The Syllabus and EENS

(I've not had a great deal to say for a while, but I was mulling on this (as is my wont), and thought I'd wake the blog up...)

This is an error the Syllabus condemns:

"Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ."

Now, phrasing is important. Look at what is condemned and what is not condemned in that statement:

Condemned: "Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ."

Not condemned: "Faint hope may be entertained of the eternal salvation of some who are not explicitly in the true Church of Christ."

So it seems that the Syllabus of Errors does not rule out our holding out some hope for some of those apparently outside the Church. It just says we can't hold out good hope for all of them.

Perhaps we may hold out good hope for some of them, or some hope for all of them; just not good hope for all of them.

Surely, if we may not hold out any hope at all for any of them, the Error would say so. The words "good", "at least", "all", and "at all" would be redundant. The condemned proposition would be:  "Hope is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of those who are not in the true Church of Christ."

But it isn't. And surely there is a reason it isn't.