BaptismAnswered

Has the Church changed its teaching on what happens to infants who die without baptism?

A viewer asks whether the Church has recently changed its teaching on the fate of infants who die unbaptized.

Answer

I don't know what the Church has said recently about non-baptized infant deaths, but they can't change Catholic doctrine. And as for Catholic doctrine, unless the statement is of a dogmatic nature, which it couldn't be without everybody being told that we now have a new doctrine in the Catholic Church, that is, that non-baptized infants are not judged by God and go directly to heaven, unless that's been made a doctrine, a dogma in the Church, and stated infallibly, there is no such doctrine. The present doctrine we have now is that we don't know. That's what the doctrine is, because heaven hasn't revealed it. Now, we have our theological guesses, one of them being that there's a state that unbaptized infants are put in where they can't see God and never will see God, but at least they're happy where they are. That's one possibility, but that's not a Catholic doctrine.

Answered by Dr. Robert Sungenis

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