"Madre di Dio! What next?!"
(A little light hearted humor ... :-)
(A little light hearted humor ... :-)
Getting rid of Limbo? Oh, that Limbo. And I thought we were bending over backwards for a reason!
Excuse my ignorance, but didn't they already do this a couple years ago?
I seem to recall a couple articles on it maybe four, five years ago. Or were they just considering it?
Limbo makes more sense than any other theological opinion about unbaptized babies I've heard.
And, like the limbo of the Fathers, the departed souls of these unbaptized could receive the Word in limbo, and eventually then enter Heaven.
Geez, do I get tired of this kind of idiotic British info-torial, written by people who wouldn't know a Catholic doctrine if it bit them on the butt.
The headline blares out the misinformation that the Pope thinks he can "save souls" (which is a power of God which no pope claims for himself) and the outright fabrication that this clarification of doctrine was made in order to score points off the Islamic world.
You have to go down four paragraphs before The Times even sees fit to mention that limbo is not a dogma of the Church. So the Pope isn't changing Church dogmas after all. Huh.
For centuries, Christian people have wondered what happened to innocent but unbaptized people who died. One scenario was that those who possessed supernatural life attained supernatural happiness (heaven), but those who possessed only natural life, attained only natural happiness (right on the edge, so to speak, of heaven.)
This is what "limbo" (from Latin "limbus," the edge or border) is all about: a hypothesis that there might exist a state of natural blessedness for those who had only a natural capacity for enjoyment.
This is in line with a poetic imagination which delighted in guessing about different circles of heaven corresponding to different degrees of blessedness, and different ranks of angels such as seraphim, cherubim, etc.
It's a benign notion. Not a dogma of the Church (check your online searchable Catholic Catechism --- but a widespread and kindly thought all the same.
Trust the Times of London to put a Pope vs Muslims spin on the most innocent of heavenly thoughts.
Rush Limbo was unavailable for comment.
  |
There won't be trouble until the Pope tells people it isn't really Jesus on their toast or Mary on the wet wall . . . Then the fur will fly! |
It's not part of Sacred Tradition, it's always been a theological speculation. Even if the media understood the issue, they wouldn't report it correctly.
Oh, sorry, I forgot that I'm not a Methodist anymore. Catholic theology isn't determined by popular demand -- at least not for now.
"LIMBO."
Much ado about "NOWHERE."
-Theo