Posted on 05/19/2007 6:54:46 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
“Several sources in the secular press have suggested that the Catholic Church recently tossed out an article of faith known as ‘Limbo,’" wrote Natalie Kigerl in the May 18 Tidings, the newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese. Sources in the Catholic press, however, have suggested such a doctrinal change --- including Notre Dame University theologian, Fr. Richard McBrien, in an article published in the same issue of the Tidings.
Kigerl is a registered nurse in the OB/GYN department at Kaiser Permanente, a professed member of Alhambra’s Order of Secular Discalced Carmelites, and a parishioner at St. Mary’s church in Palmdale. From her nursing vantage point, she said she can see why the question of the fate of unbaptized infants who die, especially “through abortion, in-vitro fertilization, and the many forms of implantation-preventing contraception,” is so important. “In 23 years of OB nursing,” she said, “I have yet to find words to express the deep sorrow felt by everyone in the delivery room when a baby is stillborn. I have yet to understand why things like this happen.”
Yet, Kigerl noted, “undoubtedly, notions of a U-turn in Catholic doctrine are not issued from sources that have actually read the document, or have a clear understanding of definitive Catholic teaching and doctrinal development.” Though, she noted, the Church has never formally defined Limbo, she pointed out that documents like that of the International Theological Commission, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized, “are not considered official expressions of the Magisterium, but only serve in an advisory role.” In fact, the April 20 document merely “supports prayerful hope for infants who die without baptism to enter Heaven” and “does not preclude the theological possibility of Limbo.”
An important clarification, said Kigerl, is that “hope for the unbaptized does not in any way abolish the reality of original sin, or render the sacrament of baptism unnecessary for infants.” Rather, “Christian parents should do everything in their power to ensure that the children receive baptism as soon as possible after birth. This is a serious obligation with very grave implications.”
McBrien, on the other hand, wrote of the “profound uneasiness, if not even panic” of “traditionalist” Catholics when they discovered that “Limbo was no longer on the Church’s radar screen.” These might deny, he said, “that the Church had, in effect, changed its teaching on the matter.”
But McBrien goes further. “In the end,” he said, “the elimination of Limbo raises questions not only about the necessity of baptism, but more fundamentally about the nature of Original Sin.”
“What if we are all born permeated with the presence of God, which is grace, and which is ours to lose only later in life by sin?” asked McBrien. He noted that the commission’s theologians said that theologians have put too much emphasis on our “solidarity with Adam” rather than with Christ. And, said McBrien, “as the ITC notes, the Greek Fathers had no idea of inherited sin or guilt, so central to the West’s concept of Original Sin. Yet the Greeks were no less Catholic than we are.”
This is “something surely to think about,” concluded McBrien.
Anything that comes from US Catholic theologians is, in my opinion, suspect. The Pope will hold the line.
Why anybody would consider Richard McBrien a Catholic theologian is beyond me.
Limbo was never considered doctrine. It was an attempt by theologians to explain the fate of those who had not actually sinned but who had not been baptized. Church teaching has always allowed for proto baptisms replacing actual water baptism. These are baptism by blood and baptism by desire. Perhaps acknowledging that babies who die without being baptized in water are not denied eternal life in Glory should be called baptism by innocence.
No Catholic doctrine has changed. The doctrine of original sin is just that a doctrine and can not be changed. We all inherit the sin of Adam and must be saved from it by Christ. The sin of Adam has left its mark on us and on the world. Only in Christ can we ever erase that mark.
The patristic mindset will be a beautiful novelty when it is again rediscovered by the Latin laity.
-A8
Hey, maybe I could make a living as a Catholic Theologian! It appears that any dingbat can, and I’m as batty as the next one.
That’s no joke. We have a ditzy lady who does “vibrational healing,” is always making statements about the glories of Celtic pantheism, and holds a PhD from some Catholic university. So she refers to herself as “Dr. [first name]” and adds in parenthesis, “Theologian.”
And then of course there is the do-it-yourself mysticism class, taught by some elderly liberal nuns who holed up in a house owned by one of them, decided they were not only theologians but mystics to boot, and now give classes in being a mystic.
I think we need a little quality control here.
Doctrines evolve; dogmas don't change. Until +Augustine (4th century) the Latin Church did not teach Original Sin. We do not inherit Adam's sin; we inherit the effects of his sin – propensity to sin, not guilt. Because of Adam's sin, our defective will and fallen nature tends towards sin, but until we sin we are guilty of nothing of our own doing.
Therefore, a child is innocent. So, yes, Limbo and Original Sin are very much interrelated, yet they were not taught by the Greeks then and they are not taught by the Orthodox to this day. You can't throw out Limbo without somehow revisiting the Original Sin.
Blessed Augustine interpreted Rom 5 in Greek, specifically the words ho pantes hemarton, as ‘in whom [i.e., in Adam] all men sinned’ but the Greeks read it as ‘because all men sinned.’
The Greek interpretation places the responsibility on each individual who commits sin. The Augustinian version suggests that we inherit the sin and not the propensity to repeat it and mortality that follows.
We will be judged for what we have done, for our deeds, as Christians. Only we can commit our sin, and only we can repent of it. We can not be born "guilty" of someone else's sin.
Gee, Thanks! We Orthodox keep forgetting that in order to be “Catholic” these days one needs to venerate such Marian apparitions as half eaten toasted cheese sandwiches and set up shrines to greasy pizza pans and damp stains on bridge abutments. And those nuns of ours; why no matter how hard we try, we can’t seem get them to don pants suits and march with your girls in pro-abortion rallies wearing rainbow sashes! As if that weren’t enough, we just can’t convince the Patriarchs to kiss the Koran notwithstanding JPII’s example and when someone suggested that they get with the whole syncretist thing by letting Hindu priests worship goddesses at our churches and incorporate scantily clad dancers and fairies with long ribbons on sticks in the Divine Liturgy, why those old fogies nearly had a stroke. No, you’re right, A8, the Orthodox aren’t “Catholics” anymore.
Maybe when some of your “theologians” convince some pope to infallibly raise Panagia to the 4th person of some new Trinity as “Co-Redemptrix”, thus saving the world from certain destruction by a very pissed off BVM, (and assuring the multiplication of those images of Mary in cheese sandwiches) we Orthodox will all come to our senses, dump the Divine Liturgies and Byzantine and Slavonic and Arabic chant, grab our guitars and become “real Catholics”.
I don't remember either Limbo or the Original Sin being subjects of any Ecumenical Councils as Church dogma. The Arians and the Copts stopped being catholics when they denied a dogma.
Last time I checked, the individual excommunications against the bishops of Constantinople and Rome in 1054 have been "committed to oblivion" 910 years later, which means that our theological differences are not those outside the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church but within it. Which is to say, the "Greeks" are still catholic.
From that article,
What if we are all born permeated with the presence of God, which is grace, and which is ours to lose only later in life by sin? Why is such "good news" so disturbing for some? Why does it make them angry toward anyone who even suggests the possibility? Why is our solidarity with Adam in sin a more important value for such Christians than our solidarity with Christ in redemption?
As the ITC notes, the Greek Fathers had no idea of inherited sin or guilt, so central to the West's concept of Original Sin. Yet the Greeks were no less Catholic than we.
From my limited understanding of Greek spirituality, the concept of inherited guilt is accurately presented in the second paragraph, but the statement in the first paragraph doesn't sound anything like Greek spirituality. It also doesn't sound like anything remotely Biblical either. This does not surprise me coming out of the mouth (typed out of the fingers) of McBrien. He is a heretic of the first order.
The actual document from the International Theological Commission is here. Now I didn't go through that document, in depth, just for lack of time on my part, but a couple of things of note:
Anyway, it looks like an interesting document, but it is, as is noted, a bit long.
Don't read more into what I said than what I said. I'm simply pointing out that the conditions for being "just as Catholic as we are" are not time independent. The Council of Trent's decree on original sin is now Catholic dogma, even if it wasn't Catholic dogma prior to 1546. You and I will disagree about that, because you do not recognize Trent to be an ecumenical council, while Rome does. I'm not trying to stir up a hornest nest, but at the same time you can't expect those of us under Rome's authority to deny that original sin is Catholic dogma.
-A8
“From my limited understanding of Greek spirituality, the concept of inherited guilt is accurately presented in the second paragraph, but the statement in the first paragraph doesn’t sound anything like Greek spirituality. It also doesn’t sound like anything remotely Biblical either. This does not surprise me coming out of the mouth (typed out of the fingers) of McBrien. He is a heretic of the first order.”
You are absolutely correct in all respects. By the way, this article appeared a few days back in our local paper. My secretary’s husband, a theologically well educated if a bit rigid Roman Catholic, wrote a blistering letter to the paper, a great portion of which was pointing out that McBrian is indeed a big heretic.
Beyond that, as Kosta points out, The Church in the East never accepted the Augustinian notion of Original Sin. Baptism is the Mystery of “initiation” into The Church and does indeed cleanse the person of any sins he or she does in fact have, but of course infants have no sins, at least not of commission or omission. As for what hapens to them after death, well in Orthodoxy we commit them, as we do for all the deceased, to God’s limitless mercy. The idea that they are condemned to hell, however, is completely foreign to orthodoxy.
“The Council of Trent’s decree on original sin is now Catholic dogma, even if it wasn’t Catholic dogma prior to 1546.”
Interesting that such an innovative “dogma” wasn’t necessary for the previous 1100 years of Church history and that Rome only promulgated such a thing 400 years after it split from the other four ancient Patriarchates. At any rate that dogma would seem to make a liar out of +BXVI in more ways than one, especially when it comes to his long held views about what The Church is and who is “in”. It further would suggest that +BXVI doesn’t believe in the “Ecumenical” character of the Council of Trent anymore than we Orthodox do.
Wow. I’m surprised at you, K. You just lost a lot of respect and cultivated good will with that tirade.
It shouldn’t surprise you that people, when opining about religion, tend to speak from the standpoint that they believe their confession’s position is the “correct” one. We can disagree about our differences without debasing ourselves in the fashion you just did; there are plenty of other folks here on the FR Religion forum I would expect that from, but not from you. That was ugly.
If you object to a certain condescending tone, fine, by all means point it out. But don’t wallow in the mud while you’re doing it, and don’t suppose you yourself have never come across as condescending to us Catholics about “purity of Orthodox belief” from time to time.
We have *way* to much in common to be slinging mud at each other in front of our much more separated brethren here on FR. Let’s all take a ten minute break and read Matthew 18 again, especially the parts about scandal and keeping personal differences under wraps when possible.
I'm sure you have heard of the Socinians.
-A8
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, in my understanding (again, correct me if I'm wrong), the Eastern understanding is that baptism confers a "grace" that did not exist in the individual prior to that point. Rather than, as the Augustinian theology, original sin being a sin imparted through our parents, there is a hole there. Something missing (i.e., the Spirit), that is imparted to the individual in baptism, regardless of age. Is that the correct understanding of the Eastern spirituality on the subject?
Aahh, perhaps that is the clue. I do not know this man/ name.
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