Did Pius V condemn Cajetan on the baptism of desire?

n a recent post, I not­ed that Car­di­nal Caje­tan, in his com­men­tary on the Sum­ma III.68.11, posit­ed that par­ents can sup­ply bap­tism of desire to their chil­dren who die in the womb. “[C]hildren still with­in the womb of their moth­er,” Caje­tan says, “are able to be saved … through the sacra­ment of bap­tism that is received, not in real­i­ty, but in the desire of the par­ents.”

Just four days lat­er, Kevin Kuk­la at ProLife365—appar­ent­ly in response to my post, though he did not cite it—not­ed that Pope Pius V had this pas­sage removed from Caje­tan’s com­men­tary, which is not in doubt; but added that the pope actu­al­ly con­demned the propo­si­tion, which I do doubt.

Now, what’s at stake in all this is that Lim­bo apol­o­gists like Mr. Kuk­la claim that bap­tism of desire is only for adults on their own behalf; and that par­ents can­not sup­ply it vic­ar­i­ous­ly to their chil­dren. This is the trick by which they con­cede bap­tism of desire while retain­ing their belief in Lim­bo. So it would bol­ster their argu­ment if they could find a pope who con­demned a state­ment about vic­ar­i­ous desire.

But what’s odd is that Mr. Kuk­la cites no source for his claim. He does not give the name of the doc­u­ment in which Pius V sup­pos­ed­ly con­demned this error; he quotes no text from Pius V. Very slop­py. The only text he does quote is a pas­sage from Aquinas that seems to him to be at odds with Caje­tan’s view. (The empha­sis is his own.)

[B]y Bap­tism a man is ordained to the Eucharist, and there­fore from the fact of chil­dren being bap­tized, they are des­tined by the Church to the Eucharist; and just as they believe through the Church’s faith, so they desire the Eucharist through the Church’s inten­tion, and, as a result, receive its real­i­ty. But they are not dis­posed for Bap­tism by any pre­vi­ous sacra­ment, and con­se­quent­ly before receiv­ing Bap­tism, in no way have they Bap­tism in desire; but adults alone have: con­se­quent­ly, they can­not have the real­i­ty of the sacra­ment with­out receiv­ing the sacra­ment itself.” (ST III Q. 73 a. 3)

Back in 2008, the dubi­ous Dr. Tay­lor Mar­shall also claimed that Pius V con­demned Caje­tan on the bap­tism of desire; but he did­n’t name any source either. Also very slop­py. That makes it dif­fi­cult for respon­si­ble peo­ple to check out the truth of this.

So I go to the arti­cle on bap­tism in the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia; there I read this:

It is true that some Catholic writ­ers (as Caje­tan, Duran­dus, Biel, Ger­son, Tole­tus, Klee) have held that infants may be saved by an act of desire on the part of their par­ents, which is applied to them by some exter­nal sign, such as prayer or the invo­ca­tion of the Holy Trin­i­ty; but Pius V, by expung­ing this opin­ion, as expressed by Caje­tan, from that author’s com­men­tary on St. Thomas, man­i­fest­ed his judg­ment that such a the­o­ry was not agree­able to the Church’s belief.

It names no spe­cif­ic doc­u­ment; and it would seem that, in the view of the edi­tor, the redac­tion was enough, by itself, to con­sti­tute a con­dem­na­tion. But this amounts to no more than an edi­tor’s spec­u­la­tion about the pope’s ratio­nale. How do we know that’s what Pius V was think­ing? The answer is, we don’t. At one time the Church sup­pressed St. Fausti­na’s Diary; but that hard­ly con­sti­tut­ed a dog­mat­ic con­dem­na­tion bind­ing upon the faith­ful for all time. (Many Trads, who pre­fer God’s wrath to his mer­cy, wish that it were thus. But I digress.)

Next I turn to the Ency­clo­pe­di­a’s entry on Caje­tan. There I find this:

The impor­tant rela­tion between Caje­tan and the Angel­ic Doc­tor was empha­sized by Leo XIII, when by his Pon­tif­i­cal Let­ters of 15 Octo­ber, 1879, he ordered the for­mer’s com­men­taries and those of Fer­rarien­sis to be incor­po­rat­ed with the text of the “Sum­ma” in the offi­cial Leo­nine edi­tion of the com­plete works of St. Thomas, the first vol­ume of which appeared at Rome in 1882. This edi­tion has restored a num­ber of pas­sages which St. Pius V desired to have expunged from the texts, the pub­li­ca­tion of which he ordered in 1570. The sup­pressed parts, now for the most part inof­fen­sive, were large­ly in the nature of per­son­al views and had no direct bear­ing on Thomistic doc­trine as a sys­tem.

The arti­cle does not say whether Caje­tan’s remarks about the bap­tism of desire was one of the pas­sages restored by Leo XIII. (It’s prob­a­bly safe to assume it was restored.) But if the Ency­clo­pe­dia is to be believed, it is clear why the pope removed these pas­sages in the first place: They were Caje­tan’s “per­son­al views”; not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Aquinas; and Pius V did not wish any­one to con­fuse the two. Caje­tan was writ­ing a com­men­tary on the Sum­ma, after all. If Pius did have in mind the pas­sage from Aquinas cit­ed by Mr. Kuk­la, it may have been to show that Aquinas’s view was at odds with Caje­tan’s, not that Caje­tan’s view need­ed to be con­demned.

But I have checked around, in Den­zinger and else­where, and I can find no author­i­ta­tive state­ment from Pius V con­demn­ing Caje­tan’s views on any­thing. How­ev­er, in Ex Omnibus Afflic­tion­ibus (cit­ed in Den­zinger), Pius V does con­demn the view, taught by Baius, that orig­i­nal sin “habit­u­al­ly dom­i­nates the child” such that a child who dies before the age of rea­son, even though unbap­tized, would “resist the law of God.” That kind of con­dem­na­tion favors more those who doubt Lim­bo than those who teach it. Good man, St. Pius V. I find no bull con­dem­ing Caje­tan.

This does not mean that Caje­tan is right, only that the Church per­mits the opin­ion. If some­one knows where such a state­ment from Pius V is to be found, I would be hap­py for you to send it my way. But in either case, if Lim­bo apol­o­gists like Mr. Kuk­la and Dr. Mar­shall are going to make these claims, they real­ly need to cite an author­i­ty that can be checked. That’s what I do.