Abigail Jorgensen
Dr. Abigail Jorgensen is a Catholic sociologist, doula, and assistant professor at Saint Louis University, where she specializes in the intersections of family, health, and identity. She is the author of A Catholic Guide to Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss (Ave Maria Press, 2024), a compassionate and practical resource rooted in faith and informed by both research and lived experience. In addition to her academic work, she is a certified birth and bereavement doula and the founder of Haven Bereavement Doulas. Dr. Jorgensen is a sought-after speaker on topics of motherhood, loss, and Catholic social teaching, with her work featured in America Magazine, Church Life Journal, and national conferences.
Find more about the work of Dr. Abby Jorgensen at: https://catholicbereavementdoula.com
Quotes from
A Catholic Guide to Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss
by Abigail Jorgensen
This book holds a Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, official declarations that a book is free of doctrinal or moral error.
This book is a beautifully written and compassionate guide for Catholic parents facing the sorrow of perinatal loss. It offers clear, faithful answers to difficult questions while gently acknowledging the pain many experience where Church teaching is silent or uncertain. With honesty and hope, it brings comfort, clarity, and theological grounding to a space where grief and faith often collide. We highly recommend it to both grieving parents and the clergy who accompany them.
Thomas Aquinas tells a story about a hypothetical man who wanted to be baptized but died before he could receive the sacrament. He explained that such a man “can obtain salvation without being actually baptized, on account of his desire for Baptism, which desire is the outcome of faith that works by charity, whereby God, whose power is not tied to the visible sacraments, sanctifies man inwardly.” While St. Thomas is explicitly talking about an adult, whose own faith has created within him the desire for Baptism, I would extend this argument to children whose caretakers had the desire to baptize them. In other words, the concept of baptism by desire gives me hope that my children can obtain salvation without being baptized, on account of my desire for their sacramental Baptism. (pg 51)
Dr. Jorgensen outlines the challenges with the current Catholic teachings on Baptism including: baptism is necessary for salvation, a child cannot be baptized in utero, and cannot be administered after death. In these limitations, infants who die in utero or shortly after birth before they can receive the sacrament, have no defined way of receiving that salvific baptismal grace. But she gives us ample reason to hope:
[Hope] comes not explicitly from a Church teaching on perinatal loss but rather from applying Church teaching on a related topic, the Baptism of adults. While the Sacrament of Baptism makes a person a Christian by freeing him or her from the burden of original sin and incorporating that person into the Body of Christ, the Church, there are theological reasons to believe that a child might receive the graces of the sacrament without receiving the sacrament itself… I walked through ideas of baptism by desire, which many theologians believe means that adult catechumens (converts to the faith preparing for Baptism, Confirmation and First Eucharist) who die before their Baptism have received the effects of Baptism in the eyes of God and the Church due to their intent to receive the sacrament itself. Some theologians affirm that we can apply this same argument to loss parents and their lost little ones, arguing that intent to baptize—or even simply prayer—could suffice. In other words, if parents planned to have their child baptized, but the child died before they could do so, perhaps the child is, like the catechumen, “baptized by desire.” Perhaps we can also apply this reasoning to children whose parents do not realize that they have experienced a perinatal loss. If they had known they were having a child, they would have planned to baptize the child, and perhaps the child has received baptism by desire in this way as well. (pg 134-135)
Notable Quotes about the Pain of an Undefined Theology for the Salvation of Infants
The hard reality of losing a child in miscarriage, stillbirth, or during infancy teaches us about ourselves and our social systems, values, and priorities. It also can teach us about our Catholic faith, and perhaps most of all, about our God. (Intro VII)
Such is the nature and beauty of the Church, whose doctrine continues to be made clearer as we grow in faith within a world that also continues to yield new information, new understandings, and new truths. (Intro XVI)
Where to Unbaptized Babies Go after Death?
Many loss parents, myself included, wrestle with the question of where their baby has gone, as this journal entry from one loss mom conveys:
I don’t know where my babies are. I know they’re not here with me, but I don’t know where they are. And that’s a harsh reality that I just can’t understand. I crave peace, I crave surety; I read no the Catechism, I search the internet for what theologians say, and no one will tell me where my babies are. I search fora n answer in this space of waiting. Someday, maybe I’ll find out. Someday maybe I’ll even see them again. But right now, right this moment, their little images and likenesses of God are out there, somewhere, and I don’t know where. There’s no surety here.
Well, there is one surety. God is a God of Mercy. God is the God who gathered the little children to himself and said that heaven is made up of such as these. Oh, God of the little children be here with me.
(pg 47)
As St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, context matters. “A precious stone is more valuable than a loaf of bread, but during a famine the bread would be chosen instead.”
I assure you that the death of a child brings a great spiritual famine to many Catholic loss parents. These losses drive fundamental questions about God, the Church, and their deceased child’s place in it. The aftermath of perinatal death is a particularly harsh famine where bread is needed over precious stones, where care and love are better than doctrinal explanations and beautiful quotes from our great theologians. It is a time of famine for parents, where they need their pastors and spiritual guides to share the bread of listening more than our talking, particularly in the early days following loss.
…This time of great need, this famine, this is the moment when families assess, consciously or not, whether the Catholic Church is truly the most direct route to God, or whether the God of their parish is a God they even want to be near. (pg 143)
Baptism is a major pain point for many loss families in their relationship with the Catholic Church. In fact, for my clients who have left the Church, the confusing and mixed messages about whether or not their baby could be baptized is on of the most commonly cited reasons they have done so. The stakes are very high.
The most impactful problem is that there is a lack of clarity and even seeming contradiction in the way Church teaching is written at various levels regarding Baptism in situations of perinatal loss. Very often there is a focus on abortion rather than miscarriage, still birth, or infant loss, or on parents who deliberately choose not to baptize living children rather than careful attention to those parents who do not get a chance to do so.
The implications of these seeming contradictions for loss parents are weighty, as one loss mother expresses here:
Oh, come on, Church. You say, “Baptism is the only sure path to salvation!” You say, “Get your kid baptized as fast as possible; you wouldn’t want him to die before he was baptized, would you?” you say, “Life begins at conception,” “Original sin begins at conception,” and then, “Well, good luck kiddos! Hope you make it to that magical nine-month mark when just a vagina or seven layers of incision lie between you and the possibility of joining the family of God!” I’ve heard the argument that birth matters a lot before, but usually from people who want to make the point that a rebirth being is lesser than a birthed being. Careful, Church with the claims you make and the company you keep.
Church, I understand why you care so much about validating to those of us living on earth that the catechumens who die before Baptism are indeed a part of our Church family, do indeed have access to salvation through the sacrament. But why do you not seem to give the same through, discernment, and study to our children? We their parents, as their proxies, fully intend to pursue their Baptism, just as the catechumens do. Church, why do you withhold the assurance? Church, can’t you hear our intentions? Don’t you see our tears?
We find comfort. We do find comfort, in the image of God’s arms wrapped around these little children. But the comfort we find, we find outside of you.
…The Catechism, which explicitly declares that baptism by desire covers catechumens, explicitly declares in the next breath that, for children who die without Baptism, we can only entrust them to the mercy of God. In the face of this stark contrast, loss parents have to grapple with the reality that the Church does not give us the comfort of baptism by desire.
…The majority of Catholic loss parents I know firmly believe that baptism by desire works in bereavement situations. And I can absolutely see how they would be correct. But I hesitate to take the same comfort in this that they do, or to share the news of it widely as they do. They Church hasn’t assured it, after all… To be clear though, I’m not alone in my queasiness about Church quietness on the topic. Sadly many of the parents who have the same questions I do simply leave the Catholic Church, seeking recognition of their child as a full part of their family and God’s and find that recognition elsewhere. (pg 151-153)
The death of a child may be the single most crucial moment in the relationship between a loss parent and the Church. (pg 158)