was baptized.)

I thank you in advance for your various opinions and links to Church teaching.
-Reg

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Unless they have, God forbid, known that the Catholic Church is the one true Church and nonetheless refused to come into it, they are only in material error, not formal error, meaning that they don't know it. God knows his own, even if they have made a mistake about where they are supposed to be.

Beyond that, I don't know right offhand what, precisely, the mind of the Church is when she refers to the "faithful departed". It certainly includes all who are visible members of the Catholic Church. Vatican II taught that all baptized souls who profess Christ are in a kind of imperfect communion with the Church.

 

[BartholomewB]

I think it’s reasonable to have doubts about that, and not only in the case of baptized Protestants. What about Catholics who were baptized by a priest who used the wrong form of words, “We baptize ...” instead of “I baptize ...”?

Whether or not we know the answer to your question, I don’t think it would make any difference to the way we pray. We can carry on praying for “the souls of all the faithful departed,” even though we can’t be certain that this or that individual soul is one of them.

 

[po18guy]

At the risk of sounding trite, I am dying to know. In the meantime, we all know of God's immense mercy. For that, we pray.