Unbaptized Children, Hell, and "Let the children come to me..."

Amici, FWIW, and to save some the trouble of deep digging for answers to the question of what happens to unbaptized chidren, some ponderings...

• Preamble 
  Our Lord is clear in the Gospels: those who don't believe in Him are lost. However, as for children, He said let no one prevent them from coming to Him (Matt 19:14). This passage clearly means first, at that exact point in time, and also (we can clearly deduce) for the rest of his Earthly ministry: "Apostles, let the kids come to me; don't hinder them."
  Second: Traditionally, and no doubt truly, the Church interprets this passage as meaning anyone who wants Salvation must have the clear, innocent, beautiful Faith and love (charity) children have. (Cold calculations, measuring everything to a finely balanced metric, don't cut it.)
  Third: "Such is the kingdom of Heaven" – considering that these were as of that moment unbaptized Jewish kids, it is highly probable indeed that He truly meant ALL children were His, for He made 'em, knows their destiny (whether they become adults or not) and so on. Remember, when God says X, X happens. All Creation was created by the Father through the Son (the Logos) so I think it reasonable to understand Our Lord Jesus, Joshua, "Yahweh Saves", is proclaiming here that children will be saved.
  Don't know it for sure, of course, but it makes sense.
  So an answer: Trust God. If one is going to believe in the Christian God, He went to literally infinite trouble to become a human being, amazing the good angels (and of course confounding the bad ones) and redoing Creation on the off-chance (as it were) that some (small or large, probably small) portion of His human creation wouldn't deny Him. He was Incarnated in us so we could be incarnated in Him, through His grace ("grace" meaning "gift".) If He enabled the Immaculate Conception, as a pure gift (grace) through his not-yet-at-that-time Incarnation, He can save unbaptized infants. He's Lord of the Sabbath, in short; the Sabbath (here standing for Fallen Humanity, and Creation, and the curses of the Fall, etc.) is not His master.
  The BVM: The Blessed Mother. She is our great Advocate. And she's a mother. Does anyone think she wouldn't advocate for children who no fault of their own were not baptized? Does anyone think He would deny Her?
  Protestants and Orthodox: I suppose Prots are all over the map with answers to this. Most of the ones I've ever known think all kids go to Heaven, as a matter of course. The Orthodox Churches (14 independent "Ghetto" Churches), deny the Catholic teaching that unbaptized infants go to Limbo. But then, they've made an absolute mush of Purgatory, and trashed out a number of other things, like divorce and remarriage, so "whaddatheyknow"?
  Robert Bellarmine, much in the news because of his teachings about bad popes, was the last major Catholic thinker to teach that unbaptized infants went to the Hell of the Damned. Aquinas, Vulcan Academy-trained in logic, taught unbaptized infants didn't go to Fiery Hell, but a mild and happy Limbo, and his position eventually carried the day, but the Church has never actually dogmatically defined this.
  An Préachán

Original Sin, Catholic vs. Protestant

I came across an Israeli blogger who wrote: 

" Original sin "? We view it as a heinous doctrine that distorts human relations and has no basis in the original Bible.

I blogged back:

Whoa, now. There's Original Sin and there's Original Sin. You mean old-fashioned Protestant Original Sin or the Catholic definition. They're quite different. This is important to understand.

Many Christian denominations are, I guess, "light" on it today, but then that's because Protestant Christianity distorted it "back in the day" of Luther and Calvin (i.e., Calvin's "Total Depravity"). They insisted Man is absolutely fallen, a pile of junk, that anything and everything we do or think or are or be is putrid; or as Luther had it, a pile of manure, and salvation was only possible by God covering the putrid individual with His Grace, like a snow fall over the manure -- and thus one was never changed in one's nature, but remained a manure pile covered with snow into Eternity -- for example, being that way in Heaven itself -- forever. This is a belief 20th century Protestant "Mere Christian" C.S. Lewis politely discounted and successfully criticized in his 10th Letter to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer.

Roman Catholicism had nothing like that in mind in its Original Sin doctrine. The idea is that Adam and Eve's fall disconnected our natures from the way God had made us, in which we could run directly on His Grace, whole and one with Him, perfectly at peace with our different desires, controlling our appetites as we could control our thoughts, perfectly. But because of the Fall, we lost that perfect control and at oneness with God while we kept (this is important) our human dignity as being His servants made in the image and likeness of God, as well as our intellectual, rational being abilities. (The only time in the Old Testament that "imagine" is used positively, I believe -- that God made us in His image.)

In any event, we lost that ability to conform ourselves directly and fully -- in will as well as body -- with God. So therefore we need that proper nature restored, a life-long process starting with Baptism, an individual's passage through the Red Sea of sin to the Promised Land beyond, wherein we than can indeed do God's will, as He intended.

This following metaphor is good: A (classical, hard-core) Protestant says we're a car wreck that can't be repaired, but can still enter Heaven as a piece of rusting junk; a Catholic says God can and will repair the car, BETTER than new, through the sacraments.

Hope this gives you a fuller understanding of various ideas on Original Sin, of which different versions exist. G.K. Chesterton (sometimes accused of antisemitism, but I understand some scholars have debunked that), said, "Original Sin is the only Church doctrine you can prove by merely opening the daily newspaper." If anyone ever said anything that was true, that was it.

• 
  

Enlightenment, de-lightenment: The Fix Is in in Western Thought

For a Protestant, "Faith" means a "leap of faith" (see Søren Kierkegaard for an explanation of that). Catholic Faith, on the other hand, is the willing acceptance of divine revelation and the witness of the Church because they are true. They're reasonable, in fact.

For example, St. Paul says in 1 Cor 15 that 500 of the brothers saw the Risen Christ at one time -- and 500 was the size of an Athenian jury when a man was on trial for his life, so Ft. Paul is saying he has evidence that would pass the legal system of the greatest city-state of the Ancient World. 

Faith as "blind faith," a leap in the dark, is based purely on self will, or rather self desire. One wants something to be true whether it is or not and one is willing to jump into the dark for it.

"Man is the Measure of All Things" is a Renaissance idea. I think the real "black hat" in Western Culture is none other than Nick, Niccolo Machiavelli. René Descartes and his Mechanical Physics was the "icing on the cake" that sealed the doom of Western Man, and that was highlighted by the wide acceptance of the teachings of that true and certain idiot, David Hume. Humie should be read only to be laughed at and yet today he's considered the dean of the Enlightenment (my understanding is the Enlightenment meant to be enlightened that God didn't exist).

And a prime directive of the Enlightenment was to come up with a metaphysical materialistic way to explain life on Earth. None other than a certain Erasmus was a leading proponent of such an idea during the Enlightenment, and this particular Erasmus came up with a theory of evolution very much like the one his grandson would come up with thereafter. Yes, I refer to none other than Erasmus Darwin and his grandson Charlie. 

In other words, "the fix is in" in Western thinking going back now some hundreds of years. There's a long, old, complicated story being unwound right now. Vatican II and its despicable "spirit" is on a tip of the pimple that has to be popped, if I may be excused for being vulgar.

An Préachán

Part II Catholic and Protestant Differences: Authority, Section 1

PART II

Authority

Section I

Why the Protestant Rejection of Catholic Authority Exists, and Why It Is Relevant Today

The Protestant rejection of papal and the wider Church authority occurred because Martin Luther and the other early Reformers couldn’t get the Catholic Church (either the pope or Church Councils) to accept the novel Protestant teachings about how Salvation worked. (N.B. Each Reformer had a somewhat different take on it, but more or less basically agreed with each other. See Part III of this series.) So Luther and Co. had to either recant – formally give up their ideas – or split from the Church. They chose to split. 

• The technical term for a Church split is Schism.

Basic Facts About How Authority Works in Catholicism and Protestantism

Protestants reject the authority of both the Pope and the bishops in Communion with him, whether that unity is expressed in a general way or in a Church Council.

• In other words, Protestants reject the Authority of the “Living Magisterium” (the pope and bishops of the current day) AS WELL AS the popes and bishops of each generation back to the Apostles – the collected writings, rulings, and theology of which are collectively called “Sacred Tradition” (Holy Tradition in the Orthodox Churches).
• For Catholics, Sacred Tradition serves much like English Common Law, something binding, yet itself slowly woven together over centuries, a built-up body of doctrine. It serves as a very strong support for the Living Magisterium, and when the Living Magisterium goes against it, as today with Pope Francis, there’s no mistaking were the heresy lies.

Protestantism, on the other hand, although individual denominations have certainly built up doctrine over the last 500 years, still claims to accept only the “Word of God,” the Holy Bible, as its real Authority. (They call Sacred Tradition "the works of men".) Each Protestant generation has to ask, “Show it to me in the Word of God!” as the old-time preachers would say.

• For Catholicism, however, the Bible forms the third branch of mutual support and teaching. Sacred Tradition is 2000 years of the Living Magisterium commenting on the Bible, yet both the Magisterium and the Tradition are older than the Bible itself.
• For example, when the Council of Jerusalem was held, as described in Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament had yet to be written. The Living Magisterium of the time decided an issue authoritatively – a black-and-white decision with no fudging or wordy misdirection as a modern Progressive would produce – and thus created a tradition of clear-cut and binding legislation, all done without recourse to a written Holy Scripture.
• Any review of Sacred Tradition shows no early Church Father taught the Protestant view of salvation; it is truly novel (or was as of 500 years ago).
• Summation: the history of Protestantism shows the dangers of rejecting clear dogmas and the Authority by which these are arrived. Today there are 20,000 some odd (depending on how they're counted) Protestant Denominations. Obviously, the Living Magisterium, Sacred Tradition, and Holy Scripture all three go together and cannot be separated, or only at great peril to the Church. Some modern theologians talk against strict adherence to such clear-cut, long-standing dogmas, calling it a “prepositional faith”, which they claim is Pharisaical: a legalistic religion rather than a religion of “love”. Pope Francis seems to be of that school. (He calls Traditionalists and Canon Lawyers and so on “Pharisees.” But a religion without dogma is a mushy thing enslaved to whatever social currents ripple though human society at any given time. It is "popular" precisely because it doesn’t direct vertically to God, but downward toward the whims of popular opinion. “Fundamentalist” Protestants have no more use for “mushiness” than Traditionalist Catholics do. Church "mushiness" is a mainline Protestant or Progressive Catholic platform: its adherents believe it make belief easier, whereas it easily makes belief impossible.

Protestant Authority

In contrast, accepting only the Bible as it does, Protestantism has thus tended to stress the authority of the individual. “Read the Bible for yourself” is its Authority Motto – though individual pastors can, if they have the right mix of charisma and chutzpah, dominate their flock more than any priest can do.

• Martin Luther himself wanted to be the sole interpreter of the Bible, even though he claimed anyone could interpret for himself. (That didn’t last very long! But the aura of it has stayed with Protestantism till today. For details, see Part III.) 
• Against the Church and all its “priestcraft”, Protestants like to invoke the Biblical passage (from 1 Timothy 3:15) that “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” 
• In other words, one doesn’t need a “church” per se to be saved. (Someone once said to G.K.Chesterton that the Irish were a “priest-ridden people”, to which G.K.C. immediately replied, “precisely because they do not want to be a Squire-ridden people.”)

Conversely, in the Catholic world, as noted above, the Holy Bible is one of three legs of support. Thus, today, the Catholic Church is in full crisis mode (I’d say about DefCon 3, and edging fast toward 2) because the current pope (and many of his supporters) are clearly presenting teachings – teachings popular in some quarters – that go against both the Bible and Sacred Tradition. However, tthey’re actually teaching “mainline Protestantism” and it is a natural development of the “Spirit of Vatican II to make the Church more Protestant-like; i.e., the program initiated 60 years ago is about to achieve what it was started for.

• This could eventually lead to a Schism as Traditionalist and “Conservative” Catholics “step back from the brink”, but two Catholic Churches would be better than what you have in Protestantism: the reliance on the Bible alone (i.e., Sola Scriptura) has resulted in 20,000 some different Protestant denominations.

• A fragmented state (Schism) that Catholics deplore, Protestants institutionalized.

For more info, see PART II Section II.

Magnum Principium and the Downfall of the Vatican II Church

(Subtitled: You are what you pray: lex orandi, lex credendi.)

Rejoice, Traditionalists! Rejoice oh ye seriously Conservative Magisterium Catholics!

A big (indeed, magnum) development has occurred that only a few see as important as it actually is. The new papal ruling on translations, Magunm Principium, will drive the rickety Vatican II Church over the cliff (for reasons detailed below), but most commentators of all stripes are discussing it as yet another twist in the long-running Vat2 soap opera known as the "Liturgy Wars".

• Well, lemme tell yez, if it is just another maneuver, it is the equivalent of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Some links: 
Here's the U.S. Magisterium house organ, the National Catholic Register on Francis' Magnum Principium.

For a Sort of mild Progressive-to-Leftist-Magisterium take on it, read John Allen of Crux. 

And Fr Z provides excellent comments on Magnum Principium from his "Long March Through the Institutions" War of Position Traditionalist Front here and here.

 

But we ought to be giving thanks to God for Pope Francis (as the writer Hilary White has often said) because Jorge Bergoglio, in his Pope Francis avatar, is pushing the Vatican II Church into the arms of its final destiny. Another JPII-type pope would have prolonged the agony we've been suffering since 1963. Not Francis, Argentine bull in the pansy flower shop that he is No way Jorge has put the Vatican II Church on the plank, and has just given it a shove with a cutlass in the back, pirate style.

Lex orandi, lex credendi.

"You are what you pray." What's made the Western Church the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church is the Latin language and the common liturgy of St. Gregory the Great (more or less, it having variations within bounds that organically developed through the long ages before radio and TV). In other words, the basic Latin liturgy has lasted for centuries, as did the language, and that produced one Church, a Church full if fantastic saints, doctors, and clergy and laity of all sorts.

In the West.

In the East, the chasms of belief and prayer opened early on between those who prayed in Greek and those who prayed in Syriac (Christian Aramaic) and those who prayed in Coptic. Long before the 1054 A.D. split between Rome and Constantinople, the Syrians broke off from the Greeks, and the Copts from both. Obtuse theological questions were in play, of course, but the language differences were fatal.

Thus it was the the actual documents of Vatican II didn't call for the exclusion of Latin, just more use of the vernacular here and there. For to vote for a totally vernacular Church was to vote for extinction. History is filled with important examples. Only a fool or a Progressive who never bothers to ask, "Where will it all lead? What's the end game?" would run off blindly downfield clutching the vernacular ball insanely tight.

Dividing the Latin-Rite Church up into vernaculars could only lead to separate (but equal? Riiigght!) Churches.

What Magnum Principium Does

It's the exact equivalent of the Anglicans tossing out their old Common Prayer Book. That decision split the "You are what you pray" principle. It severed the main connecting link between all the myriad types of Anglican Churches, and the "low", "high", and "broad" laity within each church.

Anglicanism has been disintegrating ever since. It's in a death spiral.

The Pope's new fatwa does exactly the same, in slow motion. ("Motu proprio" is the Latin, but "Fatwa" as a certain Semitic charm.) Magnum allows bishops' conferences to decide on translation matters, (i.e., all worship services, etc., in Latin translated being into the local lingo), with only a final review by the formerly powerful Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, headed by Cardinal Sarah.

• But the good Cardinal has long been reduced to a figurehead; now his entire congregation is essentially a rubber stamp. (Were it to be staffed by clerical heroes, Bergoglio would see that it was quickly un-staffed of those types and restaffed by his sort of "Si, si!" yes-men. (Actually, it was El Bergo who appointed Cardinal Sarah to the Congregation in late 2014.)
• This is a change from formerly, when JPII and especially B16 worked to make the decisions centered under the watchful eye of a Vat2 conservative in the Vatican hierarchy. These popes did so precisely because the liturgical chaos of the 1960s and the dull, tawdry, oh-so-mundane Novus Ordu Mass was ripping the guts out of Catholicism. Had Albino Luciani lasted very long in the papacy, there might not be a Catholic Church today (oh, there's always a remnant, of course; we'd all probably be in the SSPX today).
• Now, that Congregation of Cardinal Sarah's can approve of a new translation, or not; if not, however, can they issues detailed suggestions as they did before? We'll find out.

 The Misuse of Synods and Those Awful National Bishop Conferences.

• It's death to the Vatican II Church because lex orandi, lex credendi. Always.
• In ten years the various national churches in the West, (the Germans, the French, the English, and so on) will have quite different liturgies. In this, they'll mirror what's happened to the Anglicans.

In a quarter of a century, we'll have separate national Churches, just like the Orthodox have had for some time now They have 14 separate autocephalous "self-ruling" Churches, and Westerners will be getting along no better with each other than the Orthodox do: (Excerpt from link: Four Patriarchates, which encompass the numerical majority of the Orthodox population worldwide, have refused to attend and acknowledge their previous agreement on the date and place of the Council.)

• (As for myself, I used to think this would take a century to fully mature, these separate "national" churches, or at least a half century; but I think so no longer)
• For the Historical Church, the Catholic Church in the West and the various Orthodox in the East, not to mention the Copts in the South, how one prays is what one is, lex orandi, lex credendi: we're defined by our prayers, especially the most important prayer, the Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist, which ontologically makes Our Lord Christ literally present. "Cult" makes Culture. A culture founded on the cult of Ba'al is going to be quite different from one founded on the worship of YHWH, obviously enough. (Oh, wait, in the U.S. some 45 million babies have been aborted since about ten years after Vat2 ended. So maybe old Ba'al is still worshiped after all?)
  
• This fact about worship highlights the problem with the "Spirit of Vatican II worship: it was established in the "Me" decade, and worship of self is quite evident in how the Novus Ordu Mass "works". Think about it. None of the following, for example, were mandated by the actual Vatican II documents: a total replacement of the Latin for the vernacular; priest facing the people, not God or His altar; everyone speaking in rote, lamely worded prayers, all orchestrated, managed, and directed by their orchestra conductor, the "presider"; the goofy handshake, the smarmy songs, in the insipid "You're OK, I'm OK" homilies; even the soft, pastel colors and removal of the altar rail and receiving the Most Precious Body and Blood of God Himself in the hand, given by some "extraordinary minister! – in fact, it is much like taking (or giving) a tip. About as sacred as passing out gum.

Bottom Line

Fact is, the various language-family churches currently making up the One, Holy Catholic Apostolic Church have had a growing number of differences since Vatican II, all implemented primarily by the Mass being in the many vernaculars in the first place.

• And that is Protestant, the very essence of Protestantism. 
• For the first thing the 16th century Protestant revolutionaries did was to translate the Mass into the local vernacular and turn the priest around to face the people
• The next thing was to abolish the Mass and the priesthood, and have ministers of various sorts.

Many, many people have noticed and commented on how "Protestant" the Vatican II Church seems to be. Well, that was a feature, not a bug. Ad THE Bug, that "Grace of Ba'al", Hannibal Bugnini himself, said,

• “We must strip from our Catholic prayers and our Catholic liturgies everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethern, that is, Protestants."
   L’Osseratore Romano, 19 March 1965, quoted in Michael Davies 

So what was set in motion 60 years ago has a new champion, Pope Francis. His Magnum will explode those trends now, moving up the timetable, and you'll see the Francophone Catholics being in horror of the Germans, the Anglos fighting among themselves for which English version should dominate (if any one version should dominate at all), and the same with the Latins.

Already the "Roman Catholic" Church is fragmenting! The Germans basically were threatening B16 with going into Schism "back in the day". Were somehow an actual Trad Catholic to become pope tomorrow, the Germans would go into Schism the day after.

And each N.O. parish will be "celebrating liturgy" even more differently than now. Traveling Catholics have a good bit of homework to do to find a parish that worships in a way they're used to.

• But of course it is important to point out that many N.O. parishes might go the other way, offer more TLMs just to bring some sanity to their worship...
• Many might turn the priest around to face God and His Altar (at last! It only took 60 years to figure that one)
• But most of all, the Trad Catholics, clinging to and worshiping the TLM, will be the ONLY Catholics left in 50 years. As I noted at OnePeterFive, the rest will be grunge rock bands.

P.S. One Commentator Got It Right

I'm sure more than one did, but the one I read was commenting on a Fr. Z column. "Austen" wrote

Austin says:

9 September 2017 at 10:14 AM

Putting the vitally important liturgical questions aside for a minute, the decentralisation that Father notes is a clear and present danger.

I am a former Anglican. Having no central authority, our communion was ripped apart by rogue provinces (led by the Americans) which unilaterally changed liturgical norms, then discipline, and then doctrine. The weight of having one rich and powerful progressive province distorted the whole communion and pulled it in a revisionist direction until the tension grew too great and the communion was ripped apart.

It is clear that the Germans wish to resume their role, assumed at the Council, of being the Church’s progressive pressure bloc. If they persist, other like-minded conferences, in Latin America particularly, will join them. The US church will be horribly divided. There may be international schism.

Pope Francis is on record as saying that he may go down in history as the one who divided the church. Given his admiration for Luther, and the force of his policies, it appears that this is an ambition rather than an unfortunate corollary of his pontificate.

We are seeing an unprecedented crisis in the life of the Church. When the guarantor of orthodoxy and unity becomes an agent of dubious opinion and division, the whole edifice of the Church Militant is put at risk.

Spot on, Austen! He has a great understanding of what's happening to Anglicanism, and that's been beautifully written up by Fr. Ed Tomlinson. (Highly recommended.)  What's happening to the Catholic Church now has already devastated the Anglican Communion, as detailed here. Some points to consider:

1. Synodal government – or for Catholics, these "National Bishop Conferences" – are deadly to the Church. Church councils have met since the First Jerusalem Council, as detailed in the Acts of the Apostle. But such councils rarely meet, and they meet to decide some specific issue. Or they should. You can't govern by them. The U.S. has one president and other countries have a P.M. The chief executive. Yes, Countries had congresses and parliaments, but the general governing is done by one person, a person whom is held responsible for what happens, like the captain of a ship (same principle there, too). 
2. Bishops govern their local churches and the pope governs the bishops. Groups of bishops hiding behind a bureaucracy (i.e., national bishop conferences) are just a way to "pass the buck". For example, Paul VI called a council to ratify the new Mass, but they rejected it (that is, while a sizeable chunk of them voted to OK it, a majority voted against it, although they were divided into two groups: one wanting to reject it out right and one will to accept it only if changes were made. (They weren't.) Paul6 ignored it all (well, except to burst into tears, but he was always doing that).
3. Fr. Ed Tomlinson writes (my emphasis), "synodical governance ... led to a radical politicisation of the Church of England. With everything suddenly up for grabs, by virtue of majority vote, the factions no longer pulled together in unity but began to plot and lobby against each other. General Synod became a battleground on which theological opponents could be put to the sword. And it didn’t take long for the liberal lobby, strengthened by trends in society and over-represented on the bench of bishops, to realise synod worked in their favour."
4. Synods or Bishop Conferences are mere power blocks where, behind the scenes, battles rage.
5. We can see from the two "Synods on the Family" how Bergoglio and his associates, the "powers that be", cynically used the assembled bishops to press his own agenda. 
6. Conclusion: they should be reject...
7. ...And to the extent they're not rejected, the Church will just succumb more and more to the "politics" of it all.

 For what it's worth, this is my take on El Bergo's Magnum Principium.

Just remember: God is in charge, and doing "His thing" in His own way and in His own good time.

Amen to that!

An Préachán