Friends don’t let friends do cleverdumb theology

Oh, for Pete’s sake:

To begin with, stillborns are, if it is at all possible, conditionally baptized when there is any question at all about whether they are still alive. When death is absolutely established, stillborn babies, like 80 year old dead men who perish from a heart attack before they can approach the font, are not baptized because they are dead, not because they are not human beings. Catholics do not baptize the dead, regardless of their age. And baptism is, in any case, not designed as a reducing valve to keep the unbaptized out of Heaven, but as a sure (but not the only) encounter with God. That is why the extremely unbaptized Good Thief made it to heaven, as we are told by the Highest Possible Authority on the Matter.

This among other things, I why a funeral Mass for unbaptized or stillborn children is not only permissible but positively encouraged by the Church, not only because grieving parents are consoled by it, but because we believe that the prayers of the body of Christ for the dead help them on their way to union with God and are part of their beatitude.

Baptism does not confer humanity on children. Human beings are due human dignity from the moment of conception.

Attention anti-Catholic Fundamentalists (whether Protestant or unbelieving): For the love of God, stop saying dumb things just to score imaginary points and create Unit Cohesion with your equally ignorant peers. If you want to argue with the Church (or indeed with anybody) you have to argue on their terms and not your own. You can’t just march up to people, tell them they think X, and then declare them wrong. Because when it turns out they think Y and think X is ridiculous, you have only shown yourself to be a fool. And if you go on saying they think X when they tell you, “No. I don’t” you are thereafter not merely a fool, but a liar.

By the way, the Church, like the entire scientific community, does not believe “Life begins at conception”. Life began about 4 billion years ago and all living things come from other living things. Both the sperm and egg that went on to become you were themselves already alive. What the Catholic tradition actually teaches, as the sciences do as well, is that a unique organism comes into existence at conception. As Secular Pro-Life says: “For the Embryology Textbook tells me so”.

As to the metaphysics that go beyond mere biology, the Church, while never formulating a dogma about the start of personhood, has always insisted that the Incarnation of the Son of God took place at conception and that he shares fully in our human life. This, of course, makes the Church’s position on abortion dependent on revelation, not on mere scientific observation. But at the very least, it is rubbish to say that she does not really see the human person as sacred from conception. Here, as in the rest of her teaching, she looks to the person of Christ as the key to understanding the human person.