The Angelus English-Language Article Reprint

Let your speech be “Yes, yes: no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37)

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March 2009

Reprint #85

The State of
Necessity
Part II

Bishop Rifan’s
Incoherent Reading
Confusion between Two Errors
For Bishop Rifan, “there is no real contradiction
between what Blessed Pius IX taught and what
Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration on Religious
Freedom, teaches.”1 According to him, Pius IX
condemned religious liberty understood as the
absence of a moral obligation for the individual
conscience to embrace the true religion (the error
of personal or individual religious indifferentism),

while Dignitatis Humanae teaches religious
liberty understood as the individual’s right to
be free from constraint by civil authorities in
the public exercise of religion. But the teaching
of Vatican II corresponds to the error of the
religious indifferentism of civil authorities, equally
condemned by Pius IX. It suffices to compare the
texts to realize that Bishop Rifan’s interpretation
is completely unfounded. Pius IX condemned not
only the error of the indifferentism of individuals,
but also and more precisely the error of the
indifferentism of the State based upon the principle
that the civil authorities must not prevent the

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The Negative Right:
A Previously Refuted Thesis
exercise of false religions in the external forum,
which is tantamount to denying the social kingship
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The two equally condemned errors
(indifferentism of the individual and of the State)
are quite distinct. In theory, the second error can be
professed without professing the first, even though
there is a link of cause and effect between the
two. This, moreover, is an attribute of both liberal
Catholicism and of modernism, which (indirectly)
instill the indifferentism of the individual conscience
by at first restricting moral duty to the limits of
the individual conscience. Even if apparently
§1 of Dignitatis Humanae rejects the error of the
indifferentism of individuals, even if apparently
§2 of this document does not teach it, even if the
expressed and various authorized declarations have
stated at the time of the Council2 and afterwards3
that the documents of Vatican II did not teach the
first error, it nonetheless remains that §2 of Dignitatis
Humanae confirms the error of the indifferentism
of the State. That is why all the passages cited by
Bishop Rifan are beside the point.
A Too Rapid Inference
Bishop Rifan is mistaken about the real thrust
of Dignitatis Humanae because in his reading of it
he makes no distinction between the internal forum
of acts of conscience and the external forum of acts
done in public. He says:
The Council teaches from the natural point of view a
right not to be forced or prevented from acting within
due limits in matters religious by the State. That is to
say that the Council affirms that in matters of conscience
the civil power lacks jurisdiction; it is relatively incompetent.4

But keeping to the exact meaning of Dignitatis
Humanae, it must be said that the inference Bishop
Rifan makes by linking these two phrases by means
of “that is to say” is incorrect. It is true that, as he
says in his second statement, the State does not have
power to act directly on internal acts of conscience.
But the text of Dignitatis Humanae says much more
than that. In his first statement, Bishop Rifan says
that the State does not have the power to compel
external actions accomplished in the framework of
life in society. The first assertion logically implies
the second, for if one lacks the power to compel
external actions, all the more so does one lack
the power to compel internal acts. But the second
statement does not necessarily imply the first, for it
is possible to lack power to act on internal acts while
possessing the power to act on external ones. That
is why the two statements are not strictly equivalent,
the first saying more than then second.

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Finally, Bishop Rifan adopts the argument used
by Fr. Basil of Le Barroux,5 which was refuted by Fr.
Jehan de Belleville,6 also of Le Barroux. According
to this argument,
the Council merely affirms a negative right, without
conceding any affirmative rights to persons in their acts
not in conformity with the truth or the good in matters
religious.7

The distinction between a negative right and an
affirmative right in this context is equivalent to a
distinction between the right not to be impeded
from acting and the right to act. However, it is a
sophistical distinction, for, as St. Thomas says,8
every negation is based on an affirmation: if one has
the right not to be prevented from acting (negation)
it is because one has the right to act (affirmation).
To be fair, we should make it clear that Fr. Basil’s
argumentation is in reality more nuanced than
the short summary given by Bishop Rifan would
lead one to believe. According to the Benedictine,
Dignitatis Humanae proclaims not the right to act
but the right not to be prevented from acting in the
sense that even if an objectively bad action as such
has no objective right, the person who does it has
the subjective (or personal) right not to be prevented
if he is in good faith. But it suffices to refer to the
notion of right defined by Aristotle and St. Thomas
to comprehend right away the sophism underlying
this position. For in fact a right is inherently
objective and not subjective; the right to act and the
right not to be prevented from acting are identical,
and both are ascribed not to the person who acts
but to the action with its object. For it is essentially
the object of an action which is at the root of a right,
that is to say of the justice and hence the moral
goodness of an action.9 The dispositions of the
person accomplishing it (invincible ignorance, good
faith, good intention) cannot remedy the intrinsic
malice of an action. That is why the State ought
to prevent intrinsically evil actions in the external
forum of life in society even if those who accomplish
them are in good faith. In practice, of course, the
heads of state are unable to prevent evil always
and everywhere. Human government imitates that
of God, who allows evil in order not to place an
obstacle to a greater good or to avoid a worse evil.
But this exercise of tolerance is a matter of prudence
and not of justice: it implies no strict right, either
positive or negative, in favor of evil.
It is this negative right “not to be restrained from
acting” which is explicitly condemned as such by
Pope Pius IX in Quanta Cura. The Pope condemns
the proposition that
liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and

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asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a
right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which
should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil.

This is the condemnation of the religious
indifferentism of the civil authorities in the sense
that they should not “restrain [anyone] from acting,”
the error taught by§2 of Dignitatis Humanae in
contradiction with Tradition before Vatican II and
the social kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Coherence of the Conciliar Texts
Thus far we have shown that the teaching of
religious freedom in Dignitatis Humanae regarding
the indifferentism of the State incurs Pius IX’s
condemnation. We must now see whether the
condemnation is limited to this error alone and
examine whether §1 of Dignitatis Humanae really
rejects the indifferentism of individuals or merely
seems to.

a. A traditional appearance

It is true that this text begins by making an
assertion in apparent opposition to the error of
private indifferentism condemned by Gregory XVI
and Pius IX:
First, this sacred Synod professes its belief that God
himself has made known to mankind the way in which
men are to serve Him, and thus be saved in Christ and
come to blessedness. We believe that this one true religion
subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church, to which
the Lord Jesus committed the duty of spreading it abroad
among all men. Thus He spoke to the apostles: “Go,
therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-2). On their part, all men
are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns
God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they
come to know, and to hold fast to it.
This sacred Synod likewise professes its belief that it
is upon the human conscience that these obligations fall
and exert their binding force. The truth cannot impose
itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its
entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power.
Religious freedom in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with
immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore, it
leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the
moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion
and toward the one Church of Christ.

b. But an appearance only

Apparently, then, or at least directly, the text
of Dignitatis Humanae does not seem to oppose
the statements of Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX
concerning the condemnation of the indifferentism
of individuals. But in reality, things are not quite
so simple, for §1 of Dignitatis Humanae contains
the ambiguous expression “subsists in,” which
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recurs here, taking it from Lumen Gentium, §8. This
expression opens the way to a new, much subtler
form of private individualism and inexorably leads,
albeit indirectly, to the conclusion condemned by
Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos and by Pius IX in Quanta
Cura and the Syllabus of Errors: one may indeed
hope for salvation outside the one true religion,
since religious communities other than the Catholic
Church
have by no means been deprived of significance and
importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of
Christ has not refrained from using them as means of
salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church.”
(Unitatis Redintegratio §3)

The end of this passage is also remarkable:
it states that religious freedom, the subject of the
following discussion, “leaves untouched traditional
Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and
societies toward the true religion and toward the
one Church of Christ.” Here it is not a question of
“the Catholic Church” in which, it is said a few
lines above, the one true Church subsists; rather,
it is a question of “the one Church of Christ.” This
is another snare from Lumen Gentium §8. The true
religion is the one exercised only in the one Church
of Christ. But the Catholic Church is only the
community in which this one true religion and this
one Church of Christ subsist. Now, we know (thanks
to a document of the Sacred Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith of June 29, 2007,10 what the
expression “subsistit in” means: to subsist means to
exist fully, as opposed to existing partially. The text
of §1 thus states that the religion binding on all men
is the one exercised not only fully in the Catholic
Church, but also more or less in the other religions,
which are so many partial elements of the one
Church of Christ.

Dignitatis Humanae:
A Text Contradicting
Tradition from A to Z
and from No. 2 to No. 1
Consequently, to state that “it leaves untouched
traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty
of men and societies toward the true religion and
toward the one Church of Christ” is to deny the
truth. Indeed, either the text of Dignitatis Humanae
understands the expressions “true religion” and
“one Church of Christ” in the sense suggested by
the context in parallel places of Lumen Gentium
and Unitatis Redintegratio, in which case the

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doctrine that religious liberty leaves untouched is
not the traditional Catholic doctrine; or else the
text understands these same expressions in the
traditional Catholic sense, in which case religious
freedom does not leave untouched the doctrine they
express.
Contrary to the appearances, §1 of Dignitatis
Humanae is perfectly coherent with §2: the moral
obligation imposed on individuals does not concern
the one true religion as it is preached by the one true
Catholic Church; it concerns religion not only as it
is preached in the Catholic Church, but also in the
false religions considered as such. The indifferentism
of the State which is the subject in §2 is rooted in a
new, subtler form of the indifferentism of individuals
discussed in §1.
Benedict XVI and the Authentic
Interpretation of Vatican II
We can also see that the different declarations
of Pope Benedict XVI do not corroborate Bishop
Rifan’s rereading of the text.11 Until now, the
successor of John Paul II has not yet done anything
to correct the most seriously defective teachings of
the Council; on the contrary.

a. Benedict XVI and Religious Liberty

In his Christmas Address to the Roman Curia
of December 22, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI makes
a distinction between the two meanings possible
for “freedom of religion.” In the sense that it
would be the equivalent of an independence of the
conscience in relation to the divine authority fixing
the objective rule of morality (thus, in the sense of
the indifferentism of the individual) the expression
is to be reproved,12 according to the Holy Father.
But in the sense that it would be the equivalent of
the absence of any and all constraint in the external
forum on the part of the civil authorities, the
expression is, according to him, just.13 Further on,
the Pope adds:
The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in
that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this
very reason they also died for freedom of conscience
and the freedom to profess one’s own faith: a profession
that no State can impose but which, instead, can only
be claimed with God’s grace in freedom of conscience.

This passage could at the most have an
equivocal sense, for it is true that the profession of
faith cannot be imposed by the State in the internal
forum of the conscience, whereas it is false that the
profession of faith cannot be imposed by the State in
the external forum of society. Moreover, the Pope is
not speaking here of the profession of the one true
faith; he is simply speaking of martyrs who claimed

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the freedom to profess their own faith, which can be
understood in the subjective sense.
But subsequently, other addresses of the Pope
have dispelled this ambiguity and proven that
Benedict XVI speaks of freedom understood in the
sense condemned by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos
and by Pius IX in Quanta Cura. Indeed, the Pope
claims the right for all believers to profess their
religion publicly in society without the State being
able to intervene in any way whatsoever. Moreover,
in his Address of 2005, Benedict XVI already said
that the Vatican II had wished to ratify “an essential
principle of the modern State.” This remark should
prick our ears, for it strikes us as an echo of the
former reflections of Cardinal Ratzinger, who
presented the teachings of Vatican II on religious
freedom as a “countersyllabus.”14
One year after his famous speech on the
hermeneutic of the Council, Pope Benedict XVI
unequivocally indicated what the meaning of this
religious freedom is in the Address of November
28, 2006, to the diplomatic corps of the Turkish
Republic:
The civil authorities of every democratic country are
duty-bound to guarantee the effective freedom of all
believers and to permit them to organize freely the life
of their religious communities.15

Especially during his recent trip to the United
States, Benedict XVI forcefully repeated the same
ideas in his Speech to the United Nations Assembly
on April 18, 2008:
Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom....The full guarantee of religious liberty
cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but
has to give due consideration to the public dimension of
religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing
their part in building the social order.

He adds that the principle of religious liberty
is “directed towards attaining freedom for every
believer.”16

b. Benedict XVI and Ecumenism

Far from correcting the faulty teaching of
Dignitatis Humanae on religious freedom, Pope
Benedict XVI’s speeches clearly and forcefully
confirm it. On the other hand we can see that Pope
Benedict XVI, no more than did Pope John Paul
II, does not flinch the consequence of this teaching;
indeed, the consequence of religious freedom is
ecumenism. Without entering into details about his
visit to the synagogue of Cologne in 2004 or his trip
to the Middle East in 2006, we can see very well
that, during the ecumenical meeting held at Naples
on 21 October 2007, Benedict XVI did not hide his
intentions. He explained:
Today’s meeting takes us back in spirit to 1986, when
my venerable Predecessor John Paul II invited important
Religious Representatives to the hills of St Francis to
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pray for peace, stressing on that occasion the intrinsic
ties that combine an authentic religious attitude with
keen sensitivity to this fundamental good of humanity.

And he added: “While respecting the differences of
the various religions, we are all called to work for
peace....”17 It is clear that the spirit of Benedict XVI
is still the spirit of Assisi.
The conclusion that interests us is the following:
the declarations of Pope Benedict XVI and his
ecumenical endeavors do not bring an end to the
state of necessity. The authentic interpretation of
Vatican II given by the present pope still upholds
in principle the same errors denounced long ago
by Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro
Mayer in their Open Letter to Pope John Paul II.18
This letter alone reduces to nothing Bishop Rifan’s
sophistry.
Twenty Years after the Episcopal
Consecrations: Operation Survival
Continues
Twenty years have passed since the episcopal
consecrations of June 30, 1988. Pope Benedict XVI
denounces the abuses ascribed to the spirit of the
Council, but he preaches fidelity to the empoisoned
letter of the Council. He declares that the traditional
missal was never abrogated, but he sees in it the
extraordinary expression of the liturgical law in
concurrence with the protestantized Novus Ordo,

“This Vatican Synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This
freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals
or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that [1] in matters religious no
one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. [2] Nor is anyone to be
restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs whether privately or publicly,
whether alone or in association with others, within due limits” (Dignitatis Humanae, §2).
[Emphasis added.] Bishop Rifan, Traditions et magistère vivant (Le Barroux: Editions
St. Madeleine, 2007), p.96. See also p.92, n.130: Bishop Rifan borrows this explanation
from Fr. Lucien, Fr. Basil of Le Barroux, and from Fr. Louis-Marie de Blignières. For
more details about this question, see Le Sel de la Terre, No. 56 (Spring 2006), pp.183-87.
2
Bishop Rifan, ibid., pp.94-95, quotes the official report given on the text of Dignitatis
Humanae by Bishop Emile De Smedt on November 19, 1963.
3
Ibid., pp.99-103. Bishop Rifan quotes long passages of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church (1992) which are along the same lines as Bishop De Smedt’s report.
4
Bishop Rifan, ibid., p.96.
5
The thesis of Father Basil, La liberté religieuse et la tradition Catholique (Le Barroux:
1998) reviewed in Le Sel de la Terre, No.30) in six volumes comprising 2,960 pages
and 9,154 notes, has only a material advantage, for if one has the patience to read it to
the end, it becomes evident that there is a lot of hot air. A new, condensed version in
one volume is not any more convincing.
6
Jehan de Belleville, O.S.B., Droit objectif dans Dignitatis Humanae: La liberté religieuse
à la lumière de la doctrine juridique d’Aristote et de St. Thomas d’Aquin (Rome, 2004).
7
Bishop Rifan, Tradition et le magistère vivant, p.96.
8
Disputed question De Malo, Q.2, Art.1, ad 9.
9
See Sel de la Terre, No. 56 (Spring, 2006), pp.180-82.
10
Response of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 29, 2007.
1

which in his eyes remains the ordinary expression of
this same law.
This duality which divides Benedict XVI’s
government between a faultless fidelity to the
erroneous principles of the Council and an
appearance of a return to order is perfectly
explained in the logic of the modernist system.
Modernism, which is religion in progress and
perpetual evolution, results, said St. Pius X, “from
the conflict of two forces, one of them tending
towards progress, the other towards conservation.”
The force tending towards conservation is authority,
which represses abuses; the force tending towards
progress is the imperatives of the Council. And we
can see how the conciliar authorities are always
looking for a balance and trying to counterbalance
the two contradictory tendencies against each other,
the progressives against the conservatives.
The conservative tendency will at the most go
so far as to authorize a certain personal attachment
of some of the faithful to pre-conciliar Tradition.
But this would not justify a conclusion that the
state of necessity has ended. The dilemma remains
the same, between a false blind obedience and
legitimate resistance for the sake of perpetuating the
Catholic Faith. Even today we must still choose the
latter.
Authored by Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, SSPX. Translated exclusively for Angelus
Press from Courrier de Rome, July-August, 2008, pp.6-8.

Bishop Rifan (Tradition, p.103), claims nevertheless to rely on the Discourse of December
22, 2005.
12
“...if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to
discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and
historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped
of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the
human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner
dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge” (translation available on the Vatican’s
Web site).
13
“It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that
derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that
cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of
conviction. The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential
principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the
deepest patrimony of the Church” (ibid.)
14
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a
Fundamental Theology (1982; Ignatius Press, 1987), pp.381-82.
15
Meeting with the Diplomatic Corps to the Republic of Turkey, November 28, 2006
(online at vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches).
16
Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, April 18, 2008
(online at vatican.va).
17
Greeting to the Heads of Delegations taking part in the International Encounter for Peace
at the Episcopal Seminary of Capodimonte, October 21, 2007 (online at www.vatican.
va).
18
English version: The Angelus, January 1984.
11

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Limbo Is Not a
Theological Hypothesis
But a Truth Taught by the
Apostolic Magisterium
The Demolition of Orthodoxy
Neomodernism is demolishing orthodoxy stone
by stone, by repeated blows, blows which, through
an unnameable tolerance and sometimes a veritable
complicity, are allowed by those in charge, who
wash their hands like Pilate. Numerous “masters
in Israel” vie to create a media spectacle; there is a
whole cortege of improvised disciples: neo-exegetes,
neo-theologians...neo-this and neo-that, disposed to
joyously trample the Faith in the name of the fairyqueen of a global, ultimately adogmatic religion. An
example of this continuous demolition of the most
certain truths is the attack on the doctrine of limbo.
In its July-August 2007 edition, Courrier de
Rome1 published an article that demonstrated in
great detail the doctrinal falsity of the assertion
that the existence of limbo is a mere “theological
hypothesis.” In fact, it is neither an hypothesis
nor a fable that the “New Evangelization” could
sweep away, opening wide the gates of Paradise to
all unbaptized infants. In this issue we will review
the teachings of the Apostolic magisterium prior
to Vatican II, with the clarification that if a rightly

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understood, homogeneous evolution of doctrine is
certainly possible, the involution and contradiction
of truths already legitimately set forth ought to be
rejected out of hand. It is certainly possible that a
less clear truth may acquire greater clarity, but the
contrary is false, given that a clearly explained truth
tranquilly taught in theology and by the constant
and universal magisterium of the Truth cannot
undergo an involution, and still less a cancellation.
In effect, the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church,
does not begin by teaching a truth only to authorize
its being discarded.

The Voice of the
Apostolic Magisterium
1) The Council of Carthage (418) energetically
defends the baptism of infants (and thus the doctrine
of limbo) in the following articles:
Whoever says that infants fresh from their mothers’
wombs ought not to be baptized, or says that they are
indeed baptized unto the remission of sins, but that they
draw nothing of the original sin from Adam, which is
expiated in the bath of regeneration...let him be anath-

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ema. Since what the Apostle says: “Through one man sin
entered into the world (and through sin death), and so
passed into all men, in whom all have sinned” [cf. Rom.
5:12] must not to be understood otherwise than as the
Catholic Church spread everywhere has always understood it. For on account of this rule of faith even infants,
who in themselves thus far have not been able to commit
any sin, are therefore truly baptized unto the remission
of sins, so that that which they have contracted from
generation may be cleansed in them by regeneration.2

It is a truth of faith, then, that infants are born
with original sin (cf. Rom. 5:12); this can only be
effaced by baptism (“nisi renatus fuerit ex aqua et
Spiritu Sancto non potest introire in Regnum Dei”—Jn.
3:5). Baptism of desire also exists, but it is not
possible except for those who have attained the use
of reason, which is certainly not the case of infants
and young children.
If anyone says that for this reason the Lord said:
“In my Father’s house there are many mansions” [ Jn.
14:2]” that it might be understood that in the kingdom
of heaven there will be some middle place or some place
anywhere where the blessed infants live who departed
from this life without baptism, without which they cannot
enter into the kingdom of heaven, which is life eternal, let
him be anathema.3

The canon is formal: children who die without
baptism cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven,
which is eternal life.
2) Pope Innocent III (beginning of the 13th
century), in an apostolic letter to the Archbishop
Imbert of Arles, affirmed this among other things:
We say that a distinction must be made, that sin is
twofold: namely, original and actual: original, which
is contracted without consent; and actual, which is
committed with consent. Original, therefore, which is
committed without consent, is remitted without consent
through the power of the sacrament; but actual, which is
contracted with consent, is not mitigated in the slightest
without consent....The punishment of original sin is deprivation of the vision of God, but the punishment of actual sin
is the torments of everlasting hell.4

3) The Council of Florence (1442), in the decree
Pro Jacobitis, affirmed:
Regarding children, indeed, because of danger of
death, which can often take place, when no help can be
brought to them by another remedy than through the
sacrament of baptism, through which they are snatched
from the domination of the Devil and adopted among
the sons of God, it advises that holy baptism ought not to
be deferred for forty or eighty days, or any time according to the observance of certain people, but it should be
conferred as soon as it can be done conveniently, but so
that, when danger of death is imminent, they be baptized
in the form of the Church, early without delay, even by
a layman or woman, if a priest should be lacking.5

4) Pope Pius VI (1794), in his Apostolic
Constitution Auctorem Fidei, condemned 83
propositions of the Jansenist Synod of Pistoia,
including the following:
The doctrine which rejects as a Pelagian fable, that
place of the lower regions (which the faithful generally
designate by the name of the limbo of children) in which
the souls of those departing with the sole guilt of original
sin are punished with the punishment of the condemned
exclusive of the punishment of fire, just as if, by this
very fact, that these who remove the punishment of fire
introduced that middle place and state free of guilt and
of punishment between the kingdom of God and eternal
damnation, such as that about which the Pelagians idly
talk—false, rash, injurious to Catholic schools.6

5) Pope St. Pius X, in his Catechism of Christian
Doctrine (1912), wrote:
Children who die without baptism go to limbo, where
they do not enjoy God, but neither do they suffer, for
having original sin, and only this, they do not merit to
enter Paradise, but neither do they merit purgatory or
hell.7

In an apostolic letter to Cardinal Vicar Pietro
Respighi, speaking of his Catechism, the holy pope
wrote that the faithful
will find it a brief, very precise summary, even in
format, in which they will find explained with great
simplicity the principal divine truths and the most useful
Christian reflections.8

How can anyone think that limbo is a simple
“theological hypothesis” that can be tranquilly
suppressed?
6) Pope Pius XII, speaking of the necessity of
baptism, confirms:
If what We have said up to now concerns the protection and care of natural life, much more so must it
concern the supernatural life, which the newly born
receives with baptism. In the present economy there is no
other way to communicate that life to the child who has not
attained the use of reason. Above all, the state of grace is
absolutely necessary at the moment of death; without it,
salvation and supernatural happiness—the beatific vision
of God—are impossible. An act of love is sufficient for
the adult to obtain sanctifying grace and to supply the
lack of baptism; to the still unborn or newly born this
way is not open.

A Convenient Interpretation
The last act of the supreme magisterium, which
officially blocked the interpretation of the doctrine
of limbo as a whimsical hypothesis, could not go
unmentioned by the International Theological

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25

Commission, which in fact, in its last document
aimed at suppressing the Catholic doctrine of limbo,
gave its own interpretation, asserting that
Pius XII rather recalled the limits within which the
debate must take place and reasserted firmly the moral
obligation to provide Baptism to infants in danger of
death.9

In reality, the Commission did not correctly
understand the pontifical message: Pius XII
authorized no “debate” on limbo, but wished
to confirm that baptism is absolutely necessary for
salvation, for if baptism of desire exists for adults in
a state of invincible ignorance, this is not the case
for infants and children who have not yet reached
the use of reason. And if for children without the
use of reason baptism is a “conditio sine qua non” for
obtaining supernatural life, this also holds true for
obtaining the beatific vision; whence the traditional
teaching on limbo as a strictly theological conclusion
confirmed by repeated and precise statements of
the magisterium, which no one can suppress on the
pretext that this teaching is but a vain imagining fit
only for the memory hole.
The International Theological Commission
cannot wander outside the rails set by biblical truth,
which is of divine faith: “Unless a man be born
again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God.”10 That is what Fr. Michel,
author of several articles on the subject published in
L’Ami du Clergé, wrote:
Undoubtedly, the Catholic doctrine implied in the
dogma of the necessity of baptism for the remission of
original sin is that children who die without baptism
cannot enjoy the beatific vision. If this conclusion cannot yet
be considered a dogma of faith insofar as it has not yet
been proposed directly as such by the Church’s magis-

terium, it is at least an immediate truth of faith susceptible of
a dogmatic definition.11

Stephanus
Translated from Courrier de Rome, October 2008, pp.7-8.
Name of the French edition of SiSiNoNo. This article appeared in the The Angelus
(Nov. 2007).
2
Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, tr. by Roy J. Deferrari from the 30th
edition of Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum (1955; reprint: Loreto Publications,
n.d.), 224 [hereafter abbreviated Dz.].
3
Ibid., n. 2.
4
Dz. 410.
5
Dz. 712.
6
Dz. 1526.
7
St. Pius X, Catechism of Christian Doctrine, §100.
8
AAS, December 2, 1912, pp.690-92.
9
International Theological Commission, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die
Without Being Baptized,” §39.
10
Jn. 3:5.
11
A. Michel, “The Salvation of Children Who Die Without Baptism,” L’Ami du Clergé.
1

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