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I can relate to what you were taught re unbaptized babies going to limbo. Yes, the nuns taught this along with everything else we were required to believe as Catholics. I do not remember limbo, for one, as being separated from the other teaching. It was not presented as a "theory" to be believed or not.

I don't recall the teaching of whether Jews could enter heaven but I don't doubt you at all.

I came home from grade school one day in a very sad state. We were told in religion class that those who were not baptized could not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Thanks, sister. You made my day. My Dad, whom I loved so much, was a Protestant, and I was just told that he was not going through those pearly gates when he died.

I don't recall what plans the Catholic Church had for him at that point, but he would not be with God!

For anyone who chooses to excuse or deny the pain caused (and believe me, I know those who suffered other pain and humiliation), by passing it off as "that's the way the nun's could be"...well, all I can say is, those people are the ones with the closed, trapped minds. They will somehow, somewhere find any excuse because their conscience will not allow them to have an independent thought on this subject.

Whatever the nuns taught in their schools was the responsibility of the Church. The nuns shouldn't be the only fall guys for what was permitted, sanctioned.

The fact that many of these nuns were neither very bright nor very educated was revealed once the restraints came off after VatII and they felt they could go berserk and start on enneagrams and warmed-over feminism. Those girls still aren't very bright, but now they are teaching an entirely different type of error. I don't know if you spend much time around churches anymore, but if you do, you will see that the same dim but power-crazed sister is now virtually in charge of the parish and spends her time hosting little "sharing services" where people hold hands and stare into candle flames or sing about peace and luv.

One of the great hopes at the start of the Council was that it would produce a sort of Trent-style renewal of Catholic teaching and teachers. Doctrines were not going to be changed, of course, but they were to be expressed in a better way and the teachers who taught them were going to be helped to understand and convey them somewhat better. Unfortunately, just the opposite happened: doctrine virtually disappeared and the teachers (religious or lay) were allowed to wing it with content-free books and no supervision from anybody with an IQ over 50.

I have hopes that this will again change, and that after 40 miserable years, we will finally get to some genuine renewal. It looks to me as if the teaching area is something that this Pope is very interested in developing.

Don't feel bad there are a$$holes in the world and they love telling children and others horror stories to make them sad. They feel very superior to have all that knowledge and they just know you need it.

I remember my Baptist uncle telling my father straight up that he was going to hell because he had been baptized a Catholic. I just thought he was stupid but I was lucky to have the faith of a child at that time.

When my brother died when I was 12 my father was inconsolable and in the hearse on the way to the burial he was crying and I told him not to worry that my brother was in Heaven. My Catholic uncle chose that very moment to disagree with me. I couldn't believe that he would say such a thing at such a hard time. I just glared at him and said "He's in Heaven."

Neither of those guys were being good Christians at that time but I would never pass judgement on their souls.