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Dear bornacatholic,

Uh... I'll take... what's behind... Door #3!!

Seriously, I don't know.

I accept what the Catechism says - we entrust these souls to the mercy of God, Who is good.

Hermann's explication of "limbo" (or whatever one might wish to call it) seems reasonable enough, but it's just a theological speculation. Objections that state that it doesn't make sense that the unbaptized are placed at a disadvantage to those who are baptized seem reasonable enough. But frankly, the same complaint could be made vis a vis baptized babies versus persons permitted to come to and grow past the age of reason.

The objection is this: "If one believes that an unborn child who dies without the benefit of baptism goes to Heaven, then aborting the unborn guarantees them the Beatific Vision, and is a great gift. That cannot be."

Okay, I got that. But if that's the objection, that it puts the unbaptized unborn child at greater advantage to the born and baptized, then why not this objection:

"If one believes that a baptized baby, should he die prematurely in infancy, is assured of salvation, then infanticide of baptized babies guarantees them the Beatific Vision, and is a great gift. That cannot be."

None of us hold that infanticide is a good thing, yet all of us believe that, God forbid, if a baby were to die immediately following baptism, he would obtain the Beatific Vision. Look even at how I write that! "...yet all of us believe that, GOD FORBID"!! It's a horror to think! Yet it flows as logically as the previous statement to which the analogy is offered.

Certainly, in a human way of thinking, the baptized baby who is murdered is at an advantage to the human person who grows to maturity.

Which is why I think that God hasn't told us what happens to unbaptized babies. Because although it will all make sense when we are permitted to behold Him, because it will all make sense once we see clearly, rather than in the mirror darkly, it cannot make sense to us now, limited as we are by time and space, our intellects and souls still attached to sin and darkened by it, our lack of union with God.

My own belief is as follows: it may very well be that somehow God has some way of saving unbaptized babies, of providing them with sanctifying grace to overcome original sin. Yet, it is also advantageous to be baptized, and thus, we should be eager to baptize.

Or, perhaps, we're asking the wrong questions from the wrong perspectives, and we'd do better if we asked the right questions. But perhaps we might not even know the right questions in this life. I kinda suspect that those of us who get to Heaven will say, "Oh my! How obvious! Why didn't I think of that?? My way of thinking about the whole thing was really quite convoluted!!"

As to just what we will know then, well,..., uh..., just what is behind Door #3?

sitetest

I posted at length on this when the issue first came up early this month. The Catholic church does not dogmatically teach that unbaptized infants do not go to heaven. Augustine and Cyprian said they go to hell but were not speaking dogmatically (could not do so); they were corrected by Innocent III etc.. Limbo was never dogmatically taught. Fr. Cantalmessa is not heretical by any stretch of the imagination. Baptism is "necessary for salvation" in the CCC is aimed at those who deny baptismal regeneration. It simply does not address the question of unbaptized infants subject to original "sin" but not subject to actual sin. To attempt to apply it to them to argue they go to hell or to some other state short of heaven is a misapplication. "Necessary" can mean a variety of things, from "fittingness" to absolute metaphysical necessity. It always has to be interpreted by its context.

It is simply a fact that the fate of unbaptized infants has been the subject of immense theological speculation in the West since Cyprian. It is highly significant that even though it was raised by radical Protestants against Calvinists at the time of the Reformation, the Catholic Church did not take a dogmatic position on it at that time except to insist that they do not go to hell. The Council of Trent certainly could have if it had wished to. So the matter was deliberately left undecided.

Those who are critical of the move to "remove" Limbo from Catholic vocabulary often join it with criticism of the position taken at Vatican II on salvation outside the Catholic Church, often a quasi-Feeneyite position. But Vatican II did not innovate on this. Already during the 19thc and even before, papal teaching insisted that only those who deliberately and knowingly leave the Catholic Church for heresy (heresy is deliberate and persistant choice of error) go to hell. Those who never were exposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church (later generations of Protestants who have faith in Christ as God incarnate but who do not even have accurate knowledge of the Catholic Church's ecclesial claims, hence cannot, simply cannot, make a knowing choice for heresy) can be saved and that the "extra" in "nulla salus extra ecclesiam" means deliberately chosen "extraneity" not the accident of birth and education "outside" the visible Catholic Church.

The whole brouhaha about Limbo is a tempest in a teapot. We have better things to argue over. Enough already, let go of Limbo. It was a nice hypothesis. It never had authoritative teaching behind it. Those who claim it did are claiming greater authority to define doctrine than the Church herself claims--claiming to be smarter than the pope. It's just a tad bit wearying to have the former Cardinal Ratzinger lectured to by those who think they've caught him out in bad theology. (And the attacks on Cantalmessa here are in fact veiled attacks on JPII and Ratzinger, the latter being part of the moving factor behind JPII's suggestion that Limbo be consigned to limbo even before JPII died.)