Let the Children Come ...
I don't hate Protestants - I just think they're really inconsistent and (unwittingly) dishonest with themselves.
I am currently in the midst of a debate with a Protestant on a Catholic email list (click to join BattleActs) over the issue of what happens to infants who die - do they go to heaven or hell or somewhere in-between?
My God, I hope they go to heaven (although, by the end of this post, you will most certainly have forgotten that I just said that). I hope He has mercy on all of them.
But I'm not going to say that it is so, just because I hope it is. I try to accept the truth when it shows itself, and not let my humanistic ideas get in the way of what I think "must be" true, or "should be" true, just because I can't imagine anything different.
And the truth of this particular issue is rather chilling and hard to accept.
All human beings are born with the stain of original sin. St. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we were all, by nature, "children of wrath."
That's what nature gives us; that's what natural birth bestows on us. Which is precisely why Our Lord said that the natural birth was not enough, and that we had to be "born again," only this time, born "of water and the Holy Ghost."
For those who aren't totally anti-Catholic, you can see that being born "of water and the Holy Ghost" means baptism - and if that isn't clear to you, then read the rest of John 3, and ask yourself why, right after this discussion with Nicodemus, St. John records that Our Lord went out and baptized. Coincidence? Hardly.
For whatever bizarre reason, God has chosen to communicate the grace of salvation by means of baptism; it's all over in Scripture. St. Peter tells the crowd to "be baptized for the remission of your sins" (Acts 2:28); St. Paul is told to "be baptized and wash away your sins" (Acts 22:16); St. Peter writes that "baptism now saves you" (1 Pet. 3:21). It doesn't get much clearer than this, and frankly, this is one of the inconsistencies of Protestantism that bothers me: plain texts like these are explained away by means of all sorts of tortured exegetical gymnastics, yet I've seen Protestant theological structures built on verses far, far less clear than these.
Now, if all men contract original sin, with no respect for age, culture, race, finance, etc., then there is no other conclusion than to say that the remedy for original sin is the same for all men as well: baptism.
Original Sin doesn't care how old you are; why would God?
The very fact that even infants need the healing remedy of baptism should be enough for any sane person to say, "then by God, don't withhold baptism from the babies!"
Some people are stubborn, though.
So consider this: St. Peter says that the promise of forgiveness via baptism is also "for your children" (Acts 2:39); St. Paul says that baptism is the new and improved version of circumcision (Col. 2:10ff) - and circumcision was certainly not withheld from infants; Our Lord Himself says that we are not to hinder the little children from coming to Him.
So why, why, why do I get accused of being "sick" and cold-hearted for saying that infants who die apart from baptism (probably) do not go to heaven? I'm not the one withholding from them the only remedy they have! I say baptize them immediately, but you, Mr. Protestant, say they have to wait until they're old enough to have faith - who's sick and cruel here?
Herein lies the several inconsistencies.
Protestants say we're saved by faith; but also that you have to be old enough to comprehend what "faith" is; infants "can't" have faith, so they shouldn't be baptized. In fact, some denominations (the one I grew up in, for example) will not recognize an infant baptism as valid, and will re-baptize you if you want to join their church (forget that St. Paul said in Eph. 4:5 that there is only "one baptism").
So basically, God is at the mercy of human Reason. If I'm not old enough to understand the gospel, I can't be saved, and I can't be baptized.
This is rather an elitist religion, I say - salvation by intellect, eh? Only the smart survive? Darwin, anyone?
And whatever happened to the Protestant maxim that salvation is free and not dependent on anything Man does? Sounds to me like it is quite dependent: it's dependent on my age and my ability to develop mentally. If I'm born with a brain defect, as many people are, and at 35 I still only have the brain capacity of a 3-year-old, what then? Are the mentally retarded damned as well, because they cannot understand the Gospel and exercise an "informed" faith?
Not in my religion, they're not. Salvation is by grace, grace is free, and baptism is one of seven direct conductors of that grace - come and receive it, whether you're 2 weeks old or 80 years old, whether you're a PhD or dumb as a box of rocks, whether you're rich or poor - it's free!
Ironic, isn't it? Protestants are always trumpeting their "free" gospel of grace and contrasting it with Catholicism, in which you have to "work" for heaven - not on this issue, my friend. The grace of baptism is not dependent on anything; not even on the "choice" of the infant.
Still, I was accused of being a monster for suggesting that God takes sin seriously, and that non-baptized infants don't go to heaven.
What, does He make exceptions for them? I certainly see nothing of the sort in Scripture.
If He makes exceptions for them, He must make exceptions for the mentally retarded, too. And if exceptions are made there ... well, where does it stop? I suppose pagans all go to heaven too, because they didn't know any better about the Gospel (and this argument is founded on the question of Reason and Intellect)?
So some suggest that infants are not born with original sin, just a sin "nature" that will cause them to commit personal sin later in life - and it's that personal sin that sends them to hell.
In which case, this means that infants are born pure and holy, and Natural birth is sufficient to get you into heaven, provided you die before the age of reason. Grace is not necessary.
By the way, these are the same people who will then turn around and vehemently reject the Immaculate Conception, little realizing that they've just proposed a doctrine that is somewhat like saying the Entire World is Immaculately Conceived.
Well, call me cruel, but ... I understood that this life has only one purpose: it's a temporary habitation on our way through to Heaven - I'm just a-passin' through and all that. This life is worthless when compared to eternal life in glory. So ... if all infants go to heaven when they die ... I say kill them all. Abortion is a great, great blessing, not a curse. We're sparing these poor souls the risk of someday committing personal sin and possibly ruining their otherwise-pure souls - that should be seen as a work of mercy!
Think about it! Since 1973, we in America have sent over 40 million souls straight to heaven! That's a good thing! So abort them all, do them a favor - sure, you'll have to let one or two of them live just to keep the species surviving, but that's all you need. Two kids, maybe three, then abort the rest and send them to heaven.
Actually ... that kinda sounds a lot like what our society looks like right now, doesn't it? Maybe the rise in abortions is an indication of what society believes about infants and heaven - because I guarantee you 99% of society believes all infants go to heaven. Corrupt faith breeds corrupt morals.
But what if society had to face the awful truth? That the true horror of abortion is that millions and millions of souls are not only being deprived of natural life, but also of the beatific vision? How fast would we rise up as one man and demand that abortion be outlawed?! Folks, there's a reason why abortion is so satanic, so diabolical: and it's not because Satan is interested in immediately sending millions of souls straight to glory.
I know, it's an awful thought. But what is even more awful, to me, is the plague of intellectual blindness that has robbed this society of the truth: baptism is the remedy, and it must not be withheld from our infants.
You say I'm cruel because I consign infant souls to hell? I say you're cruel for withholding from them the cure, insisting that they arrive at intellectual readiness first.
A final aside: when I say infants go to "hell," I mean what the Church has always meant by that. Hell has levels, and the damned suffer various degrees of punishment for their crimes; Hitler is going to suffer a lot worse than your neighbor lady who was basically moral, but wasn't a Christian.
Well, infants have committed no personal sin, so they have nothing to suffer for. They have no fire to endure. The only punishment they receive is that they are deprived of the vision of God - that's the pain of loss, not the pain of tortures.
The Fathers called this level of hell the "limbus," or "limbo" - it means "border." Infants are in hell, technically, but if you think of hell as a city, then they're on the outermost border, as far away from the city as possible. Limbo is a place of natural happiness - not supernatural, but at least natural.
So please, don't think I'm saying that all these babies are burning in torment. They're not, they're just not able to see God's face - and that's horrible enough.
I can appreciate how difficult this opinion is to swallow. What comfort is there for a mother who's aborted her baby? Folks ... that's the reality of sin. It does have consequences, long-lasting and far-reaching - that's why God insists that we stop sinning.
What about mothers who lose their babies in an accident? These things happen - get them baptized before you have to face that problem. I know a woman who lost her baby at about 9 months old ... it was horrible and gut-wrenching, but at the same time, I wanted to scream, why didn't you have your baby baptized?! She was a Protestant - that's why. Think it doesn't matter what religion you belong to? Here's one concrete example of how a wrong choice in a matter of faith leads to a tragic eternal loss of life.
It does matter. It matters a lot.
Lest you think me unusually harsh and cold, let me say a few final words of a more personal nature.
I only know what has been revealed for certain. And three things have been clearly revealed: 1) all men are conceived in original sin, 2) baptism is the only way to get rid of it, and 3) original sin is certainly enough to send you to hell.
It's hard to add 2 + 2 and not get 4 here.
What has not been revealed is something I can only speculate about (see Dt. 29:29) - but I can certainly hope and pray. I hope that God will have mercy on these souls anyway - I hope He has some secret backup plan that I don't know about. And I pray for those souls.
Why? Because I have a vested interest. You may think I'm talking about these things purely in an abstract way, but I'm not: my wife lost a baby in a miscarriage. Our first baby. Only 5-6 weeks old. Enoch David never got a chance to receive baptism, and that was nobody's fault. Not his, not my wife's, not mine. He wasn't the victim of our cruel choice to abort; he wasn't a victim of our stupid choice to delay baptism.
We named him (we assume it was a "him") Enoch David because, like Enoch in the OT, he was suddenly "no more, for the Lord took him," and like David, we experienced the pain of losing a child.
So what do I do now? Do I change my beliefs because it suits me? No. I entrust my baby's soul to the intercession of St. Enoch and St. David, I hope that God has mercy on his soul, and I pray very much that I will see him someday in heaven. What I will not do is lie and say, "well, of course he went to heaven, he was just a baby." I suspect he's in Limbo, enjoying natural happiness with no pain; that's a small comfort. But I'll keep praying that God has mercy on him.
All of this to say "let's get serious." Salvation is not a game; sin is not a fiction; hell is real, and potentially only a few moments away.
So let's treat this with the solemnity it deserves; let's quit delaying baptism for our kids; and let's pray with every ounce of strength we can muster that God will finally put an end to this holocaust of abortion, TODAY, RIGHT NOW. We've sacrificed our children to Satan for too long already ...
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us and for the souls of the unborn.
I am currently in the midst of a debate with a Protestant on a Catholic email list (click to join BattleActs) over the issue of what happens to infants who die - do they go to heaven or hell or somewhere in-between?
My God, I hope they go to heaven (although, by the end of this post, you will most certainly have forgotten that I just said that). I hope He has mercy on all of them.
But I'm not going to say that it is so, just because I hope it is. I try to accept the truth when it shows itself, and not let my humanistic ideas get in the way of what I think "must be" true, or "should be" true, just because I can't imagine anything different.
And the truth of this particular issue is rather chilling and hard to accept.
All human beings are born with the stain of original sin. St. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we were all, by nature, "children of wrath."
That's what nature gives us; that's what natural birth bestows on us. Which is precisely why Our Lord said that the natural birth was not enough, and that we had to be "born again," only this time, born "of water and the Holy Ghost."
For those who aren't totally anti-Catholic, you can see that being born "of water and the Holy Ghost" means baptism - and if that isn't clear to you, then read the rest of John 3, and ask yourself why, right after this discussion with Nicodemus, St. John records that Our Lord went out and baptized. Coincidence? Hardly.
For whatever bizarre reason, God has chosen to communicate the grace of salvation by means of baptism; it's all over in Scripture. St. Peter tells the crowd to "be baptized for the remission of your sins" (Acts 2:28); St. Paul is told to "be baptized and wash away your sins" (Acts 22:16); St. Peter writes that "baptism now saves you" (1 Pet. 3:21). It doesn't get much clearer than this, and frankly, this is one of the inconsistencies of Protestantism that bothers me: plain texts like these are explained away by means of all sorts of tortured exegetical gymnastics, yet I've seen Protestant theological structures built on verses far, far less clear than these.
Now, if all men contract original sin, with no respect for age, culture, race, finance, etc., then there is no other conclusion than to say that the remedy for original sin is the same for all men as well: baptism.
Original Sin doesn't care how old you are; why would God?
The very fact that even infants need the healing remedy of baptism should be enough for any sane person to say, "then by God, don't withhold baptism from the babies!"
Some people are stubborn, though.
So consider this: St. Peter says that the promise of forgiveness via baptism is also "for your children" (Acts 2:39); St. Paul says that baptism is the new and improved version of circumcision (Col. 2:10ff) - and circumcision was certainly not withheld from infants; Our Lord Himself says that we are not to hinder the little children from coming to Him.
So why, why, why do I get accused of being "sick" and cold-hearted for saying that infants who die apart from baptism (probably) do not go to heaven? I'm not the one withholding from them the only remedy they have! I say baptize them immediately, but you, Mr. Protestant, say they have to wait until they're old enough to have faith - who's sick and cruel here?
Herein lies the several inconsistencies.
Protestants say we're saved by faith; but also that you have to be old enough to comprehend what "faith" is; infants "can't" have faith, so they shouldn't be baptized. In fact, some denominations (the one I grew up in, for example) will not recognize an infant baptism as valid, and will re-baptize you if you want to join their church (forget that St. Paul said in Eph. 4:5 that there is only "one baptism").
So basically, God is at the mercy of human Reason. If I'm not old enough to understand the gospel, I can't be saved, and I can't be baptized.
This is rather an elitist religion, I say - salvation by intellect, eh? Only the smart survive? Darwin, anyone?
And whatever happened to the Protestant maxim that salvation is free and not dependent on anything Man does? Sounds to me like it is quite dependent: it's dependent on my age and my ability to develop mentally. If I'm born with a brain defect, as many people are, and at 35 I still only have the brain capacity of a 3-year-old, what then? Are the mentally retarded damned as well, because they cannot understand the Gospel and exercise an "informed" faith?
Not in my religion, they're not. Salvation is by grace, grace is free, and baptism is one of seven direct conductors of that grace - come and receive it, whether you're 2 weeks old or 80 years old, whether you're a PhD or dumb as a box of rocks, whether you're rich or poor - it's free!
Ironic, isn't it? Protestants are always trumpeting their "free" gospel of grace and contrasting it with Catholicism, in which you have to "work" for heaven - not on this issue, my friend. The grace of baptism is not dependent on anything; not even on the "choice" of the infant.
Still, I was accused of being a monster for suggesting that God takes sin seriously, and that non-baptized infants don't go to heaven.
What, does He make exceptions for them? I certainly see nothing of the sort in Scripture.
If He makes exceptions for them, He must make exceptions for the mentally retarded, too. And if exceptions are made there ... well, where does it stop? I suppose pagans all go to heaven too, because they didn't know any better about the Gospel (and this argument is founded on the question of Reason and Intellect)?
So some suggest that infants are not born with original sin, just a sin "nature" that will cause them to commit personal sin later in life - and it's that personal sin that sends them to hell.
In which case, this means that infants are born pure and holy, and Natural birth is sufficient to get you into heaven, provided you die before the age of reason. Grace is not necessary.
By the way, these are the same people who will then turn around and vehemently reject the Immaculate Conception, little realizing that they've just proposed a doctrine that is somewhat like saying the Entire World is Immaculately Conceived.
Well, call me cruel, but ... I understood that this life has only one purpose: it's a temporary habitation on our way through to Heaven - I'm just a-passin' through and all that. This life is worthless when compared to eternal life in glory. So ... if all infants go to heaven when they die ... I say kill them all. Abortion is a great, great blessing, not a curse. We're sparing these poor souls the risk of someday committing personal sin and possibly ruining their otherwise-pure souls - that should be seen as a work of mercy!
Think about it! Since 1973, we in America have sent over 40 million souls straight to heaven! That's a good thing! So abort them all, do them a favor - sure, you'll have to let one or two of them live just to keep the species surviving, but that's all you need. Two kids, maybe three, then abort the rest and send them to heaven.
Actually ... that kinda sounds a lot like what our society looks like right now, doesn't it? Maybe the rise in abortions is an indication of what society believes about infants and heaven - because I guarantee you 99% of society believes all infants go to heaven. Corrupt faith breeds corrupt morals.
But what if society had to face the awful truth? That the true horror of abortion is that millions and millions of souls are not only being deprived of natural life, but also of the beatific vision? How fast would we rise up as one man and demand that abortion be outlawed?! Folks, there's a reason why abortion is so satanic, so diabolical: and it's not because Satan is interested in immediately sending millions of souls straight to glory.
I know, it's an awful thought. But what is even more awful, to me, is the plague of intellectual blindness that has robbed this society of the truth: baptism is the remedy, and it must not be withheld from our infants.
You say I'm cruel because I consign infant souls to hell? I say you're cruel for withholding from them the cure, insisting that they arrive at intellectual readiness first.
A final aside: when I say infants go to "hell," I mean what the Church has always meant by that. Hell has levels, and the damned suffer various degrees of punishment for their crimes; Hitler is going to suffer a lot worse than your neighbor lady who was basically moral, but wasn't a Christian.
Well, infants have committed no personal sin, so they have nothing to suffer for. They have no fire to endure. The only punishment they receive is that they are deprived of the vision of God - that's the pain of loss, not the pain of tortures.
The Fathers called this level of hell the "limbus," or "limbo" - it means "border." Infants are in hell, technically, but if you think of hell as a city, then they're on the outermost border, as far away from the city as possible. Limbo is a place of natural happiness - not supernatural, but at least natural.
So please, don't think I'm saying that all these babies are burning in torment. They're not, they're just not able to see God's face - and that's horrible enough.
I can appreciate how difficult this opinion is to swallow. What comfort is there for a mother who's aborted her baby? Folks ... that's the reality of sin. It does have consequences, long-lasting and far-reaching - that's why God insists that we stop sinning.
What about mothers who lose their babies in an accident? These things happen - get them baptized before you have to face that problem. I know a woman who lost her baby at about 9 months old ... it was horrible and gut-wrenching, but at the same time, I wanted to scream, why didn't you have your baby baptized?! She was a Protestant - that's why. Think it doesn't matter what religion you belong to? Here's one concrete example of how a wrong choice in a matter of faith leads to a tragic eternal loss of life.
It does matter. It matters a lot.
Lest you think me unusually harsh and cold, let me say a few final words of a more personal nature.
I only know what has been revealed for certain. And three things have been clearly revealed: 1) all men are conceived in original sin, 2) baptism is the only way to get rid of it, and 3) original sin is certainly enough to send you to hell.
It's hard to add 2 + 2 and not get 4 here.
What has not been revealed is something I can only speculate about (see Dt. 29:29) - but I can certainly hope and pray. I hope that God will have mercy on these souls anyway - I hope He has some secret backup plan that I don't know about. And I pray for those souls.
Why? Because I have a vested interest. You may think I'm talking about these things purely in an abstract way, but I'm not: my wife lost a baby in a miscarriage. Our first baby. Only 5-6 weeks old. Enoch David never got a chance to receive baptism, and that was nobody's fault. Not his, not my wife's, not mine. He wasn't the victim of our cruel choice to abort; he wasn't a victim of our stupid choice to delay baptism.
We named him (we assume it was a "him") Enoch David because, like Enoch in the OT, he was suddenly "no more, for the Lord took him," and like David, we experienced the pain of losing a child.
So what do I do now? Do I change my beliefs because it suits me? No. I entrust my baby's soul to the intercession of St. Enoch and St. David, I hope that God has mercy on his soul, and I pray very much that I will see him someday in heaven. What I will not do is lie and say, "well, of course he went to heaven, he was just a baby." I suspect he's in Limbo, enjoying natural happiness with no pain; that's a small comfort. But I'll keep praying that God has mercy on him.
All of this to say "let's get serious." Salvation is not a game; sin is not a fiction; hell is real, and potentially only a few moments away.
So let's treat this with the solemnity it deserves; let's quit delaying baptism for our kids; and let's pray with every ounce of strength we can muster that God will finally put an end to this holocaust of abortion, TODAY, RIGHT NOW. We've sacrificed our children to Satan for too long already ...
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us and for the souls of the unborn.
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