Sir, - In my letter of August 21st, I said that Cardinal Hume thinks frozen embryos, as human beings, should be allowed to die with dignity. I argued that logically he should ask for them to be baptised. This, Mr Foyle says (August 23rd), is muddled thinking.
He assumes that all aborted souls certainly go straight to Heaven and that all Catholics must agree with him. He overlooks centuries of teaching on original sin. The Catechism of the Council of Trent says: "Since infants have no other means of salvation except baptism, how grievously they sin who permit them to remain without the grace of baptism longer than necessary, particularly at an age when they are exposed to numberless dangers of death."
This is why, until recently, the unbaptised were buried across Ireland in cillini, scrubland graveyards, without prayer, cross, or gravestone. Parents who had suffered the tragedy of having a child born dead had to face the still more painful prospect of never seeing their little ones again.
The theology underlying this was monstrous. Not even Vatican II gave grieving parents any solace. The new Catechism attempts to do so; Jesus's love of children gallows us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without baptism." While it contradicts the Council of Florence and Trent, it still only expresses hope. not certainty. Hence it goes on to say: "All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of baptism." Baptism must be given wherever possible.
Apart from rethinking this whole question, we need to make amends to older parents of infants who died unbaptised. If they were invited to a thanksgiving Mass for their babies who are already with God in heaven, there is not a cathedral in Ireland big enough to hold them. Yours, etc.,
Ashford,
Co. Wicklow.