So, what of these babies? Can we hope that they're in God's loving embrace? If so, how de we square that with the Church's perennial teaching in the necessity of baptism for salvation?
In class, there are a few things that I try to emphasize:
- First, baptism is absolutely necessary. Jesus was explicit, and it is the perennial teaching of the Church. Like with other hard teachings-- the real presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, the indissolubility of Holy Matrimony-- the Church cannot but be faithful to Christ's words.
- Second, however, I believe in a merciful God, whose very nature is love. Therefore, I'm at peace about my own six children who've died before birth. I entrust them to His providential care.
- Third, while we may not know precisely what God has in mind for these children because Christ didn't tell us, we are permitted to hope that there is a way to salvation for them.
The reason that I feel confident stating the third point in class is because it's explicitly endorsed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1261 (my emphasis):
"As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: 'Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,' allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism."
This is enough to bring peace to many students' minds. Yet the reason that some of my more traditionally-minded students struggle with it is because they've been taught that unbaptized children are deprived of the Beatific Vision, and that they reside in a "Limbo of the Children."
Isn't this what the Church teaches? they ask.
Actually, the Church has never explicitly had a doctrine of limbo. In fact, during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, the International Theological Commission published a document clarifying that this is the case and going so far as to state that limbo "has no clear foundation in revelation, even though it has long been used in traditional theological teaching."
As the ITC document reviews, St. Augustine was one of the first to wrestle seriously with the question of what happens to children who die without the benefit of baptism, in light of Christ's hard words about its necessity. Augustine's response was that due to original sin these children would be condemned to hell, though they would receive only the "mildest condemnation" since they had committed no personal sin of their own.
Hard words from Augustine, but what is their context? It had to do with the fact that the heretic Pelagius, to whom Augustine was responding, had been teaching that babies who died without baptism would be saved. Augustine tended strongly in the other direction because he was rejecting the Pelagian teaching. Interestingly, although many other theologians adopted Augustine's extreme wording, the subsequent Council of Carthage, in condemning Pelagius and affirming the necessity of baptism, did not go so far as explicitly to say that unbaptized children would receive any sort of punishment, even mild punishment. Subsequently, the ITC document traces how this led to theologians speculating, more mildly than Augustine did, of a "Limbo of Children," whose only "punishment" was their being deprived of the Beatific Vision.
What is clear is that there are two extremes positions, both of which are illegitimate:
- First, stating that unbaptized children are condemned to hell. St. Augustine may have stated it, but the Church has never taught it.
- Second, stating that unbaptized children are saved. The heretic Pelagius may have stated it, and many erroneously seem to think that the Church now teaches it, but the Church has never taught that either.
Within those two extremes, however, we find on legitimate footing both the theory of limbo and the hope that God has a way, albeit unknown to us, for unbaptized children to be saved. The ITC document states that the issue of children dying without the benefit of baptism has taken on new "pastoral urgency," and that this has led to a new examination of the issue. Both the ITC document and the CCC privilege the legitimate position that we can hope that God has a way for unbaptized children to be saved. That's why I privilege this position when my students press me on the issue in class.
How do I make sense of it, theologically? I militate against the notion that God would create immortal human souls, endowed with the powers of the intellect and will, that is, the ability to choose the Good, only to deny them the opportunity of ever making that choice and enjoying perpetually God's own presence. Augustine's own most famous phrase, from the beginning of the Confessions, is that our souls are restless until they rest in God. Honestly, my thought has always been that this would be a cruel irony indeed, something utterly alien to God's own nature.
Let me go out on a limb for a moment, more so than I would in a high school religion class (since it's merely my opinion). Already in the time of Augustine, two substitutes to the baptism of water had been carved out-- baptism of blood (that of martyrs who died in Christ's name) and baptism of desire (the baptism of those who desired baptism explicitly or implicitly but hadn't yet been able to avail themselves of the sacrament). My own theological instinct places the hope that we are permitted to have that unbaptized babies are saved under the category of an implicit baptism of desire.
Like other virtuous pagans and Old Testament figures who would have chosen Christ if only He had been proclaimed to them, so too, these babies, had they lived long enough to choose Christ, could also have done so. I imagine them as immortal souls standing before the Judgement Seat of the Lord, making the same choice that we all do in choosing baptism, or that the virtuous pagans did when Christ harrowed hell. Do we know that they would have chosen Christ? Certainly not, hence Pelagius' error. But could they have? Can we hope that they would have? It's clear that the answer is 'yes.'
