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 .
My friend, it is precisely *because* of the authority of the Bible that ideas like Limbo are taken seriously.
To wit, maybe you can enlighten us where Abraham and the patriarchs went when they died. In Luke 16:22 we hear of the "bosom of Abraham". Where is that?
Some of those people may attain salvation, though they are in a gravely deficient situation. This is no automatic gimme.
So, why do Catholics contradict the catechism and assert the position that their Protestant interlocutors have to convert to Catholicism or they will not be saved. That is not true, according to the catechism anyway. So why say it?
You do not seem to understand the Cathechism's point on this. Not all ignorance is invincible and it is much better to avail oneself of the sacraments than to willingly and knowingly abstain from them because of an adherence to indifferentism.
SD
Are you suggesting that they are in "Limbo" - if so what right does the RC Church have to evict them?
843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life." 332
Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair. 333
845 To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood. 334
This is hardly a free pass to those of other religions.
SD
Absolutely not. Some of them *may* well have made it to heaven. But if they *did* make it to heaven, they only did so through the Church in some mysterious way that we don't really understand.
Also, even of those millions that went to hell, not all of them suffer eternal torment (which theologians call the "pain of sense"). One can be in hell and *still* enjoy a certain level of natural happiness, and that is the point of this thread.
I am suggesting they *were* yes. The Patriarchs were not in heaven, because Christ opened heaven. Yet they were clearly not deserving of being burned in the fires of hell. So they must have been in a part of hell where *there was no pain or minimal pain*. That's limbo. Of course, the Patriarchs are in heaven now.
if so what right does the RC Church have to evict them?
None whatsoever. The Church has no right to change the reality of the thing, only to divine what that reality is.
They seemed to have divined that you are wrong.
I just go with what Yeshua (Jesus) called it: She'ol (or Hades, which is not the same as what we think of as Hell), on the Abraham's Bosom side (Lk. 16:22, where He confirmed an old rabbinical tradition about the division of She'ol).
**************
Thanks for your part in it, though. I learned much and saved some of your links.
Limbo is obviously where St. Philomena, St. Christopher, etc., went to meet the pre-Christians like Vergil, Cicero, Aeneas, Orpheus and Eurydice, and the Holy Innocents slaughtered by King Herod.
This is the ROMAN Catholic Church, so it is obvious you have to retain some Roman Stuff, which probably makes your kraut-and-wurst Catholics nervous. Limbo is merely the Hades of the pagan era, with a new sign out front. And, a damn great idea!
When we were kids, we thought it an even better idea, as Limbo offered the possibility of avoiding those namby-pamby, rosary-rattling goodie-goodies, who were always pointed out as going straight to Heaven. Yuck!
I have thought that too, so I know where you're coming from. The problem is, that we tend to look as Heaven as a right that has to be rejected by sin, rather than what it really is, a privilege and gift that cannot be earned.
Go back to the Latin definition. Heaven is "supernatural" happiness = super + natura, "above our nature". We can no more naturally live in heaven than a fish can live in the air. Remember all those Biblical passages like "no one can see the face of God and live"? Well, heaven is seeing the face of God. That vision is so majestic it would literally destroy us, unless God granted us the special capacity to withstand it.
For a man to go to heaven, he must be made a new creation. He must be given divine life and the capacity above his own natural existence to see the face of God. This is what the sacraments give us ordinarily, and God can give us extraordinarly even outside of the sacraments.
If a man does not have this supernatural gift, he can still be happy. He can be happy in having enough food, company of his friends, pleasure in his body and the absence of pain. This is Limbo. So when we place babies or unbaptized folks in Limbo, we are not saying they necessarily have to suffer. They may well not suffer at all. They just, in the scheme of things, experience a lesser happiness than the souls in heaven.
And Catholic theology is clear that there are degrees of beatitude. I'm not going to have the supernatural happiness of, say, the Blessed Mother, or St. Francis.
LOL...well, we're not at that point yet, and there are too many past theologians who are in my camp on this one to dismiss that easily.
Nevertheless, if the Church ever proclaims I'm wrong, I'll happily accept it, and change my tune.
You don't know your Bible if you can't find evidence of Purgatory.
PRE-CISELY!!! Brilliantly and succinctly stated.
The Pagan afterlife is the Christian hell. Our heaven they couldn't even conceive of, except perhaps as deification (e.. Romulus, Aeneas).
The first Pope was Peter, not Paul.
"No, I don't believe infants go to hell when they die. I don't have all the answers, but "Limbo" isn't one of them."
Well, if you don't know, then how do you know that Limbo is wrong?
Matthew 18:1-4
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 18:14
In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.
Matthew 19:14
Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
Matthew 8:11
I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
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