Is Feeneyism Catholic? - Society of St. Pius X

T HE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH 47
sacrament: they believed that this grace of the sacrament can be
received even without the sacrament itself, and that some saints
did die with that grace though without the sacrament, as in the
case of martyrs (which was the most common at their time).
From that text, it is quite clear that a Catholic catechumen
dying for Christ before his baptism was saved, and was considered
in the Catholic Church. When St. Fulgentius, a few paragraphs later,
speaks of those who shed their blood for Christ outside the
Church, he speaks of heretics or schismatics, not of catechumens.
65
Moreover, the very Council of Florence, in the very same decree
for the Jacobites (part of the bull Cantate Domino) mentions
baptism of desire! Here is the passage:
As for children, because of the danger of death, which can
happen often, since no other remedy is available for them besides
the sacrament of Baptism, by which they are delivered from the
domination of the devil and adopted as children of God, [the
Council] warns that one ought not to delay the sacred Baptism
for 40 or 80 days or another time according to certain customs,
but it should rather be conferred as soon as fittingly possible. 66
Now the underlined passage is a quote from St. Thomas
Aquinas. Knowing how closely the Council of Florence followed
St. Thomas’s teaching, it is undoubtedly a confirmation by the
very Council of Florence of St. Thomas’s teaching. Now here is
the whole text of St. Thomas:
Whether Baptism should be deferred?
(Summa Theologica, III, Q.68, A.3)
I answer that, In this matter we must make a distinction and
see whether those who are to be baptized are children or adults.
For if they be children, Baptism should not be deferred. First,
because in them we do not look for better instruction or fuller
conversion. Secondly, because of the danger of death, for no other
remedy is available for them besides the sacrament of Baptism.
On the other hand, adults have a remedy in the mere desire
for Baptism, as stated above (A.2, see p.73). And therefore Bap-
65 See another example of the clear distinction that the Fathers were making
between both in St. Cyprian (p.58).
66 Dz. 712.