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Pope says fate of unbaptized babies touches important beliefs
Catholic News Service ^ | Oct-7-2004 | Cindy Wooden

Posted on 10/10/2004 4:38:20 PM PDT by Stubborn

The Second Vatican Council's reforms and the new theological challenges it posed placed the question of unbaptized babies on the back burner for most theologians, but many bishops around the world have asked the doctrinal congregation for guidance on the question.


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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- What the Catholic Church believes about the fate of babies who die without baptism is not an "isolated theological problem," but one that touches belief about original sin, the importance of baptism and God's desire to save all people, Pope John Paul II said.

A theological investigation and explanation of what the church believes can help the church have "a more coherent and enlightened pastoral practice" in situations surrounded by pain for the loss of a new life, the pope said Oct. 7 during a meeting with members of the International Theological Commission.

Catholics used to speak about "limbo" as the place where unbaptized babies spent eternity; while they were incapable of committing a sin that would merit hell or require reparation in purgatory, the stain of original sin was believed to keep them from enjoying full communion with God.

According to an Oct. 6 statement, the 30 members of the International Theological Commission took up the question of "the fate of children who have died without baptism" during their Oct. 4-8 meeting at the Vatican.

The discussion, it said, was framed "in the context of the universal salvific plan of God, of the uniqueness of Christ's mediation and of the sacramentality of the church in the order of salvation."

The president of the commission is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Limbo, never officially defined by the church, was a theological concept developed in the Middle Ages that said unbaptized babies would spend eternity in a state of "natural happiness," but would not enjoy the perfect communion with God that comes through baptism into Jesus Christ.

The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" lists "limbo" in the index, but the word does not appear within the text.

The index refers readers to a paragraph (No. 1261) that says:

"As regards children who have died without baptism, the church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them.

"Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children, which caused him to say: 'Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,' allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without baptism," the catechism says.

Sister Sara Butler, a member of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity and professor of dogmatic theology at the New York Archdiocese's St. Joseph's Seminary, Yonkers, said that immediately prior to the Second Vatican Council many Catholic theologians were taking a new look at original sin, limbo and the problem of salvation for unbaptized babies.

Sister Butler said the Second Vatican Council's reforms and the new theological challenges it posed placed the question of unbaptized babies on the back burner for most theologians, but many bishops around the world have asked the doctrinal congregation for guidance on the question.

She said the issue touches on many important practical and theological issues, including "the pastoral care of parents who lose a child" and "what the church hopes for children who do not have Christian parents" and, therefore, have no chance for baptism.

"If you are too positive and say, 'God is so good, he saves everyone,' then you are saying you don't need baptism," Sister Butler said.

For Catholics, and for Christians in general, she said, "baptism is the only sure way we know for salvation," although Christians hope and trust that somehow through Christ's mediation and the work of the church, the good and the innocent who were not baptized also may be saved.

In March, Sister Butler and Barbara Hallensleben, who teaches dogmatic theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, became the first women members of the International Theological Commission.

Sister Butler told Catholic News Service that she and Hallensleben were welcomed to the commission along with the other new members, but were not singled out as the first women theologians appointed to the body. Nor were they asked to provide a "woman's perspective" on the topics discussed, she said.

"In this case, the lay people who are parents were the ones who would have had something special to say," she said.

During his Oct. 7 meeting with commission members, Pope John Paul also applauded their decision to take up a study of natural moral law.

"It always has been the conviction of the church that God gave man the ability to arrive, with the light of his reason, at an understanding of the fundamental truths about his life and his destiny and, concretely, at the norms of correct action," the pope said.

1 posted on 10/10/2004 4:38:20 PM PDT by Stubborn
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To: Stubborn

What does baptism do?


2 posted on 10/10/2004 4:42:12 PM PDT by RedBloodedAmerican
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To: Stubborn
While I understand the burden of Original Sin, I've never understood how an infant who never had the opportunity to be Baptized, or missed the opportunity because the Child's parents were slow to act doesn't present a clear exception to the rule.

And what about those who are not ministered to by a Missionary or Priest, who nevertheless have been touched by the Holy Ghost and believe? Even if their belief is not accompanied by full immersion in dogma, mainly due to an inablity to receive The Word. What happens to those people?

3 posted on 10/10/2004 4:52:04 PM PDT by AlbionGirl ("Concupiscence darkens the intellect." For those so occluded: "Sin makes you stupid.!")
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To: RedBloodedAmerican

Baptism is a Christian sacrament, and the theology of it is that it removes original sin. The child, once baptised, becomes a Christian and can enter into eternal life.

Some Protestants challenged infant baptism, at the time of the Reformation, saying that it ought to be a choice taken by an adult (as it seems to have been in Gospel accounts.)

There are Protestant sects such as the Quakers, who do not believe in baptism, or any other sacrament.

The Eastern Orthodox Christians do not hold to the doctrine of original sin, therefore see baptism having a different significance - of welcoming the child into the church community, and santifying it. But in their view, the child was not damned by original sin before the ceremony.

The baptisms in Gospel narratives were closely related to the Jewish practice of immersion in pure water, as a gesture of repentance from sin and rededication for prayer. If continued in this form, baptism would have become a practice whereby Christians practiced it often throughout their lives. But that faded out, and it became a single ritual performed by the clergy.


4 posted on 10/10/2004 5:06:42 PM PDT by BlackVeil
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To: AlbionGirl; BlackVeil; RedBloodedAmerican

"Original Sin" is an Augustinian concept which, as Black Veil points out, is not and never has been accepted in the Eastern Church. The Roman doctrine of Limbo is an outgrowth or natural consequence of that theology. Thus while the Roman Church teaches that Baptism is fundamentally about wiping out that "Original" sin, the Eastern Church teaches in its hymnology among other places that "All those who have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ.", become members of the Church, the Body of Christ on Earth.


5 posted on 10/10/2004 5:49:50 PM PDT by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: RedBloodedAmerican

Through Baptism, Original Sin is taken away, we then become adopted children of God and heirs to heaven.


6 posted on 10/10/2004 6:18:47 PM PDT by Stubborn (It Is The Mass That Matters)
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To: Stubborn
Limbo, never officially defined by the church, was a theological concept developed in the Middle Ages that said unbaptized babies would spend eternity in a state of "natural happiness," but would not enjoy the perfect communion with God that comes through baptism into Jesus Christ.

This is not correct. From the Catholic Encyclopedia,

It is principally on the strength of these Scriptural texts, harmonized with the general doctrine of the Fall and Redemption of mankind, that Catholic tradition has defended the existence of the limbus patrum as a temporary state or place of happiness distinct from Purgatory.

7 posted on 10/10/2004 6:41:14 PM PDT by Land of the Irish
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To: AlbionGirl
Many folks love to want to believe (I am not knocking them) as you - that God's mercy will allow an exception to the rule. Only thing is, God does not change His rules as "the rule" - perhaps "the exception", but should we simply depend on Him to change His rules for our convience or peace of mind?

Any way, I would challenge that thinking with this: If He were to change His rule at all, it would need to be that new borns did not have Original Sin and therefore they go straight to heaven if they die unbaptised

If He allows exceptions, what are the absolutes and where does it stop?

And what about those who are not ministered to by a Missionary or Priest, who nevertheless have been touched by the Holy Ghost and believe? Even if their belief is not accompanied by full immersion in dogma, mainly due to an inablity to receive The Word. What happens to those people?

This is also a common question, I liken it to "what about the ignorant native in darkest Africa who never heard of God?

The short answer is that they will go to hell, OTOH, were God to see that they truly were sincere in their desire to know and love Him, He would, in His Divine Providence (btw also a defined dogma) send someone to Baptise and minister to them. IOW, He will never allow a sincere soul to die without the Sacraments, even if it means a miracle, after all, what is a miracle to God? This is God's Divine Providence. I disagree that God will make exceptions at our whim.

Most people seem to think that Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who is the Infinite God, never thought of or foresaw the predicament of "the native" living in 2004. And yet, in some later conversation, the same people will reassure themselves that "the hairs of our head are numbered," and - "He marks the sparrow's fall."

People generally were not taught, and so have no idea, of the rapid growth of the Church during the lives of the Apostles. They do not know that before the death of the last Apostle, St. John, the Faith had been brought to every part of the known world. This world-wide spread of the Faith is called "the miracle of diffusion." When the modern Catholic thinks of the early Christians at all, he thinks of them as being only a few in number, and that few as the poor and illiterate. But that is not so. The Church had great successes, even in its earliest days. In the centuries following the age of the Apostles, the Church continued to grow, despite the wholesale persecutions.

We know, then, that long ago the Faith was held and lost, in these lands where it had flourished so gloriously. Now, loss of Faith is always culpable. It is always man's fault, that is, when he has lost his God-given gift of Faith. That is the clear teaching of the Church. It is by man's sins - whether of neglect, sloth, indifference, worldliness, selfishness, vice - that he no longer believes.

And - and this is the significant fact with regard to the native - the sins of the fathers are visited upon their sons. "Like father , like son" is repeated for our reflection and chastisement in the stories of the human race in all generations. The sin of Adam and Eve is the "original sin" with which every child comes into the world, every man's inheritance from a sinful father. The sons of Cain were wicked men, as was their father. The cities of Babylon and Jerusalem tell that tale. Chanaan was cursed for the sin of his father, Cham. And on and on it goes. The men who followed Luther and Calvin, John Knox and Henry VIII, passed on to their children their sin. Their children are the Protestants of our day, whose fathers lost the Faith for them.

8 posted on 10/10/2004 6:55:31 PM PDT by Stubborn (It Is The Mass That Matters)
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To: Land of the Irish

Good catch! The article is, after all, novus ordo.


9 posted on 10/10/2004 6:57:07 PM PDT by Stubborn (It Is The Mass That Matters)
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To: Kolokotronis; AlbionGirl; BlackVeil; RedBloodedAmerican
"Original Sin" is an Augustinian concept which,

Oh, really?

"If in the case of the worst sinners and of those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from Bpatism and grace, how much more, then , should and infant not be held back, who, having but been recently born, has done no sin, except that, born of he flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he approach more easily to receive the remssion of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another." (St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 64, AD 251)

"The sin of Adam deservedly passed on to all his posterity because they were begottne of him." (St. Pacian of Barcelona, Sermon on Baptism, AD 392)

And more.
Didymus the Blind: "that sin, which, indeed, all who are descended from Adam contract in sucession." (Against the Manicheans, c. AD 380)
St. John Chrysostom: "'For just as by the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners' ... What does the word 'sinners' mean here? It seems to me that it means liable to punishment and condemned to death." (On Romans, 10, AD 391)
St. Ambrose: "The sin of Adam deservedly passed on to his posterity, because they were begotten of him ..." (Sermon on Baptism, AD 392)
St. Athanasius: "When Adam transgressed, sin reached out to all men." (Discourses Against the Arians, 1, AD 360)
etc., etc.

I suppose you claim this is pre-Augustine Augustinianism? The Pelagians said that too.

"Since by transgression of the first man the whole progeny of the human race is vitiated, no one can be freed from the condition of the old man except by the Sacrament of the Baptism of Christ." (Pope St. Leo the Great, Epistle 15)

as Black Veil points out, is not and never has been accepted in the Eastern Church.

Really? So you believe that little children are born sanctified? That is the only alternative to believing that they are not, which is what the Roman Church teaches, and which is the meaning of original sin.

The Roman doctrine of Limbo is an outgrowth or natural consequence of that theology.

Ah yes. So of course, this is why it finds its first expression from St. Gregory Nazianz? Clearly a papal hack theologian.

"Others are not in a position to receive it, perhaps on account of infancy, or some perfectly involuntary circumstance through which they are prevented from receiving it, even if they wish. ... [they] will neither be glorified nor punished by the righteous Judge, as unsealed and not yet wicked, but persons who have suffered rather than done wrong. For not everyone who is not bad enough to be punished is good enough to be honored; just as everyone who is not good enough to be honored is bad enough to be punished." (Oration on Holy Baptism, 40.22-23, AD 381)

Thus while the Roman Church teaches that Baptism is fundamentally about wiping out that "Original" sin, the Eastern Church teaches in its hymnology among other places that "All those who have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ.", become members of the Church, the Body of Christ on Earth.

Actually, the Roman Church teaches the same thing. "Wiping out original sin" means infusing the infant's soul with grace. Original sin means the child is born estranged from Christ and lacking in the sanctifying grace and original justice with which our first parents were endowed with, but lost.

Similarly, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception means that Blessed Mary, at the moment she was concevied and given a soul by God, that soul was also infused with grace to link her to Christ in God. In other words, she was saved at conception, and became Christ's then, rather than being saved at Baptism.

Simple question, do you believe little children come into the world with or without grace infused in their souls?

10 posted on 10/10/2004 7:06:56 PM PDT by Hermann the Cherusker
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To: Land of the Irish

Re-reading your post, I do not agree with the encyclopedia. I always understood that Limbo was eternal. I don't understand how they can say otherwise.


11 posted on 10/10/2004 7:15:49 PM PDT by Stubborn (It Is The Mass That Matters)
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To: Kolokotronis; Hermann the Cherusker

***Original Sin" is an Augustinian concept which, as Black Veil points out, is not and never has been accepted in the Eastern Church.***



How does the Eastern Church interpret the following...


"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned-- for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come."
- Romans 5


and...


"For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. "
- I Cor 15


12 posted on 10/10/2004 7:25:41 PM PDT by PetroniusMaximus
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To: Stubborn; AlbionGirl

***Many folks love to want to believe (I am not knocking them) as you - that God's mercy will allow an exception to the rule.****


Does your position mean that EVERY unborn child who ever existed will never see the face of God? (Being as it is impossible for them to be baptized).


13 posted on 10/10/2004 7:29:43 PM PDT by PetroniusMaximus
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To: Hermann the Cherusker

Too bad you don't read Greek, Hermann. Augustine formulated the Western concept of original sin, the "guilt" of Adam's sin being inherited. The East holds and held that we have inherited a fallen nature, a propensity to do sin, from Adam. Each person's sins are his or her own. It is not a legalistic, guilt thing.

Its getting late. Perhaps more later, if there's an interest. This is an extensive and complicated subject but one probably worth investigation because these differing beliefs about what the sin of Adam really means for us goes to the heart of a number of theological differences between the East and the West.

.


14 posted on 10/10/2004 7:31:15 PM PDT by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: PetroniusMaximus

In a nutshell, the first is that we have inherited a corrupted nature which leads to sin and death from Adam, but not any guilt from Adam's sin. Every man's sin is his own.

As for the second, let me quote from the Pascal Liturgy: "Christ has risen from the dead, by death trampling down death, and bestowing Life to those in the tombs!"

Any help?


15 posted on 10/10/2004 7:41:21 PM PDT by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: Kolokotronis

Simple question again, are the souls of newly concevied unborn children infused with grace or bereft of grace?

This has nothing to do with reading Greek, and it cuts directly to the heart of the matter.


16 posted on 10/10/2004 7:43:25 PM PDT by Hermann the Cherusker
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To: Stubborn

Moses and Abraham did not spend eternity in Limbo, yet, they were never baptized.


17 posted on 10/10/2004 7:47:15 PM PDT by Land of the Irish
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To: Land of the Irish
That's why there is the distinction between Limbus Patrem and Limbus Infantium.
18 posted on 10/10/2004 9:20:27 PM PDT by Blessed Charlemagne (http://www.angeltowns3.com/members/romanist/index.htm)
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To: PetroniusMaximus
Thats correct. Every unborn child who dies without Baptism as well as every infant or child who dies before the age of reason without first being baptized will never see the face of God - because they come into this world with sin i.e. the sin of Adam. I do not see how it can be otherwise - unless God, who is "the same yesterday, today and forever", changes His law of the NT.

Thats why since only baptism can give a child certain access to Heaven, that the Church teaches (taught) the importance of infant baptism for every child without undue delay, so much so that in an emergency, anyone can perform the baptism.

The Eccumenical Council of Florence (1438-1445) states: Holy baptism holds the first place among all the sacraments, for it is the gate of the spiritual life; through it we become members of Christ and of the body of the church. Since death came into the world through one person, unless we are born again of water and the spirit, we cannot, as Truth says, enter the kingdom of heaven. The matter of this sacrament is true and natural water, either hot or cold. The form is: I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit. But we do not deny that true baptism is conferred by the following words: May this servant of Christ be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit; or, This person is baptized by my hands in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit. Since the holy Trinity is the principle cause from which baptism has its power and the minister is the instrumental cause who exteriorly bestows the sacrament, the sacrament is conferred if the action is performed by the minister with the invocation of the holy Trinity. The minister of this sacrament is a priest, who is empowered to baptize in virtue of his office. But in case of necessity not only a priest or a deacon, but even a lay man or a woman, even a pagan and a heretic, can baptize provided he or she uses the form of the church and intends to do what the church does. The effect of this sacrament is the remission of all original and actual guilt, also of all penalty that is owed for that guilt. Hence no satisfaction for past sins is to be imposed on the baptized, but those who die before they incur any guilt go straight to the kingdom of heaven and the vision of God.

With regard to children, since the danger of death is often present and the only remedy available to them is the sacrament of baptism by which they are snatched away from the dominion of the devil and adopted as children of God, it admonishes that sacred baptism is not to be deferred for forty or eighty days or any other period of time in accordance with the usage of some people, but it should be conferred as soon as it conveniently can; and if there is imminent danger of death, the child should be baptized straightaway without any delay, even by a lay man or a woman in the form of the church, if there is no priest, as is contained more fully in the decree on the Armenians.

19 posted on 10/11/2004 4:01:11 AM PDT by Stubborn (It Is The Mass That Matters)
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To: Land of the Irish
Baptism is the Sacrament of the New Law, instituted by Christ, sometime in the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension.

Moses and Abraham were subject to the old laws or the laws of the OT, Baptism was not a requirement in the OT because it was not instituted yet.

20 posted on 10/11/2004 4:23:00 AM PDT by Stubborn (It Is The Mass That Matters)
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