Posted: May 22, 2015 7:48 pm
ScholasticSpastic wrote:Oh, I may have misunderstood this bit. Glad to see that they get to pretend their unbaptized babies are in heaven rather than hell, though. Well, sort of glad. It probably would have helped underscore how bloody awful their god is if the babies were simply sent directly to hell.
They only might be in heaven. Here is the official position of The Mother Church:
Our conclusion is that the many factors that we have considered above give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved and enjoy the Beatific Vision. We emphasise that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge. There is much that simply has not been revealed to us (cf. Jn 16:12). We live by faith and hope in the God of mercy and love who has been revealed to us in Christ, and the Spirit moves us to pray in constant thankfulness and joy (cf. 1 Thess 5:18).
What has been revealed to us is that the ordinary way of salvation is by the sacrament of Baptism. None of the above considerations should be taken as qualifying the necessity of Baptism or justifying delay in administering the sacrament.[135] Rather, as we want to reaffirm in conclusion, they provide strong grounds for hope that God will save infants when we have not been able to do for them what we would have wished to do, namely, to baptize them into the faith and life of the Church.
As I read that, what it effectively says is: If we go by the rules as God has revealed them, unbaptized infants go straight to hell. But that would be a real asshole move, wouldn't it? Since God presumably does not want to be seen as an asshole, he will surely find some loophole to spare the infants eternal torture. At least, we hope so."