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 .
You should check out the Protestants then. They updated the faith already many centuries ago.
I know the feeling.
I had a difficult labor. My son swallowed amniotic fluid and was kept in the neo-natal intensive care. Although I was in a religious-based hospital, they kept saying baptism wasn't necessary. I was at my wits' end. After 12 years of Catholic school, I didn't know what I'd do if he died w/o being baptized.
They finally sent me a priest who talked to the doctors and said my son's problems were momentary and due to the birth, nothing long term (the docs could have said that, but that would have been too much like right, huh?). I didn't need an emergency baptism in the hospital, we could do it later. Whew.
Fastforward 12+ years later, I converted to Judaism and can't even fathom the idea of original sin or God punishing a little baby by sending it to Limbo. I'm glad the Church may be getting rid of the concept.
Never saw it. Ping ME!
Yes, but how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
And the RCC's are madly trying to catch up.
To say that the baby's soul is in some eschatological playground, never to be reunited with the mother, is not a pastoral response.
To say that God's love and compassion reaches out to infants, since God wants to draw all men to Himself, and that these little souls are with God is as good an answer as any.
What part of the Gospel does Our Lord say that, for those who sin against the Holy Spirit, there will be no forgiveness, "in this world or the next"?
Was He referring to Purgatory?
Why don't they want the Pope listening to Rush?
Very good, D. My only quarrel with what you have said is that Origen had a notion that nobody really went to hell because God wouldn't allow it. It was one of the notions for which he was condemned.
Perhaps the Mormans have it correct and we can baptise them after they have died since baptism of an infant requires no free will choice on the part of the infant while alive.
True. And nothing unholy may enter heaven. So those who die in a state of grace (without mortal sin on their souls), yet possess an attachment to sin, will be purified before entering heaven "as through flames."
1 Corinthians 3:12-15Consider also:If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.
Matthew 12:32Jesus clearly implies that sins may be forgiven in "the age to come," i.e., in eternity. The classic proof text for Purgatory appears in the book of Maccabees. Luther found the doctrine of Purgatory repugnant, so he threw out the book of Maccabees.And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
2 Maccabees 12:39-45Today Orthodox Jews, for instance, engage in a mourner’s Qaddish for eleven months after a loved one’s death for the purposes of purification.On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs. But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain. They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden. Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.
Finally, the doctrine that all true doctrine is contained in the Bible is not biblical.
And I don't believe an aborted baby is availed to "Limbo".
Okay, that helps a bit. Thanks.
And yet John Paul II, along with his favorite theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar, said that it was not an unreasonable thing to hope and to pray that hell was empty.
Yes but we're not talking about a third state, we're postulating a particular region/state of hell in which the soul can enjoy perfect natural happiness but has not been given the supernatural gift of grace to make living in heaven possible.
No soul can enter heaven save with supernatural grace. But not every soul in hell deserves the natural punishments due to their personal sin. Hence where do we put theem ? Where do we put the babies, whom, as Augustine says , endure a punishment so light that it cannot even really be called punishment at all?
Yeah, yeah, I know! But I've been offline for two days so cut me some slack!
The "top guys" who are the successors of the Apostles? Yes, I take them seriously. You? Not so much.
If you want your pontificating taken seriously by Catholics you might want to learn a thing or two about the subject.
"And yet John Paul II, along with his favorite theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar, said that it was not an unreasonable thing to hope and to pray that hell was empty."
With all due respect to +JPII, that's not reasonable at all, though it may be sensible and beneficial to pray that no more souls go there. The fact is, as +John Chrysostomos teaches, the floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops!
So taking that further, they can say the souls of the aborted unborn departed are almost certainly with God.
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