From the bulletin for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Feb 16, 2025)
What Happens to the Souls of Unbaptized Infants When They Die?
Once new human life exists, there is by definition a person with an immortal soul. However little that life may endure, however undeveloped that individual’s personality may be, his or her death is something to be mourned. So, before diving into the theological questions that these deaths raise, we must first reverence the grief that their parents rightly experience over them.
In that sorrow, people of faith naturally wonder: where has my child’s soul gone? What shall be its destiny? In the absence of a clear answer, the pain of the loss is increased.
Confronted with our fragility and mortality, we begin by humbly recognizing our limitations. God has given us to know many things to a degree, and some things He has revealed with certainty. But beyond the few names revealed in the Bible and the saints who’ve been canonized by the Church, the fate of individual souls is one of those mysteries that will remain sealed until the Last Day.
Regarding salvation in general, we know that “all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). No one, therefore, has a right to Heaven. We also know that “God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). Christ died for all, that all might have the opportunity of sharing His eternal life (cf. 2 Cor 5:15). For that to happen, however, we understand that something must occur in our souls during this life to remove original sin and restore God’s grace. Ordinarily, the saving effects of Christ’s death and resurrection are communicated to us through baptism. Therefore, “whoever believes in the Gospel and is baptized will be saved” (Mk 16:16). As the Catechism teaches, “the Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are ‘reborn of water and the Spirit’” (CCC 1257). Hence our alacrity to baptize babies.
And, yet in the same paragraph, the Church acknowledges that though “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism … he himself is not bound by his sacraments.” All of the Old Testament saints were saved without Christian Baptism. They did, however, have faith (see Heb 11:39). Could someone be saved without baptism or personal faith? In 1949 the Holy Office (now the DDF) stated that in the case of one who, through no fault of his own, is ignorant of the Gospel, “God also accepts an implicit desire [for baptism], so called because it is contained in the good disposition of soul by which a person wants his or her will to be conformed to God’s will” (Letter to the Archbishop of Boston). Could unbaptized infants, invincibly ignorant of the Gospel and without the capacity to believe or refuse to believe, be said to have such a disposition?
The Holy Innocents are one instance in which the answer is certainly “yes.” The liturgy of the Church proclaims them to be in Heaven. But they died for Christ, although unknowingly. What about others who are not so fortunate?
We can hope in God and commend them to His mercy (cf. CCC 1261). God certainly could have a way (utilizing the prayers of the Church, perhaps, and respecting whatever willed dispositions are mysteriously present in that infant’s soul) to make them partakers of the Paschal mystery. Such children we entrust to the mercy of God . We do so mindful that: 1) infants are not capable of personal sin, and therefore it would be unjust for them to receive punishment; 2) Our Lord displayed a marked tenderness towards children, about whom He said, “Let them come to me, do not hinder them” (Mt 19:14); 3) the Church allows funeral rites for unbaptized children, and she does not pray for those for whom there is no hope of salvation; and 4) our God is infinitely good, infinitely just, and He made those children for an eternal good purpose, a purpose which they have certainly not rejected.
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