Vatican Considers Dropping "Limbo"

ANSA.it ^ | 11-29-2005 | unknown

[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 .

[manwiththehands]

"Nobody deserves paradise except through the merits of Christ."

Agreed. Limbo is a silly idea. Either we avail ourselves to the merits of Christ or we don't.

[impatient]

More and more, theologians are adopting the notion that God gives every soul, at the end of its life, the "option" of choosing God or refusing him. They extend that to unbaptized infants and adults as well.

Then perhaps limbo isn't an actual state of being, only a theological Uncertainty Principle: "Where are they? Only God knows, we can't"

For something that isn't Catholic doctrine, it's suprising how ancient the idea is nevertheless.

[Larry Lucido]

It gets worse. There are some Calvinists (probably a minority) who hypothesize that God predestines infants who die before or very shortly after birth to eternal damnation or paradise based on His own whims. Some crap about how anything else being an affront to His Sovereignty.

[My2Cents]

So, let me get this straight....If "limbo" is dropped from Catholic theology, that means that the Catholic Church has been in error about this teaching for some 7+ centuries....Which prompts the question: what else does the church teach that's in error?

[ErnBatavia]

If you ever, ever, ever find that pic of Bubba oogling the Limbo dancer...ping me!

[AGreatPer]

"God already knows the choices you are going to make because he is not a corporeal being."

God doesn't know jack. That is why he made us the way we are.

On Limbo, this was a painting in a man's mind. Nothing more. It doesn't exist.

All humans go directly to heaven except the ones that understand the 10 commandments and go against them.

[Sonny M]

Is there any connection between this new stance on limbo and the church's stance on abortion?

I think their is.

I'm surprised there isn't more folks noticing that "limbo" links with the issue of abortion in a clear way.

[ErnBatavia]

There is a limbo picture I could post, but as far as my status on FR, I'd be in purgatory.

Hey, I can speak from experience...the suspension is only a long weekend, if you grovel properly via FReepmail to JimRob.

[eastsider]

I'd be surprised, too, and I'm sorry for any confusion my previous post might have caused. I was merely pointing out that the reason the word limbo was treated as it was in the document was not due to any sort of theological embarrassment -- which is the impression I got from the article-- but because the word limbo by itself is ambiguous. That's why "The statement referred merely to 'the Fate of Children who Die Without Baptism.'"

[Larry Lucido]

Infants don't avail anything. They're infants. God either provides for them or He doesn't. I'm convinced He does.

[bonfire]

If limbo is not P.C. anymore, then how long will the RCC stick with purgatory?

I just love these "updates"!

[ShadowDancer]

Okay, well, I have no idea what to even say to something like that. That's goes beyond absurd.

[sinkspur]

Christ must be chosen by you, not for you, otherwise you haven't made any commitments to him.

I suppose that's why entire families (including infants) were baptized from the first days of the Early Church. Should we allow an infant to starve because he can't make a conscious choice to go to the refrigerator and get his formula? Christ works through His Baptism, even in infants.

Given that God is the alpha and omega, he already knows if you will make the choice to be baptized and can make his judgement based on that knowledge.

This is a strange statement. The reality is that the infant dies, yet you say that God knows how he/she would have made the decision to be baptized. That's a very convenient leap for you to make. However, wouldn't it be easier to just baptize the child?

[Dionysiusdecordealcis]

The whole problem originated in the belief that original sin condemned to hell, which was only asserted by some Western theologians, including Cyprian and Augustine, because they thought Romans 5 required it (in part because of the way the pre-Jerome Latin translations rendered the Greek). It would be unjust of God to condemn to hell infants incapable of choosing deliberately to turn from him. The Eastern tradition always limited the word "sin" to "actual" (freely chosen) sin, which does condemn to hell, justly so. In the West the word sin was applied to the original condition stemming from Adam and Eve. Beginning with Anselm and then Innocent III, it was made clear that original "sin" does not condemn to hell. Until that point, "Limbus" was the place of the "righteous" pre-Christ believers, who were set free from Limbus by Christ's descent into Limbus.

Once that was clarified, the problem shifted--what does happen to unbaptized, original "sin"-saddled infants if they don't go to Hell for eternity? Limbus (Limbo) was one answer--a place free of suffering (hence not Hell) but short of heaven/beatitude.

It was in fact never, ever given any kind of official dogmatic status. That the nuns and priests taught it to children as if it were dogma doesn't make it dogma, it just makes them bad catechists.

Whether there can be two kinds of "heaven" or not is the issue. I'm with Benedict XVI in thinking that something that's not really heaven but isn't hell makes little sense.

So, get over it--we can live without Limbo. What's really going on here is completing the logical theological development set in motion when Anselm challenged the notion that original sin condemns to hell--that one could spend eternity in hell when one had never deliberately chosen against God. Officially getting rid of limbo actually completes the process of making clear that we do not believe that God is a monster who sends people to hell who have not freely chosen to disobey him, that original "sin" is not sin in the same sense that "actual sin" is, that we truly believe in free will.

It completes a process of finally getting the East and West on the same page regarding original "sin" and it clearly distinguishes Catholic belief on this from Calvinist damnation of of infants. If you do not believe in human free will but rather that God predestines the reprobate to hell without any role for their free will, then you'd have no problem with infants going to hell. But from the very early Church onward, Origen and all the fathers insisted that we truly are free to choose for or against God, and they asserted this in the face of deterministic, non-free-will Graeco-Roman philosophies. So to get rid of Limbo even as an option actually brings about a consistent defense of free will in Catholic theology, brings it into line with Eastern Orthodox theology and makes clearer the huge gult that separates both of them from Calvinism.

For all those reasons, I say, good riddance to Limbo.

[Larry Lucido]

God already knows the choices you are going to make because he is not a corporeal being.

Seems to me God was disappointed several times throughout Biblical history. Even regretted decisions He had made from time to time. Hard to be disappointed if you always knew the outcome in advance.

My hypothesis is that, when God delegates decision-making via free will, He doesn't cheat and peek at the answers.

[Dionysiusdecordealcis]

The whole problem originated in the belief that original sin condemned to hell, which was only asserted by some Western theologians, including Cyprian and Augustine, because they thought Romans 5 required it (in part because of the way the pre-Jerome Latin translations rendered the Greek). It would be unjust of God to condemn to hell infants incapable of choosing deliberately to turn from him. The Eastern tradition always limited the word "sin" to "actual" (freely chosen) sin, which does condemn to hell, justly so. In the West the word sin was applied to the original condition stemming from Adam and Eve. Beginning with Anselm and then Innocent III, it was made clear that original "sin" does not condemn to hell. Until that point, "Limbus" was the place of the "righteous" pre-Christ believers, who were set free from Limbus by Christ's descent into Limbus.

Once that was clarified, the problem shifted--what does happen to unbaptized, original "sin"-saddled infants if they don't go to Hell for eternity? Limbus (Limbo) was one answer--a place free of suffering (hence not Hell) but short of heaven/beatitude.

It was in fact never, ever given any kind of official dogmatic status. That the nuns and priests taught it to children as if it were dogma doesn't make it dogma, it just makes them bad catechists.

Whether there can be two kinds of "heaven" or not is the issue. I'm with Benedict XVI in thinking that something that's not really heaven but isn't hell makes little sense.

So, get over it--we can live without Limbo. What's really going on here is completing the logical theological development set in motion when Anselm challenged the notion that original sin condemns to hell--that one could spend eternity in hell when one had never deliberately chosen against God. Officially getting rid of limbo actually completes the process of making clear that we do not believe that God is a monster who sends people to hell who have not freely chosen to disobey him, that original "sin" is not sin in the same sense that "actual sin" is, that we truly believe in free will.

It completes a process of finally getting the East and West on the same page regarding original "sin" and it clearly distinguishes Catholic belief on this from Calvinist damnation of of infants. If you do not believe in human free will but rather that God predestines the reprobate to hell without any role for their free will, then you'd have no problem with infants going to hell. But from the very early Church onward, Origen and all the fathers insisted that we truly are free to choose for or against God, and they asserted this in the face of deterministic, non-free-will Graeco-Roman philosophies. So to get rid of Limbo even as an option actually brings about a consistent defense of free will in Catholic theology, brings it into line with Eastern Orthodox theology and makes clearer the huge gult that separates both of them from Calvinism.

For all those reasons, I say, good riddance to Limbo.

[TC Rider]

What say you Mon? No limbo?

/jamaican accent

[adiaireton8]

Which prompts the question: what else does the church teach that's in error?

Apparently, either you have never erred, or you are a complete skeptic.

-A8

[Larry Lucido]

Yes, way beyond. Fortunately hardly anyone actually believes it, but I'm amazed at some who even speculate about it.

[Republican Red]

When I was a kid, Limbo used to scare the bugeebee's out of me.

I sure hope those souls that have been there get some sort of reparation. lol

Reminds me of an old George Carlin bit about Vatican II and seemingly arbitrary rules and regulations that changed overnight.

Carlin joked that the no-meat-on-Friday rule had been done away with, but, mused Carlin, “I’ll bet there are still people in hell doing time on a meat rap”