Baptism
A Discussion of the Doctrines of Baptism of Water, Blood and Desire
This matter is discussed under justification in the Council of Trent. Trent was responding to the various heretical notions of the Protestants in regard to justification. Today the Vatican II Pog Church acts as if all one must do to be justified and go to heaven is to be born. They act as if heaven is our right, and we must earn hell by very evil deeds. Catholics know that heaven is earned by keeping the Commandments of God.
Some Traditionalist heretics overreact to the heresy of universal salvation of the Pog Church. They have declared that unless a person is baptized with water, he will most certainly go to Hell. However, this is not what the Catholic Church has taught throughout the last two millenia. They have misinterpreted the doctrine outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.
Trent teaches that one can be justified through a desire for Baptism.
Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 4: In these words a description of the justification of a sinner is given as being a translation from that state in which man is born a child of the first Adam to the state of grace and of the “adoption of sons” (Romans 8:15) of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Saviour; and this translation after the promulgation of the Gospel cannot be effected except through the laver of regeneration (canon 5 Session 5), or a desire for it, as it is written: “ Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5)
One would think this would be sufficient to settle the case, for this is from a General Council of the Church approved by the Pope and therefore infallible. The first argument against this is that only the Canons from Councils are considred infallible, not the accompanying consideratiosn which lead up to the Canon. More modern heretics attempt to retranslate this paragraph to omit the desire for Baptism. However, the translation is clear and in keeping with the constant teaching of the Church throughout the centuries.
Let us look at a decision by Pope Innocent II in a letter to the Bishop of Cremona (DZ 388, which refers to Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum): To your inquiry we respond thus: We assert without hesitation (on authority of the holy Fathers Augustine and Ambrose) that the priest (a Jewish priest, not Catholic priest, I think) whom you indicated (in your letter) had died without the water of baptism, because he persevered in the faith of holy mother the Church and in the confession of the name of Christ, was freed from original sin and attained the joy of the heavenly fatherland. Read (brother) in the eighth book of Augustine’s ‘City of God’ where among other things it is written, “Baptism is administered invisibly to one whom not contempt of religion but death excludes.” Read again the book also of the blessed Ambrose concerning the death of Valentinian (to which Saint Thomas Aquinas also refers (III, Q68 A2) where he says the same thing. Therefore, to questions concerning the dead, you should hold the opinions of the learned Fathers, and in your church you should join in prayers and you should have sacrifices offered to God for the priest mentioned.
Official Declarations of the Church
Heresy Condemned by Pope Alexander VIII (DZ 1295): Pagans, Jews, heretics, and others of this kind do not receive in any way any influence from Jesus Christ, and so you will rightly infer from this that in them there is a bade and weak will without any sufficient grace. (Note this is an error of the Jansenists.)
Heresy condemned by Pope Clement XI (DZ 1379): Outside of the Church, no grace is granted.
Doctors of the Church and Saints
Saints Baptized in Their Own Blood
The Good Thief is a perfect example of Baptism of Desire, or as some hold, Baptism by Blood.
Objections to the Doctrine of Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood Considered
