Posted on 11/29/2005 3:42:52 PM PST by Claud
Vatican considers dropping 'limbo'
Theologians meet to look again at fate of unbaptised tots
(ANSA) - Vatican City, November 29 - The Catholic Church appears set to definitively drop the concept of limbo, the place where it has traditionally said children's souls go if they die before being baptised .
Limbo has been part of Catholic teaching since the 13th century and is depicted in paintings by artists such as Giotto and in important works of literature such as Dante's Divine Comedy .
But an international commission of Catholic theologians is meeting in the Vatican this week to draw up a new report for Pope Benedict XVI on the question. The report is widely expected to advise dropping it from Catholic teaching .
The pope made known his doubts about limbo in an interview published in 1984, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's doctrinal department .
"Limbo has never been a defined truth of faith," he said. "Personally, speaking as a theologian and not as head of the Congregation, I would drop something that has always been only a theological hypothesis." According to Italian Vatican watchers, the reluctance of theologians to even use the word limbo was clear in the way the Vatican referred in its official statement to the question up for discussion .
The statement referred merely to "the Fate of Children who Die Without Baptism" .
Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, gave the commission the task of looking at the issue again in 2004. He asked experts to come up with a "theological synthesis" able to make the Church's approach "more coherent and illuminated" .
In fact, when John Paul II promulgated the updated version of the Catholic Church's catechism in 1992 there was no mention of the word limbo .
That document gave no clear answer to the question of what happened to children who died before being baptised .
It said: "The Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God...In fact the great mercy of God, who wants all men to be saved, and the tenderness of Jesus towards children... allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who die without baptism." This view is in stark contrast to what Pope Pius X said in an important document in 1905: "Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either, because having original sin, and only that, they do not deserve paradise, but neither hell or purgatory." According to teaching from the 13th century on, limbo was also populated by the prophets and patriarchs of Israel who lived in the time before Jesus Christ .
"unless there are Christian willing to believe that a person can get to heaven without the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ..."
Where was Enoch taken up to?
Of course in a God's-eye view, existence is timeless. So the sacrifice of Christ can affect, in Divine Time, all that came before it or after it in our time. God is not bound by sequentialism.
"This can't be repeated often enough, although it's important to remember that this is a Church discipline and not a Church dogma. Nevertheless, the discipline is deserving of obedience."
How does one know, for certain, the difference between a discipline and a dogma?
Your story has become tiresome.
Generally speaking, a discipline is something we do, while a dogma is something we believe. Now there is a grey area in the sacraments which, by their very nature combine belief and action.
But beside that, the line is pretty sharp. We don't "believe" priests have to be unmarried. It is, rather, a rule followed in the Church in the West. (And not in the East. And not without exception. Yes, there are married Catholic priests. Not a dogma.)
We don't "believe" eating meat on Friday is inherently sinful. Abstaining is a practice, not without a symbolic meaning, but a practice nonetheless.
We believe in the Trinity. How and if we cross ourselves is a practice.
SD
"My wife has lost two children to miscarriage and there isn't a day goes by without me thinking about where they are and what state they are in."
Mine too.
I have no real doubt that my children are in Heaven.
I think that what is really happening is that we Catholics have a massive respect for tradition, logic, the written word, etc., but there's a lot we don't know, and a lot that's been written that conflicts, and when you put it all together on something like this, we get wrapped around the axle like yarn in the wheels of a child's toy.
We get caught up in this line or that line from the Bible.
Jesus didn't write any of that.
He came to earth, taught a pretty simple messsage, left, came back and affirmed, by that, that he was the real McCoy.
Since then, people have been talking to angels, to God, etc., over and over again.
Jesus didn't leave us a book to confuse us, He left us the Holy Spirit. A Church, yes, and when the Church remains a thing spiritual, it is an aid to the Holy Spirit. When we get too legalistic and rationalistic, the conflicts start coming out: the Bible is rife with contradictions, our written doctrines are rife with contradictions.
What we have to have is faith that it will all work out in the end.
Thanks to modern science, we have empirical data too.
Modern medicine has revived thousands of people who were dead. And thousands of them report very similar experiences, the world around. These experiences are culturally inflected, but they have all the same basic components. Now, in the past three years there have been four CONTROLLED hospital studies of near death experiences published, and their results were very consistent with one another.
We have good empirical evidence that there's really an afterlife, which means the fundamental truth of the religion is to an extent proven true scientifically.
And the good news is that folks of all sorts saw it: God has His own criteria. Also, there are trees and animals there, and the full-grown souls of those who went before us.
Your "children" in heaven are not really your children any more. They are full grown beings with full capacities that you will not have until you die. To them, you are a child.
There is a mystic poem from the middle ages called "The Pearl", about a man who "lost his precious pearl", which is to say his two year old daughter, but then encounters her spirit, come from heaven to guide him. He is as a child to her, she is not a child, but as a queenly angel, and he is quite the limited worm beside her. It may have been a rambling poetic account of an actual experience. Certainly the near-death studies and various saints and mystics encounters with angels and the spirits of the dead tell us something here.
There is every reason to believe that your "children" are in Heaven, and not children at all, more akin to angels if anything.
Probably a good idea to dismiss this flawed logic. Limbo and Purgatory are not biblical.
All Calvinists believe in God's Sovereignty. No Calvinist believes that God is whimsical. And I don't believe that anything can "affront" God.
God's vavor rests within the realm of his Soverignty:
11(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)
12It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
13As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
14What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
15For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
16So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
As for unbaptised or similarly: uncircumcised children? I look to David:
18And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself, if we tell him that the child is dead?
19But when David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was dead: therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? And they said, He is dead.
20Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the LORD, and worshipped: then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat.
21Then said his servants unto him, What thing is this that thou hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread.
22And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?
23But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.
24And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon: and the LORD loved him.
God cannot be moved, by His nature. He is a simple substance; pure act; pure spirit.
Biblical references to God's "wrath," etc., are anthropomorphizations.
"Do you not understand that the sin is not inherent in eating flesh on a given day, but in disobeying a Church law? Church law on discipline is not unchangeable. It is discipline, not dogma."
Yes, I understand that very well.
What I am looking for is an authoritative distinction between what is DISCIPLINE and what is DOGMA.
My conclusion, based on the observation of history, is that whatever gets changed is declared a discipline (because dogma can't be changed), but that until something gets changed, it will be asserted by many to be a dogma.
Is the prohibition on birth control a discipline or a dogma?
Is the list of what constitutes a mortal sin a discipline or a dogma?
Is the requirement to attend mass every Sunday a discipline or a dogma?
Is breaking a discipline, or merely disagreeing with it, a mortal sin?
The more precise and legalistic we get about these things, the more we get into a bash-trap of contradictions. Truth is, Jesus didn't spell it out. God, apparently, spelled out a great number of detailed rules for Jews, but not for everybody else. Is the prohibition on pork for Jews a discipline or a dogma of God? Would it be binding on Christians BUT FOR the Christian dispensation?
If folks in the same Catholic ark with me were not sometimes so absolutely hellbent on proving their political points by wielding the cudgel of infallibility so often, I would be less inclined to press the point. But as it is, I must.
Is the Catechism infallible? Discipline or dogma? How do we know the difference?
What about the parts in it condemning the death penalty and war? Discipline or dogma?
Does the answer to that question repose on what we personally choose to believe, or is there a single, correct, definitive answer which one can apply to each sentence in the catechism?
I think Jesus was very wise not to leave us any written words.
I don't think I can help you, then.
SD
"But if I do that, how will I know what's infallible and what isn't?"
"Your story has become tiresome."
It's tiresome because there's no answer to it and it's no fun being reminded of that.
He's already decided.
What motivating factors act upon him to cause him (or give him reason) to do this or that?
God does not react to various stimuli and alter His actions. He does not do "this or that," He does what He set out to do before the universe existed.
He is the Uncaused Cause.
SD
"Generally speaking, a discipline is something we do, while a dogma is something we believe."
Is dogma infallible and discipline changeable?
Is the Catechism dogma or discipline?
Is the part in the Catechism that rejects the death penalty in the modern world, and opposes war in all but the most limited of circumstances (which the Church said were not satisfied in Iraq) dogma or discipline?
I take this to mean that at present, limbo is in limbo.
LOL...
No. It's just tiresome.
LOL....and my life.
Sainthood is an often misunderstood concept. The Church does not "create" saints. Saints are anyone who is in Heaven. Sometimes the Church does an investigation - when they are sure that the person is in Heaven - they declare them to be a saint.
They do a very thourough investigation that takes years and usually decades.
The term "devil's advocate" comes from this process. The Church appoints someone to be a "devil's advocate" to bring up every little point or argument that would raise doubts about if the candidate really went straight to heaven or not.
Once the chruch determines that they are certain the person did go straight to heaven - they declare their sainthood. The Church is not creating the saint - they are merely reporting it.
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