Before Vicki and I were married in 1976, we had some conversations with the smart Irish priest we asked to do the deed. Because Vicki wasn’t a Catholic, the conversations sometimes were very intresting. At one point the priest was explaining the importance of baptizing our children as soon as possible after birth. Vicki asked for clarification and he gave it, talked about how they ended up in limbo. Vicki then said: "I do not believe God would do that to an innocent baby." I thought that this may be the end it, we might have to have a Unitarian wedding or something like it since we were already near the edge anyway, as far as I could tell. I stayed quiet as the good old priest just bowed his head and mumbled something about sin and grace. I couldn’t make it out, and didn’t ask for clarity. So we moved on to another topic. It now turns out that the Catholic Church
agrees with Vicki about the children. I guess Socrates and Plato and "the master of all those who know" are a different problem. Father Francis Canavan baptized three of the four, by the way.
There's actually a lesson here for Catholics who are too indignant about abortion. God takes care of the little babies, and their fate is not really in our hands.
No human act will ever, or indeed can ever supersede the authority of God's sovereign Grace. Ultimately that's the answer to questions like, "What happens if a baby is born unbaptized?" or "If a baby dies and hasn't accepted Jesus, are they condemned to Hell?" To suggest God is somehow limited by our actions contradicts one of the very basic tenets of the faith -- that is, that God will is sovereign.
Of course, this gets interesting when one takes it to the level of whether our verbalizing our acceptance of Christ is necessary for salvation. That takes us right into the teeth of the "free will vs. predestination" debate. I'll leave others to wrestle with that.