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 .
Jesus Himself followed the Pharisaical tradition, as argued by Asher Finkel in his book The Pharisees and the Teacher of Nazareth (Cologne: E.J. Brill, 1964). He adopted the Pharisaical stand on controversial issues (Matthew 5:18-19, Luke 16:17), accepted the oral tradition of the academies, observed the proper mealtime procedures (Mark 6:56, Matthew 14:36) and the Sabbath, and priestly regulations (Matthew 8:4, Mark 1:44, Luke 5:4). This author argues that Jesus' condemnations were directed towards the Pharisees of the school of Shammai, whereas Jesus was closer to the school of Hillel.Paul was also of the school of Hillel:The Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: 1971) backs up this contention, in its entry "Jesus" (v. 10, 10):
In general, Jesus' polemical sayings against the Pharisees were far meeker than the Essene attacks and not sharper than similar utterances in the talmudic sources.This source contends that Jesus' beliefs and way of life were closer to the Pharisees than to the Essenes, though He was similar to them in many respects also (poverty, humility, purity of heart, simplicity, etc.).
Gamaliel was a grandson of Hillel, doctor of the law and a member of the Sanhedrin. He was held in such high honor that he was designated "Rabban" ("our teacher"), a higher title than "Rabbi" ("my teacher"). The Mishnah (Sota ix.15) says, 'Since Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died there has been no more reverence for the Law, and purity and abstinence died out at the same time.' (p. 451) Gamaliel receives a fair-sized mention in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1985 ed., v. 5, 101): . . . one of a select group of Palestinian masters of the Jewish Oral Law . . . According to tradition - but not historic fact - Gamaliel succeeded his father, Simon, and his grandfather, the renowned sage Hillel (to whose school of thought he belonged) as nasi (president) of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court. It is certain, though, that Gamaliel held a leading position in the Sanhedrin and that he enjoyed the highest repute as teacher of the Law; he was the first to be given the title rabban. Like his grandfather, Gamaliel was also given the title 'ha-Zaqen' (the Elder) . . . . . . (Acts 22:3) tells how St. Paul, in a speech to the Jews, tried to influence them by stating that he had been a student of Gamaliel . . .Gamaliel himself did not rule out the possibility that Christians might be following God (and by extension, be legitimate Jews), for he referred to Peter and other apostles as follows (Acts 5:38-39):'. . . keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!'
They are all born of water. Some might suffer a premature birth or a still birth, but they are all still born.
You are not aware, I guess, that the amniotic sac does not develop until later in the pregnancy. It's hard to imagine that a zygote living off its own energy while impanted into the uterus is somehow in the mother's "water." Do you think uteri are always filled with water?
I also find it hard to believe being scraped or suctioned off of the uterine wall qualifies as a "birth."
SD
Interesting, I didn't know that! Good find!
Wrong. Any baptised Christian may perform a valid baptism. We normally have a priest perform it because he is the representative of the Church whom the baptisee is entering. But in an emergency, anyone can baptise.
And then we would get into "sprinkling."
Don't believe the myths. Catholics don't baptise by "sprinkling." We do by immersion or by pouring.
Nick asked, Can [a man] enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?" (v. 4) Yep, the context of water there is the mother's womb.
No, the context of being born again necessitates the question about the womb. Not the mention of water. Try reading the verses in sequence. Jesus says "you must be born again." Nick says "Can I go back into my mama?" Jesus says "Be born again of water and the Spirit."
Reading them out of order to make the final comment provide context for the earlier ones is not a reliable method of reading.
SD
Indeed. And it was Hillel who said: ""Do not to
others what you would not have them do to you: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it."
Jesus said the same thing about a century later.
" I couldn't find anything in the Summa regarding the impossibility of the annihilation of the damned, but the idea seems to be reinforced by Scripture.
"Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!" "
Maybe annihilation is the wrong word. It implies an outside action or actor. Perhaps it is better to say that the soul simply ceases to exist at the end of time when everything else created passes away. Suppose for a moment that the soul is not, by nature, immortal and that its only chance for immortality is to be united with the only "naturally immortal" One, God. If we in the exercise of free will determine to reject God's grace (I previously used the words "cut off")then we will not become like God. Without theosis, we cannot be "with" God after physical death. Wouldn't this mean the death of the soul also? +Athanasius the Great taught that without the soul, the body is nothing and without the body, the soul can do nothing. It would follow that theosis must be obtained in some fashion and at least to some extent while here in this life since there is nothing the soul itself can do after the body dies to repent or advance in theosis.
" Because we can't really cut ourselves off from that source. If we could, we wouldn't exist anymore."
I shouldn't have said "cut off". We can no more hide from God's grace than a lawn can from the rain. But we can refuse to cooperate with it and that is, in effect in our theosis, the same thing.
"Kierkegaard was right. The only appropriate response to questions regarding the mystery of God is silence.
Throughout the ages, academicians sought to establish themselves as great thinkers, capable of divining the very essence of God, by using reason and constructing with words the answers to unsolvable questions. "Look at me, I've used reason to figure out what God is." To even suggest that one has is ridiculous and tells us more about what the writer thinks of himself than anything about what God is.
God is a paradox. Any knowledge of "it" is inaccessible through reason."
Perhaps.
Perhaps it is so that we cannot reason our way to accurate knowledge about God.
It does not follow, however, that God cannot simply REVEAL such knowledge, and understanding of it to us. I do not mean "some limiting understanding of it either", for that presumes to limit God. If God wants us to understand the whole thing, he is certainly capable of doing that, in an instant. Whatever limitations we have are not barriers to GOD willing whatever he wants. Were God to want to make us all gods in our own right, God could do it in a flash.
He doesn't, because He doesn't want to.
We can't reason our way to the right answers, but there have been people who have simply been GIVEN right answers to various different questions and puzzles, by God, directly through divine revelation. I do not speak here merely of the period of the prophets and the apostles either. There have been Saints since, in ever age, who have talked to God and angels and told us about it.
And the things they tell us, to the extent that God made them clear, are not arrivable at by reason, but are true nonetheless, because they are arrived at by FIAT, God's.
An unborn child cannot receive water baptism either. Unborn babies, and children before they have the capacity to reason that they need redemption, along with severely mentally handicapped people who also cannot reason or respond to conscience in the matter of offense against God's holiness are not accountable. Where there can be no knowledge of sin, there is no accountability.
I did not say anything about my method. I simply wanted to understand what you mean when you say that we must be washed in blood. It appears that either you don't really mean that literally, or you believe that Christ has non-physical blood.
-A8
You are right but wrong. Yes without question Christ's death was sufficient to absolve Christians of their sin. BUT you cannot expect to escape the consequences of your sins. Jesus death on the cross saves us from the ETERNAL consequences of sin. It saves us from ETERNAL damnation. It does not erase the TEMPORAL consequences of our sins.
For example if a person takes drugs and robs banks he causes a tremendous amount of pain and loss to all those who are affected by his actions. He can repent and God will forgive him and he will go to heaven. But in some way he will have to make restitution for the hurt has caused other people. His earthly punishment will be jail time (no matter how sorry he is, and even though he is forgiven by Jesus death on the cross), he still has to pay the earthly consequences of his crimes. In that instance, his jail time IS Purgatory. If he robs the bank, repents and dies before he serves his jail time, then he will go to Purgatory and after he is purged by some suffering, he will go to heaven. Purgatory can be on earth, in the afterlife before entering into heaven OR BOTH.
As St. Paul says, "the person will be saved, but only as through fire. The doctrine makes perfect sense. Our sins have earthly consequences, bad ones. We have to pay them one way or another before we can go to heaven. That's justice. Jesus paid the eternal price for our sins. That's mercy.
You really don't expect to sin and not suffer in any way do you? Of course not. So why would the idea of Purgatory bother you?
Theologian Father William Most says that there are three contexts in the bible when it uses the word "saved>"
1. Saved from eternal damnation.
2. Saved as in becoming a member of the church.
As in, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that he died for your sins, then you can be saved." That is, then you can join the community of believers. Not the same as a promise of a one way non-stop ticket to paradise. He's just saying you fill the requirements to join the church.
3. Saved from earthly peril. As in "Lord save us for we are perishing.
That's purgatory. Your impure works, (wood hay and straw are impure) will burned up in the fires of Purgatory.
And after he has tired you, you shall come forth as gold.
See Protestants believe that that their sins are covered by the blood of Jesus. The sin is still there, but God cannot see them, he only sees the blood of Jesus. But Catholics see the soul as like a tarnished plate. The sins are the tarnish and through the grace of God and the repentance and penance of the sinner, that tarnish is cleaned off. Once it is spotless, the plate is like a mirror and when God looks into it, he sees his own reflection. When the soul reflects God, only then is it fit for heaven. So in Purgatory the soul is cleansed of the last remaining attachments to sin...nothing unclean shall enter into heaven.
It's a perfectly logical doctrine. It is a very consoling doctrine. It also makes one realize that sin has consequences and we must expect to accept those consequences humbly. It seems to me that Protestants want to get something for nothing...salvation with Jesus doing ALL the suffering for their sins. But you have to suffer for your sins too. Either on earth, in purgatory or both places.
"Evangelical Anglican Protestant" ...Protestant Dem#30,001"
ROFL!
And BTW. Not bad pictures on your Homepage! (For a Romish Papist that is)! :)
I will ask you then, kindly:
Are you washed in the Blood of Jesus Christ?
If so, would you mind telling us very specifically in what manner and by what means you were washed in Jesus' Blood?
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