Note: This is more of a speculative post. I have endeavored to make it consistent with the teachings of the Church, as far as they go. However, it goes beyond what is taught and into the real of speculation. All of my posts concerning faith, morality, theology, etc are subject to the magisterium of the Church, and through said magisterium to my local bishop, and should be subordinate to the teachings thereof, even if said bishop has better things to do than to read my blog and offer his imprimatur. Since this is a more speculative post, I think that it is especially important to re-iterate that point. I have now republished this post with an addendum to address the objection half-heartedly made in my com boxes.

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Yesterday morning I was conversing with my friend, Mr Andrew Elster, during our weekly work-out session (and beyond into breakfast). He mentioned talking to a colleague from work about infants, Baptism, and salvation. His colleague's position was something along the lines of "Unbaptized infants are damned to hell, since they are as guilty of Original Sin as anybody else, but have not had the time to develop faith nor the grace which comes from baptism." This opinion--or something like it--is actually fairly widespread, both amongst Catholics and Protestants; it is also the cause of much consternation amongst said groups, for an infant who dies before baptism (to say nothing of the unborn murdered in the womb) is now condemned to hell through no fault of his own, but rather through Adam. An extension of this can be applied to those who are outside the Church, particularly those who lived before Christ and those who have never heard the Gospel message.

The notion of the most innocent amongst us being condemned to eternal hellfire by nature of dying young was so dreadful that a "lay" theology gradually developed which proposed another option: limbo. This option has a certain attractiveness to it, for it neither posits that the innocent unborn gain heaven without meriting it through faith, nor that they are condemned to suffering for eternity in hell. In some forms, it is stated rather that there is an intermediate state between heaven and hell to which unbaptized infants were sent, in which they enjoyed happiness but not the beatific vision. However, this teaching finds little basis in the Tradition of the Church, nor does it seem to have much in the way of Magisterial backing; indeed, Saint Augustine goes so far as to condemn it outright in his later writings, and pope Benedict has declared that it is time to put this quasi-doctrine* to rest.

Limbo write large was popular enough to garner significant popular support both within and outside of the Church, in a variety of forms. CS Lewis, for example, alludes to it in his Screwtape Letters, and some of the early theologians in the Church suggest that while infants in such a state do not see God face-to-face, they at least are not subjected to any positive punishments. Another option is advanced by St Augustine, and presented also by Dante Alighieri: that hell is not experienced in the same way by all its inhabitants. According to St Augustine, infants suffer very mild punishment in hell, so mild that for them it can not be said that it would be better not to exist. Dante presents us with a similar treatment in his first level of hell, where are sentenced the "virtuous pagans," those who never knew Christ and yet who lived according to the Natural law as they knew it.

Theirs is a hell which is touched by the sadness of knowing that they shall never see God, and yet at the same time lacks any real suffering beyond that sadness. It is, in any case, a sadness which is limited for them so that they seem to suffer very little without hope of the eternal joy of heaven, but without any fear of eternal torment in hell, as if the full ramifications of never seeing God are at the same time soothed somewhat. Indeed, St Thomas Aquinas held that the unbaptized infants were exempted from spiritual suffering in hell, since this was the greater suffering. Such a state is one of positive happiness in that, as St Thomas taught, the souls damned to such a hell could still enjoy a form of natural happiness, although deprived of supernatural joy.

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So far I have treated a few examples of possible fates which await the departed unborn and unbaptized infants. I have not yet treated another idea which is important to this discussion, though not a "destination" or "fate" per se. This is the concept of invincible ignorance, which is rightly applied to infants as well as adults. The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about invincible ignorance as applied specifically to baptism:

"Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery." Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

Writing for This Rock magazine, Mr Jimmy Akin interpreted this passage:

some radical traditionalists, those known as Feeneyites, assert that while invincible ignorance might excuse sins against faith, one would not thereby be excused from the necessity of baptism for salvation. This is false, since invincible ignorance excuses from acts of omission (such as failure to be baptized) as well as acts of commission. If one is invincibly ignorant of the requirement of baptism but would seek baptism if one knew it was required then the lack of baptism will not be held against one. This is expressly taught by the Church (CCC 1260). One would thus be recognized as having baptism of desire, at least implicitly.... Feeneyites sometimes assert that there are no individuals who are invincibly ignorant of the necessities of baptism and embracing the Catholic faith. This position reflects a misunderstanding concerning what constitutes reasonable deliberation for many in the non-Catholic world. If someone has never heard of the Christian faith, or if he has been taught all his life that the Catholic Church is evil, then it could well be that he would not discover the truth of the Christian faith or the Catholic Church merely by exercising reasonable diligence in weighing the various religious options presented to him.

If there exist some men who are protected, as it were, by invincible ignorance, how much more true must this be for infants? The implication is that those infants who die prior to Baptism find as their ultimate destiny heaven.
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Three years ago the Vatican's International Theological Commission released a document approved by Pope Benedict XVI entitled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized." The main thesis of this document is that:

infants who die without baptism are entrusted by the Church to the mercy of God, as is shown in the specific funeral rite for such children. The principle that God desires the salvation of all people gives rise to the hope that there is a path to salvation for infants who die without baptism....there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness, even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in Revelation. However, none of the considerations proposed in this text to motivate a new approach to the question may be used to negate the necessity of baptism, nor to delay the conferral of the sacrament. Rather, there are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible to do for them that what would have been most desirable— to baptize them in the faith of the Church and incorporate them visibly into the Body of Christ.

Both of the last two popes have hinted that they have had such hopes for the unbaptized, though revelation does not state either way whether this is the case. The nearest it comes is to be found in Matthew 19:14, "But Jesus said to them: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such."

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This idea that there is hope for salvation for the unbaptized infants presents, on the surface, several problems. The first problem is is the most general, which is that an infant is incapable of expressing the faith necessary for salvation, and thus deprived of Baptism is left without any normal avenue of grace. The second problem, related closely to the first, is that we are told that Baptism itself is specifically necessary for salvation. The third problem is directed against the specifically Catholic teaching that "outside the Church there is no salvation."

As to the first problem, I am unaware of any branch of theology which specifically studies the avenues of grace and faith, or of salvation. Even soteriology is, as far as I know, silent on the matter of how, specifically, God reconciles man to himself and under what conditions these operate. Sure, we know that the normal means is that a man comes to know of the gospels, then accepts them, then places his faith in Christ as LORD and Savior, trusting in His Body and Blood, and in His resurrection. There is also the role of the Church and the sacraments, but in the case of an infant none of these save Baptism is available, and not even this is available for the unborn.

Then Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book "Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life," presents a possible solution to this dilemma in his concluding chapter during the study of Purgatory.

In listening to the patristic discussion, we had occasion to mention First Corinthians 3, 10-15. For this text, there is a foundation, Jesus Christ, on which some build with gold, silver, and precious stones, and others with wood, hay, and straw. What each has built will be brought to light by the Day of the Lord.

"...it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire."

J. Gnilka has shown that this testing fire indicates the coming of the Lord himself....The essential Christian understanding of Purgatory has become clear. Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where man is forced to undergo punishment tin a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather is it the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints....It does not replace grace by works, but allows the former to achieve its full victory precisely as grace. What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in most of us, that basic option is buried beneath a great deal of wood, hay, and straw....This insight would contradict the doctrine of grace only if penance were the antithesis of grace and not its form, the gift of a gracious possibility....We saw that prayer for the departed, in its many forms, belongs with the original data of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. But does not this prayer pre-suppose that purgatory entails some kind of external punishment which can, for example, be graciously remitted through vicarious acceptance in others by a form of spiritual barter?....The being of man is not, in fact, that of a closed monad. It is related to others by love or hate, and in these ways has its colonies within them. My own being is present within others as guilt or grace. (emphasis mine).

It seems to me that there are several things at work in the future pope's writing here. First, there is the strong possibility that the unborn and unbaptized infants have only the foundation Himself, only Christ, upon which they have built nothing, but upon which has been built for them a little "straw, hay, or wood" in the form of Original Sin. As Mr Andrew Elster and many others have noted to me in conversation, children fundamentally seem to believe in or want to believe in God, and this is a belief which they practically have to unlearn, even if their grasp of Who God is is very weak and tenuous, very theologically inaccurate. Thus, an infant who has not unlearned such a thing will have a concept of God to which he can give assent, and indeed is likely to do so. He thus spends some amount of time in purgatory as the "wood, hay and straw" is burned off, but his ultimate destination is heaven.

Moreover, an infant has wronged no-one, and is thus not present as "guilt" in the life of another souls (to follow then-Cardinal Ratzinger's reasoning) unless that person was guilty of the infants death. Instead, a baby tends to be present as "grace," an so has perhaps had built for him a little "gold, silver, or precious stones." Finally, the infant's time "in" purgatory may be aided by nature of the prayers of those of us still on earth, for whatever guilt he may have in us--and it can't be much, unless we have killed him or willed him ill--might be reconciled in this way.

As to the second objection, that of the necessity of Baptism for salvation, the Church has always taught that there are three forms of Baptism. The first is the normal form, "of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5), the second is the baptism of blood received by the martyrs, and the third is the "baptism of desire." The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "For catechumens who die before their Baptism, their explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for their sins, and charity, assures them the salvation that they were not able to receive through the sacrament."

This paragraph can also be applied to unbaptized infants, who may not have a "mature" or "adult" desire for baptism, yet nonetheless desire that which is good, including that which is spiritually good, for themselves in their limited capability of understanding. Thus, an infant might desire baptism by its having been revealed as to his understanding to be a good thing, a sacrament. Infants have far less mental capacity than adults in terms of understanding, having less knowledge and a less mature brain and mind, but this additionally has the advantage that they are not yet so sophisticated in convincing themselves that that which is good is bad, nor that those things which are bad are good.

Finally, there is the question as to the necessity of the Church. "Outside the Church, there is no salvation." This doctrine has been a constant teaching of the Church, and on the surface seems to deny salvation to unbaptized infants, since by definition they have not been 'born" into the Church. Yet, the Catechism of the Catholic CHurch, in explaining this doctrine, has a few things to say. First, paragraph 819 notes that

"Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth" are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: "the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements." Christ's Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, and are in themselves calls to "Catholic unity."

Moreover, Paragraph 847 states that

This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation."

"Through no fault of their own" includes, by definition, infants who do cannot yet make decisions for themselves in even a limited manner, and who do not yet have the knowledge of God, His Church, or His Sacraments. There is, however, another and more often overlooked point about how the Church is defined (and "divided"). The visible Church on earth is only one part of the Church--the "Church Militant--and this is joined in communion with her other parts--the Church Suffering (those in Purgatory) and the Church Triumphant (those in heaven). Thus, everyone who is in heaven, or destined for heaven but in the transitional stage of Purgatory, is by definition "in" the Church, and not outside of her. Ergo, there is no salvation outside of the Church, but this doctrine does not contradict the possibility of the salvation of an unbaptized infant.

None of this is to say that Baptism itself is unnecessary, nor the Church, nor living a life of faith. These things are all normally necessary, and are all present at least in a germinal way in the lives of an infant. As "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized" notes,

The principle that God desires the salvation of all people gives rise to the hope that there is a path to salvation for infants who die without baptism (cf. CCC, 1261), and therefore also to the theological desire to find a coherent and logical connection between the diverse affirmations of the Catholic faith: the universal salvific will of God; the unicity of the mediation of Christ; the necessity of baptism for salvation; the universal action of grace in relation to the sacraments; the link between original sin and the deprivation of the beatific vision; the creation of man “in Christ”.

The conclusion of this study is that there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness, even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in Revelation. However, none of the considerations proposed in this text to motivate a new approach to the question may be used to negate the necessity of baptism, nor to delay the conferral of the sacrament. Rather, there are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible to do for them that what would have been most desirable— to baptize them in the faith of the Church and incorporate them visibly into the Body of Christ.

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*I call this a quasi-doctrine, because it has never been taught officially by the Church, but rather only held privately by a great number of the faithful. The International Theological Commission's statement "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized" refer to this as a "theological hypothesis."

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Begin Addendum!
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And now, a little more than a year after writing the original, I would like to add an addendum to reply to my commentor (any any actually curious minds) more fully. I usually don't take the time to reply to poorly thought-out comments such as his. Basically, my thoughts on this matter are that if you're too lazy to go so far as to even cite a chapter and verse for your disagreement--let alone a succinct explanation of why you think this is a rebuttal--then I think you're probably also too lazy to be bothered with reading whatever my reply may be. If by starting with Saint Matthew's gospel--canonically the first--you mean to insult me by implying that I don't read the Bible, then your contemptible comment is worthy of scorn. However, I know that I have other readers who may be curious as to what I have to say on this matter. As I mentioned before, this is mostly speculation, but it is meant to be "informed speculation."

The idea of Sola Fide, though not explicitly found in the Scriptures, is for many Protestants a fundamental doctrine, on par with Sola Gracia and the patently non-Scriptural doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Such is presumably the case for a person who answers a long interpretive post by quickly saying "If your [sic.] reading this article please open your bible to Matthew and start reading the Scripture. I don't believe the Bible supports anything discussed here in this article," and then "I would say you need to open the bible and read it." Suppose we accept, momentarily and for the sake of argument, the position of Sola Fide*. Then an immediate question arises: to what extent do we need to have faith to be saved? In a simplified form, this faith is taken to be in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior--all propositions which I accept, as does any other "orthodox mere Christian" (for lack of a better term).

Ok, but this doesn't settle the difficulty of the extent to which this faith must go: either in the degree of the Christian in question, or in the kind (or quality) of the faith. For example, does a man need only to acknowledge that Christ is his Lord, or Lord of the whole human race, or indeed of the entire universe, of "all things visible and invisible?" Does he need to accept that Christ is True God, or can He merely be the highest of created beings, as was taught by Arius and his followers, or for that matter by the Socianians (Protestant anti-trinitarians)? Or for that matter, could we be like the Monarchists/Adoptinists or the much later Unitarians and treat Christ as the Son by adoption only?

Presumably said Christian also needs believe in the doctrine of sin--or does he merely need to believe in Christ as a generic Savior, a savior who rescues us from hell, whether because of sin or otherwise? And what of the doctrine of the Trinity? After all, it is not the least bit necessary to believe that the Holy Spirit is God to also believe that Christ is God? Do we need to believe that there are three Persons in one God, or could we be like the Monarchists/Modalists (Sabellians), and treat all as one person with many faces?

Apparently "faith alone" only works with a host of qualifications. I am not here trying to pick on Protestants, however, since a good number have a more coherent idea of faith and theology--indeed, if not for the fact that I have attached links to people who hold the "wrong" answer to some of these questions, such Protestants would suggest that I was attacking straw men; they at least have, within their personal interpretations of Sola Scriptura a coherent set of answers to all of these questions, even if all of those individual interpretations disagree.

As to the actual salvation of infants, it is most certainly to be found in the Bible that Christ said, "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such" (Matthew 19:14). Perhaps it is not clear that babies are the littlest of all children, often so young as to be under the stain of original but not personal sin.

Also to be found in Scripture is another passage of interest to the question of infant salvation:
For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting. For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him. He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil. For every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved" (John 3:16-20).
God so loved the world, which includes the relatively innocent infants: relatively, because they are at least free from personal sin, though not Original sin. "He that doth not believe, is already judged" may seem at first glance to be problematic for infant salvation--since infants believe very little about anything, they obviously do not believe and affirm all the the points I laid out above. On the other hand, "doth not believe" can be interpreted in a more active manner: a baby fails to believe in a passive manner (e.g. by not having developed enough t actively believe), but there are some people who actively do not believe, that is, who actively reject faith. I think this is actually a better interpretation of the verses given, since babies don't necessarily (and often simply do not) "love darkness rather than light," let alone "doth evil."

As I have noted before,
An infant, at least, keeps every commandment save possibly the first**, by default: for they all begin with "Thou shalt not..." As to the first, or to the New Commandment ("Love the LORD your God...and love your neighbor..."), we simply can't know. From all outward appearances, babies love everyone, for I've rarely seen an infant who fails to smile at a new face, save when he's in some other discomfort. The infant has faith that his parents will be there to care for him, and through this faith perhaps also that God is there for him, too.
And it was Christ Himself Who said that "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them; he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him" (John 14:21). Or does being a "proper practitioner" of Sola Fide require that we ignore such words of the LORD? Luckily, not all Protestants take such an exclusive view of Sola Fide. How Christ Manifests Himself to infants whose powers of intellect have not begun to develop is a mystery to me, though I don't doubt that He can and indeed does. After all, the difference between God an an adult or God and baby is infinite either way, though the difference between an adult and an infant is quite finite, and thus infinitesimal by comparison. DO I believe that every child to whom our LORD "manifests" himself has whatever faith and love which that infant is capable? I'd like to hope so, though it is also entirely possible (and, thanks to Original Sin, likely) that this is not the case. We simply don't know. What we do know is that it is by no means impossible for God to save infants, even unbaptized or unborn ones--and I do not believe that the Bible proves otherwise.
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*It is not my intention to argue for or against these Sola's today.

** And possibly the fourth, though I can think of no infant which doesn't love his parents