Father Cantalamessa on Limbo and the Unbaptized

ROME, JAN. 24, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A commentary by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, published Jan. 6 in ZENIT, prompted questions about the status of unbaptized children who die.

The topic has been under the consideration by the International Theological Commission, at the urging of Pope John Paul II (see ZENIT, Oct. 7, 2004).

Father Cantalamessa, the preacher to the Pontifical Household, offered these further reflections on the topic.

* * *

Some readers have said that they are perplexed by my affirmation that unbaptized children will not go to limbo but to heaven, which I expressed in my recent commentary on the Gospel of the feast of Christ's Baptism, published by ZENIT News. This gives me the opportunity to clarify the reasons for my affirmation.

Jesus instituted the sacraments as ordinary means to salvation. They are ordinarily necessary and people who can receive them and refuse are accountable before God. But God didn't bind himself to these means. Also of the Eucharist Jesus says: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man you shall not have life" (John 6:53), but this doesn't mean that anyone who has never received the Eucharist is not saved.

Baptism of desire and the feast of the Holy Innocents are confirmations of this. Some may counter that Jesus is involved in the death of Innocents who died because of him, which is not always the case of unbaptized babies. True, but also of what is done to the least of his brothers Jesus says: "You have done it to me" (Matthew 25:40).

The doctrine of limbo has never been defined as dogma by the Church; it was a theological hypothesis mostly depending on St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin and was abandoned in practice long ago and theology too now dismisses it.

We should take seriously the truth of God's universal will for salvation ("God wants everybody to be saved," 1 Timothy 2:4), and also the truth that "Jesus died for all." The following text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church seems to hold exactly the same position:

"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. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism" (CCC, 1261).

I don't think that to affirm that unbaptized babies are saved will encourage abortion. People who neglect Church doctrine on abortion are scarcely concerned about other doctrines of the same Church. Even if there were grounds for such a fear, the abuse of a doctrine should never prevent us from holding it.

I must confess that the mere idea of a God eternally depriving an innocent creature of his vision simply because another person has sinned, or because of an accidental miscarriage, makes me shudder … and I am sure would make any unbeliever happy to stay away from the Christian faith. If hell consists essentially in the deprivation of God, limbo is hell!

Fr. Cantalamessa is absolutely wrong to claim that CCC §1261 supports his position, which, recall, is that "The fate of children who are not baptized is no different from that of the Holy Innocents." Whereas the CCC holds out a hope for their salvation through some miracle, as perhaps an enlightening of the intellect to allow an unbaptized child to deliberate about himself and "then direct himself to the due end" (St. Thomas, Pars Ia-IIae q. 89 a. 6 corp.) and thus be saved through baptism of desire, Fr. Cantalamessa affirms that they are saved just as the Holy Innocents. The CCC hardly envisions such a certainty as being possible, and hence affirms: "All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism," an urgency cancelled out by Fr. Cantalamessa's theory!

I must confess that the mere idea of a God eternally depriving an innocent creature of his vision simply because another person has sinned, or because of an accidental miscarriage, makes me shudder … and I am sure would make any unbeliever happy to stay away from the Christian faith.

It is puzzling how Fr. Cantalamessa makes such an assertion, in light of the the historical fact that the missionary efforts of the Church were perfectly effective in the past two millennia. "The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude" (CCC §1257). And how can Fr. Cantalamessa call unbaptized infants innocent, when the Church affirms that they are stained with the guilty of the sin of Adam? "Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the 'death of the soul'. Because of this certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin." (CCC §403)

If anyone denies that infants, newly born from their mothers' wombs, are to be baptized, even though they be born of baptized parents, or says that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins, but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam which must be expiated by the laver of regeneration for the attainment of eternal life, whence it follows that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins is to be understood not as true but as false, let him be anathema, for what the Apostle has said, by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned, is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood it.
For in virtue of this rule of faith handed down from the apostles, even infants who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this reason truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that in them what they contracted by generation may be washed away by regeneration.
For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Pope Paul III, Council of Trent, Decree on Original Sin)

Wow. This guy is just mind-bogglingly heretical. One wonders where to begin.

Some readers have said that they are perplexed by my affirmation that unbaptized children will not go to limbo but to heaven

If unbaptized children go to heaven, then either the Sacraments are of no use, but are mere symbols (didn't Trent have something to say about this???), or one can only be lost as a young child be receiving the Sacraments and then sinning, which, if it were the case, it would of course be better to go unbaptised. Jesus instituted the sacraments as ordinary means to salvation. They are ordinarily necessary and people who can receive them and refuse are accountable before God. But God didn't bind himself to these means.

Yes he did though! If He hadn't done so, there would hardly be a purpose to Christ coming and giving us the Seven Sacraments. We are bound to the Sacraments as is God. It is not as though God could not do things another way, but He has chosen to reveal to us only that He has decided to do things in one specific way - the Sacramental system.

Also of the Eucharist Jesus says: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man you shall not have life" (John 6:53), but this doesn't mean that anyone who has never received the Eucharist is not saved.

The Eucharist is a necessity of means for salvation, since the reality of the Eucharist is union with Christ and His Church, outside of which no one is saved. Little children after Baptism desire the Eucharist through the intention of the Church, just as they profess the faith through the Church's profession for them.

The doctrine of limbo has never been defined as dogma by the Church; it was a theological hypothesis mostly depending on St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin and was abandoned in practice long ago and theology too now dismisses it.

Is Original Sin no longer the doctrine of the Church? Apparently not according to Fr.

We should take seriously the truth of God's universal will for salvation ("God wants everybody to be saved," 1 Timothy 2:4), and also the truth that "Jesus died for all."

So why is insisting on a need for evangelical work and encouragement of infant baptism not seen as "taking this seriously", while specious liberal pontifications that empty dogma and liturgy of all meaning are?

But God does nothing of the sort. God isn't some cruel Person who is constantly seeking out His creatures to punish because of some misfortune of circumstance. God damns no one to hell. If someone is in hell, it is because that is where they wished to be, despite the effort on God's part to recall them to Truth. It is not as though God pushed them into the bottomless pit and lake of fire, and they could do nought else.

They jumped in, willingly, still sneering at God as they plummeted down, giving him the finger, so to speak, as they sank into the fire.

As to God, He is, after all, Love. If someone who has died is in torment, it is because they made themselves unable to bear the vision of the Glory of God, not because God is an eternal torturer. God warned them in every way possible what would happen if they persist in sin and then die and come before Him. He put the law in their hearts, and inscribed the fear of punishment and desire for reward.

The true misfortune here is that when we are conceived, we are deprived of grace, and thus, consigned to an eternal separation from God due to the foolish choices of Adam and Eve barring the intervention of God. That is of course why God sent His Son for us, so that we and our children need not suffer this fate any longer.

If hell consists essentially in the deprivation of God, limbo is hell!

Hell consists essentially in depriving oneself of God, shutting ones eyes to His vision and ones heart to His grace. Hell is our choice. God is not depriving anyone of anything. God is everywhere, so he is certainly also in Hell, as the Psalmist says. The unfortunates in Hell though, are burning because "Our God is a consumming fire" (Hebrews 12.29). They made their lives a mess of stubble and kindling, and so they burneth in the same fire that refines and glows within the saints.

Little children cannot make choices, of course, since their minds are not yet fully rational. So they are completely exempt from the experience of Hell. They too come before God. (How could they not? Can they possibly go somewhere that God is not?) And God in His mercy gives them an existence of natural happiness fitting to their state as neither wicked nor good, shielding them from the ill-effects of existing in His presence without benefit of grace. When we speak of unbaptized infants being deprived of the vision of God, that is what is really meant - they are deprived not only of the Light of Glory, but also and more importantly, of the Lake of Fire that would otherwise consume them forever.

The saint sees God and rejoices. "The Glory of God lights it up, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof" (Revelations 21.23). The sinner also sees God but he cannot see the Glory, only the fire that burns him, being "tormented with fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels, and the Lamb" (Revelation 14.10). The innocent cannot see God, he can only sense his goodness and beneficience in the fact that he exists and is loved, even if he cannot fully participate on account of what is for him his own good. He can never be one with the blessed, but he is not tormented alongside the wicked, even as he shares their lot of eternity apart from the society of the blessed.

When I had time today, I searched the net for his sermons. I didn't read one which suggested to me he was a heretic. In fact, they were radical; in a good way.

Of course there are dozens of "he is a heretic" links to the various schismatic and sedevacantist(sedeprivationist?) sites which condemn him but all I really need to convince me he is not heretical is to realize he has been preaching to Johannes Paulus Magnus and Pope Benedict, and I consider their Doctrinal and Theological Bona Fides vastly superior in quality to the schismatics, heretics, freaks and moonbats who constantly war against the Magisterium, and I think that if they thought Fr. C, was a heretic they'd send him off on a trip somehwere

We live in a time when far too many trust the personal opinions of radical schismatics and are skeptical of virtually every action of our Popes.

IOW< those accusing him of heresy see things JP and Pope Benedict don't. I think when one severs his connection from the Body of Christ he reveals himself as lacking the qualifications to judge whether or not one is a heretic.

I understand your position is diffrent. I also understand you are very bright. I think if you carefully reconsider what he preached you will see it isn't heresy.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.