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 .
Who says? Was that decided at some Council or other? If so, jolly good idea.
Some grave inconsistencies here, though. We were taught that unbaptized babies were on the direct flight to Limbo. But, that good and holy people (perhaps like those pre-Christian Patriarch Fellows ... although the "pre" has me stumped) who were not Baptized Christians, either through invincible ignorance, or birth in some curséd heathen land, could make it to the Big Leagues in the Sky, right alongside us!
Frankly, I'm suprised to hear that, as the eventual annihilation of the soul sounds heretical IMHO and I wouldn't have expected that to be a position within Orthodoxy. I'd have to look up Justin Martyr et al. to divine what he was saying, but off the cuff, he may well be right that the human soul is not naturally immortal; but it is possible that it remains so by divine Fiat nevertheless.
Let me do some more homework on this. :)
My MIL "baptized" my son (with holy water from my deceased grandmother) at 3 weeks. She felt the same way. In some ways it made me feel better too :) The first holy water that touched my baby was from my Gram :) So she will watch over him forever.
That's pretty funny. It's like saying the Scripture isn't Scriptural. Believe me I've been around the mulberry bush a few times on this whole thing. I realize that oral tradition was very important BEFORE we had the Word written down but now that we've got it pretty much in print (for just a little while anyway), it's pretty safe to say that while it may not encompass EVERYTHING, if we do cling to the Scripture alone, we can feel pretty confident that the truths in there are okay.
I stand corrected. Anselm was the key theologian to begin the process of distinguishing original sin from actual sin in the West, describing orginal sin as privation of righteousness, not as actual, freely chosen sin. He laid the groundwork for further distinction between the two by the scholastics of the 12th and 13th centuries. But he did not take the next logical step and argue for a non-hell limbo fate. That step came in the 1200s with Innocent III and the scholastics.
Regarding Innocent III--at issue is whether what the CE quotes from the Decretum refers to hell or not--not suffering pain, being deprived of the vision of God-- is that a description of the antechamber of hell or of the antechamber of heaven. I say the latter.
Won't happen, the doctrine is Biblically sound and supported.
No worries. Abortion can NEVER be accepted by the Catholic Church.
So, if you want to formulate it that original sin apart from Christ's redemption condemns to hell, fine. But Christ's redemption is an accomplished fact so original sin alone, in infants before the age of reason and before actual sin, does not condemn to hell because Christ's redemptive sacrifice saves them from it and they don't/can't accept or reject his redemptive sacrifice. After the age of reason, actual sin condemns to hell unless the sinner chooses to accept Christ's redemptive sacrifice. It comes out the same in the end but yes, your formulation is more precise.
I think Biblically possible is a better description. Yes there are a handful of passages that can be read so as to support it, but there are equally posible disenting opinions on them. (This is why the Orthodox doctrine on the afterlife overlaps but isn't identical to the Catholic one)
Limbo has never been declared an official teaching. But it was the subject of speculation, and that speculation is not that it was a punishment, but rather that it was a state of natural happiness (as opposed to supernatural bliss).
That was my point. Limbo, if it were true, would not be a punishment.
SD
I think the two of you are confusing the Limbo of the Fathers (aka Abraham's Bosom) with Limbo for the unbaptised innocents. Two different ideas. The first is well founded doctrine. The latter has always been theological speculation.
SD
If they abolish limbo, what happens to all of the souls in it? Are they displaced, recycled, or what?
Oooh, yes, that's clever. Reducing theological speculation to cute one-liners is obviously a sign of superior intellect.
SD
No. The concept is to make a personal sacrifice on Friday. This draws your mind to God and obviously his loving grace to you.
Arafat got a Nobel Peace Prize as well. Methinks that is not a very good measurement. ;)
Good point.
There's no need to have an infallible list. The very nature of the claim that a teaching can be known to be infallible if it meets the criteria of Vatican I precludes the need for a list. Anyone can go through the teachings and make his own list of those that meet these criteria.
In cases where this or that theologian has challenged the infallible nature of this or that document, he sends a dubium to the CDF, e.g., in the case of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Of course, even when the CDF replied to the dubium saying OS was infallible, the opponents of OS refused to concede. Or if a group of people or a movement arise to challenge the infallible nature of this or that document, eventually the bishops in council respond or the CDF responds with an instruction or the pope responds with an encyclical. If he or they think the controversy can be settled by reiterating authoritative teaching without all the markers of Vatican I infallibility, they do so. If the controversy is such that the heavy guns need to be brought, they are brought out--e.g., the three clearly marked infallible assertions of Evangelium Vitae. A teaching is known to be infallible if it has the markings of an infallible decree.
If controversy arises, a confirmation can be issued. But even if a council drew up a list of infallible teachings and proclaimed the list itself infallible, those who reject the concept of infallibity would, of course, challenge the infallibility of the infallible list. This leads nowhere.
So, you wanted a list. There are dozens. Most are by private theologians (Ott, Denzinger) but some are official church documents, the two catechisms. The two catechisms are authoritative lists. That's enough for most people. It would be possible for the Church to issue a list and surround it with the markers that would designate it an infallible list. That has not yet been done because it has not been thought necessary because the people who employ this too-clever-by-half maneuver that you are employing really don't need to be dignified with an infallible list when authoritative lists exist. And even if you were dignified with being given what you ask for (an infallible list), all you'd have to do would be to question it's infallibility because there's no infallible list of the infallible lists.
Indeed, the very language you use is misleading. Decrees by themselves are not infallible. Teachings are. A document can contain both infallible and fallible stuff. Evangelium Vitae is a good example. Most of it is fallible but three clearly designated formal pronouncements are infallible. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis declared that the doctrine that only men could be admitted to ministerial priesthood was irrevocable because the Church had no authority to change it. Because some people thought this did not meet all the criteria of Vatican I, they challenged it; the response was, it's infallible even though the language is not the same as the language used for the teaching on the Assumption in 1950. It's infallible because of unbroken practice and dominical institution.
So, to ask for a list of infallible decrees itself misunderstands infallibility. You want a list of infallible teachings. The teachings are embedded in documents. Denzinger pulls out the nuggest of authoritative teaching in each case. Ott describes them and to some degree pulls them out but also indicates levels of authority. The Catechisms restate the teachings, those of all levels of authoritativeness.
There's no substitute for reading and studying these compendia because only in that way will you learn what is greatly authoritative, what is very greatly authoritative and what is infallible.
Either accept the authoritative lists of infallible (and noninfallbile) teachings--the two catechisms or admit that no list could ever really be finally authoritative for you. For the rest of us, the two catechisms do just fine. And Ott and Denzinger offer very useful guidebook for dummies who can't see the de fide markers embedded in the actual infallible documents themselves.
Purgatory most certainly is Biblical.
I think they're given a $2000 debit card and put up in hotels in the Houston area...
Im not catholic but I agree not one man save Christ deserves Paradise!
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