The Necessity Of Baptism

By DON FIER

Part 2

Just before His glorious Ascension into Heaven, Jesus said, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). Based on these words and numerous other teachings of our Lord, the Church firmly holds that Baptism “is necessary for salvation for all those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 261).
Indeed, “the Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], n. 1257).
However, as we saw last week, even though “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, he himself is not bound by his sacraments” (ibid.). In accordance with this principle, the Church accepts two other forms of Baptism in cases of necessity — Baptism of blood and Baptism of desire — which, in an extra-sacramental manner, bring about the grace and effects of Baptism that are necessary for the attainment of eternal life.
Baptism of blood refers to a person who suffers death for the faith whereas Baptism of desire refers in an explicit manner to catechumens who die before receiving Baptism of water and implicitly to those who sincerely want to do God’s will and would have been baptized had they known of its necessity.
In his 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, Pope St. John Paul II reflected on implicit desire for Baptism by stressing God’s universal salvific will.
“Since salvation is offered to all,” says the Holy Father, “it must be made concretely available to all. But it is clear that . . . many people do not have an opportunity to come to know or accept the gospel revelation or to enter the Church. The social and cultural conditions in which they live do not permit this, and frequently they have been brought up in other religious traditions. For such people salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which…is the result of [Christ’s] Sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit. It enables each person to attain salvation through his or her free cooperation” (n. 10).
Although such a road to salvation is indeed possible through cooperation with God’s sufficient grace, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council caution that it is a difficult path, for “often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator” (Lumen Gentium, n. 16).
As expertly stated by Dr. Lawrence Feingold, the conditions necessary for one to be saved outside the visible body of the Church, which one enters through Baptism, include the following:
“There must be invincible ignorance, which excludes religious indifferentism or grave negligence; there must be the sincere desire to do the will of God as known by conscience; there must be supernatural acts of faith, hope, and charity; and there must be perfect contrition for grave sins” (Baptism and Confirmation Course Notes [spring 2014], p. 113).
Men of goodwill who are outside the Church through invincible ignorance are surely in a most unenviable situation, for they lack the fullness of the means of salvation which only the Catholic Church provides. As Pope Pius XII explains in his 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis:
“Even though by an unconscious desire and longing they have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer, they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church” (n. 103).
For example, one in such a condition does not have access to the sacramental channels of grace. Furthermore, how can it be known with moral certainty that a person’s ignorance is invincible, that his search for the truth is not tinged by prejudice, negligence, or fear of worldly disadvantage or suffering?
In closing its section on the necessity of Baptism, the Catechism examines what the Church teaches “as regards children who have died without Baptism” (CCC, n. 1261). This is a tender subject, especially for many faithful Catholic parents who have lost a child to miscarriage, stillborn birth, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or some other unexpected tragedy that prevented their child from receiving Baptism prior to death.
The topic is also particularly relevant in the contemporary age of cultural relativism and religious pluralism in which we live where so many parents do not practice their faith and consider Baptism unnecessary, in an age where abortion and in vitro fertilization are commonplace.
The question of the fate of unbaptized infants was carefully studied in the early 21st century by the International Theological Commission (ITC), an advisory panel to the Vatican consisting of 30 theologians from around the world who were chosen by the Pope. After years of study, the ITC published (with papal approval) an extensive, well-footnoted document on April 20, 2007, entitled The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized (HSI). It does not carry the weight of an authoritative pronouncement of the Magisterium.
As has been demonstrated earlier, the Church teaches that it is possible for adults who are not members of the visible Church to attain salvation through Baptism of desire. What about those, however, who die without sacramental Baptism before having reached the age of reason, those who are “scarcely capable of supplying the fully free and responsible personal act which would constitute a substitution for sacramental Baptism?” (HIS, n. 29).
For, as articulated by Pope Pius XII in his 1951 Allocution to Italian Midwives: “The state of grace is absolutely necessary at the moment of death; without it salvation and supernatural happiness — the beatific vision of God — are impossible. An act of love is sufficient for the adult to obtain sanctifying grace and to supply the lack of baptism; to the still unborn or newly born this way is not open.”
From medieval times until the mid-20th century, the traditional teaching of the Church regarding infants who die without Baptism has centered on the concept of the “limbo of the children.” As defined by Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, in his Modern Catholic Dictionary, limbo is the “abode of souls excluded from the full blessedness of the beatific vision, but not suffering any other punishment. They enjoy the happiness that would have been human destiny if humans had not been elevated to the supernatural order” (p. 319).
In other words, according to the doctrine of limbo, infants who die without Baptism do not experience “pain of sense” and enjoy full natural happiness because they are not guilty of personal sin; however, they do not participate in the face-to-face vision of God. These children, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, “will not sorrow at all because they lack the vision of God; rather they will rejoice in the fact that they participate greatly in the divine goodness in their natural perfections” (De malo, Q. 5, art. 3).
The idea of limbo, however, “has no clear foundation in revelation, even though it has long been used in traditional theological teaching” (HSI, n. 2). It has “never entered into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium” and the term “limbo” does not even appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, neither has it been dismissed and “remains therefore a possible theological hypothesis” (HSI, preface).
The ITC document makes note of a certain tension between two sets of biblical affirmations: “those concerning God’s universal salvific will (cf. 1 Tim. 2:4) and those regarding the necessity of Baptism as the way of being freed from sin and conformed to Christ (cf. Mark 16:16; Matt. 28:18-19)” (HSI, n. 4). The theological basis used to support various means by which unbaptized infants might be united to Christ in the beatific vision appears later in the document, including the principle: “God’s power is not restricted to the sacraments” (HSI, n. 82).

The Great Mercy Of God

The conclusion reached by the commission is that “there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without Baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness, even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in Revelation. . . . There are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible to do for them that what would have been most desirable — to baptize them in the Faith of the Church and incorporate them visibly into the Body of Christ” (HSI, preface).
The ITC document, however, is heedful to caution the faithful:
“It must be clearly acknowledged that the Church does not have sure knowledge about the salvation of unbaptized infants who die. She knows and celebrates the glory of the Holy Innocents, but the destiny of the generality of infants who die without Baptism has not been revealed to us, and the Church teaches and judges only with regard to what has been revealed” (HSI, n. 79).
And so, as the Catechism teaches, “the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved and Jesus’ tenderness toward children…allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism” (CCC, n. 1261).

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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)