The Pope Banishes Limbo

Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching on limbo, approving a Vatican report released Friday that says there were "serious" grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven.

Theologians said the move was highly significant — both for what it says about Benedict's willingness to buck a long-standing tenet of Catholic belief and for what it means theologically about the Church's views on heaven, hell and original sin — the sin that the faithful believe all children are born with. Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are with original sin and thus excluded from heaven, the Church has no formal doctrine on the matter. Theologians, however, have long taught that such children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness, a state commonly called limbo, but without being in communion with God. "If there's no limbo and we're not going to revert to St. Augustine's teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we're left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace," said the Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. "Baptism does not exist to wipe away the "stain" of original sin, but to initiate one into the Church," he said in an e-mailed response.

Benedict approved the findings of the International Theological Commission, a Vatican advisory panel, which said it was reassessing traditional teaching on limbo in light of "pressing" pastoral needs — primarily the growing number of abortions and infants born to non-believers who die without being baptized. While the report does not carry the authority of a papal encyclical or even the weight of a formal document from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it was approved by the Pope on Jan. 19 and was published on the Internet — an indication that it was intended to be widely read by the faithful.

"We can say we have many reasons to hope that there is salvation for these babies," the Rev. Luis Ladaria, a Jesuit who is the commission's secretary-general, told The Associated Press. He stressed that there was no certainty, just hope. The Commission posted its document Friday on Origins, the documentary service of Catholic News Service, the news agency of the American Bishop's Conference.

The document traces centuries of Church views on the fate of unbaptized infants, paying particular attention to the writings of St. Augustine — the 4th century bishop who is particularly dear to Benedict. Augustine wrote that such infants do go to hell, but they suffer only the "mildest condemnation." In the document, the commission said such views are now out of date and there were "serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision." It stressed, however, that "these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge." No one can know for certain what becomes of unbaptized babies since Scripture is largely silent on the matter, the report said. It stressed that none of its findings should be taken as diminishing the need for parents to baptize infants. "Rather ... they provide strong grounds for hope that God will save infants when we have not been able to do for them what we would have wished to do, namely, to baptize them into the faith and life of the church."

Vatican watchers hailed the decision as both a sensitive and significant move by Benedict. "Parents who are mourning the death of their child are no longer going to be burdened with the added guilt of not having gotten their child baptized," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. He said the document also had implications for non-Christians, since it could be seen as suggesting that non-baptized adults could go to heaven if they led a good life. "I think it shows that Benedict is trying to balance his view of Jesus as being central as the savior of the world ... but at the same time not saying what the Evangelicals say, that anyone who doesn't accept Jesus is going to hell," he said in a phone interview.

The International Theological Commission is a body of Vatican-appointed theologians who advise the pope and the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Benedict headed the Congregation for two decades before becoming pope in 2005.

Matthew 18:10-14:

10"See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.[a] 12"What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost."

I mean, c'mon! How much more clarity do you want?

And this same Thomas Reese was so highly thought of by the Pope that Benedict had him fired from editing the Jesuit paper America as soon as he was elected. If Reese says the sun is rising in the East, look to the West.

Okay, that does it. This pope is entirely too sensible and reasonable, not mention quite conservative. You guys have got to lay off or we Prots and Baptists will have nervous breakdowns. What makes us happy is if a pope behaves much like the evil Emperor in Star Wars, right down to the lightning bolts coming out of his hands. See this picture on the right? Now that's what a pope is supposed to look like. Get with the program, okay? LOL. Just kidding, really. (Good grief, I actually found a site called darthbenedict.com when I went looking for that pic.)

More seriously, I think this pope knows he won't have as much time as JP II. And there are certain issues he wants to steer his church forward on. Not any great upheaval in doctrine. More a streamlining. And not any compromising or useless ecumenizing with other Christian churches but, as in this case, eliminating unnecessary divisions. In this case, he does so by returning to the simple silence of the Word on the fate of infants and young children who die. The Bible is silent so, really, why should we dispute over it? By the time we're old enough and know enough to debate it, we really should know better and should simply say it's in God's hands. And instead of arguing over infants that scripture is silent about, we should be thinking about our own spiritual fate about which the Bible gives a great many grave warnings.

This pope is smart to start removing some of these unnecessary barriers. In facing the Muslim challenge around the world and the decline of Europe, the Christian world needs to stop squabbling over really pointless and dusty theological disputes. This is not to say that theology is unworthy. Merely that some of the theological baggage of past centuries is unhelpful and unnecessarily divisive for both Catholic and non-Catholic followers of Christ. Benedict has a strong grip on demographics and is looking to the future of his church and the other Christian churches as a whole.

I think the thing I would look for as a sign that this is his goal is if he softens or even repudiates the filioque, thus eliminating the single most enduring division between Rome and the Orthodox churches. There is still the matter of his own office and authority to dispute with the East but that would be a very major step. I think it is vital for him to move forward. We in the West must find ways to unify and support the churches of the East as they face persecution. And we must support the human rights of Christians in Asia, particularly in China. We can't do that if we're taking theological potshots at each other while martyrs are persecuted for the faith in the Mideast or in Asia.

He'll probably have to move on filioque in the next few years if he's going to do it. The history of the doctrine, which resulted from a quashing of heresy, is interesting. Like Limbo, the Bible is rather silent on the matter of how the Holy Spirit proceeds. The current Latin recitation of the Spirit proceeding from Father and Son equally was imposed by Charlemagne, not by any pope. So a scholar as sound as Benedict could easily skirt the issue, though not without caution. Christians are charged to be sound in doctrine, not to be faithful to old emperor Charlemagne. We might all squabble over this throne of Peter business but we can all agree easily enough that Charlemagne was certainly not granted the keys to the Kingdom.

Never forget that all our Christian faiths stem from and are rooted in the Holy Mother Church. Protestants are the first major branch. Baptists are just proddies with another name.

We would say that we all stem from and are rooted in the ancient churches and that we are not Catholic because Rome introduced, sometimes rather accidentally, certain doctrines unknown in the ancient churches. The Protestants, following Luther and especially Calvin, adhere to the portions of Augustine's teachings on the utter sovereignty of God which the church of Rome rejects. Catholics and non-Catholics tend to split Augustine right down the middle and then try to bash each other with their half of Augustine. You're probably familiar with this.

Baptists and others believe that the Protestants did not do enough to shake off the man-made traditions that the church of Rome accrued over so many centuries, many of them during the Dark Ages and which were a wellspring of superstitious ignorance or an imposition of unbiblical notions which were used to answer certain unanswerable questions, exactly like this matter of Limbo. Baptists and evangelicals would find fault with Luther on the matter of consubstantiation, something seen as an unbiblical compromise with Rome's transubstantiation.

Understand, I'm not saying any of this to insult you or the Roman Catholic church. But these are historic divisions. And I have to applaud this pope for reducing these in this pronouncement on the teaching of the unofficial doctrine of Limbo. The very fact that it was never taught infallibly and yet hundreds of millions of Catholics know about it and adhere to it to some extent shows the problems involved with such unofficial yet widely taught theological ideas which are readily admitted to be unbiblical.

Me, I'm glad we don't ever have to argue over Limbo again. That's good. And, you know, Catholic parents (and Presbyterian and some other Protestant parents) should not have to worry for a moment if their child should happen to succumb to SIDS or other illness prior to their baptism. It's unbiblical and cruel to cause these persons such anguish where scripture is silent.

So, do you think that Benedict might try to reconcile with the Eastern Orthodox by softening or even renouncing the filioque? I think he has scope to do so. It has divided the East from the West for a thousand years.

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