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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went.

oogle’s ambitious 80-acre “Downtown West” campus project has been put on hold indefinitely as the tech giant faces its most severe cost cuts in its history, leaving San Jose’s downtown area in limbo. CNBC reports that as Google with its most severe cost cuts in history, the internet giant’s ambitious 80-acre “Downtown West” campus project has been put on indefinite hold, leaving San Jose’s downtown area in limbo. The construction project, which was estimated to have an economic impact of around $19 billion, has been put on hold, and there has been no communication with the contractors about when it...

Dialogos Institute to Hold Colloquium on Limbo The Dialogos Institute, an organization devoted to the study of the patristic heritage in the spirit of Latin and Byzantine Thomism (about which we have reported in the past) is holding its second colloquium 30th June - 1st July 2017 in Ramsgate, England. The topic is “Limbo” and the speakers are Dr Lawrence Feingold, Fr Andrew Pinsent, Dr John A. Demetracopoulos, Fr Johannes Maria Schwarz, and Dr Alyssa Pitstick.  The topic of Limbo is of particular importance to those who wish to defend the Catholic tradition, as it has come under particularly strong attack...

Confused how some Catholics can be labeled "Pelagians"? Recently, there's been a lot of fingerpointing at traditional Catholics. Some of it is the same old, same old (insert stale Pharisees joke here). Some of it, however, is very new and very confusing. Some Catholics have recently been identified -- more than once -- as "Pelagians." This will undoubtedly bolster the morale of other Catholics while, yet again, making life next to impossible for the traditional-minded parish priest who is, now more than ever, being accused by his flock of putting himself "above the Church" by his devotion to reverence in...

Thousands were promised spots first in line for special visas to the U.S., but the process has slowed to a crawl. Now the Iraqis, targeted for death because of their service to America, can only wait. Reporting from Baghdad— He rarely leaves his house. He's been shot at by gunmen in a passing car. He gets death threats over the phone. "Traitor," the callers say. "American agent." Tariq, 27, is a quick-witted, tech-savvy Iraqi who tosses off idiomatic American English phrases such as "I'm outta here" and "That's cool." When he served as an interpreter for the U.S. military, Tariq...

There has been a crowded field of suffering created by the Great Recession, in which $14.5 trillion of American wealth vanished. Baby Boomers have lost retirement funds, while Generation X–ers have lost out on some peak earning years. The biggest losers, though, have been the Millennials. According to the 2010 census data released last week, many of them have literally lost their future. The media have taken to describing the 18- to 29-year-olds who will ultimately bear the brunt of the economic downturn as the “Lost Generation.” It’s the haunting turn of phrase that Ernest Hemingway credited to Gertrude Stein,...

For her first assignment of the school year, Verona Gill, a $100,000-a-year special education teacher whom the city is trying to fire, sat around education offices in Lower Manhattan for two weeks, waiting to be told what to do.Verona Gill was suspended from teaching. For her second assignment, she was sent to a district office in the Bronx and told to hand out language exams to anyone who came to pick them up. Few did. Now, Ms. Gill reports to a cubicle in Downtown Brooklyn with a broken computer and waits for it to be fixed. Periodically, her supervisor comes...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – After several years of study, the Vatican's International Theological Commission said there are good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven. In a document published April 20, the commission said the traditional concept of limbo – as a place where unbaptized infants spend eternity but without communion with God – seemed to reflect an "unduly restrictive view of salvation." The church continues to teach that, because of original sin, baptism is the ordinary way of salvation for all people and urges parents to baptize infants, the document said. But there...

TAGUM CITY, Philippines (UCAN) -- Ester Berayo never really believed the little she had heard about limbo, but all seven of her children were baptized within six months of their birth as a kind of "protection." Baptism is "like an armor you give to infants to ward off spirits," Berayo told UCA News on April 24. Infants are favorite targets of "mischievous elements of the other side," so baptizing them serves as a kind of "protection," she explained. The health worker in La Filipina, a village 945 kilometers (about 590 miles0 southeast of Manila, also volunteers as a catechist once...

The recent Vatican report prepared by the Vatican's International Theological Commission concludes that the so-called teaching on Limbo "reflects an unduly restrictive view of salvation." The report generated a few dramatic headlines, but will not have much practical effect Catholic life. Nevertheless, the report is worth some reflection. First of all, as the report argued, Limbo was never really a doctrine, that is to say, something officially defined by the Church's magisterium. While certainly it was a popular teaching and many older Catholics accepted it as Catholic belief, technically belief in Limbo was in the category of a theological opinion...

“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....

CHICAGO/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Election politics is hobbling the budget process in states like Illinois more than usual this year, as lawmakers try to square dire government balance sheets with voter resistance to spending cuts and tax increases. The outcome of this fine balancing act could shift control of more state legislatures to the Republicans after the November 2 vote, dealing a major setback to President Barack Obama and his once-resurgent Democratic Party. The stakes are no higher than in Obama's home state of Illinois, a political bellwether and the industrial and financial heart of the U.S. Midwest. The state,...

Click the music link and sing along! BAD NEWS FOR BARACKTune: "Limbo Rock" Original MIDI Every lib'ral boy and girl All the folks in Limbaugh World Both sides bashing on Barack All find something they can mock Track his numbers, track his polls Track the unemployment rolls All the pollsters on the block Say it's bad news for Barack He'll go lower now He'll go lower now How low can he go First he spread the wealth around Then he bowed down to the ground Spend a trillion, make it three Spend it like it grows on trees Track his...

A CUF member asks…What happens to aborted babies at death? Are they considered martyrs? Are they admitted directly into heaven?We don’t know what happens to aborted babies. In hope we commend them to God’s infinite Love and Mercy.Theologians are working on the answer. Recently, the International Theological Commission  came out with a document, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised (April 19, 2007), that provides an extensive overview of the matter, and a conclusion:“Our conclusion is that the many factors that we have considered above give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptised infants...

Limbo and the Gospel Out of Season By Robert T. MillerThursday, June 21, 2007, 6:28 AM Back in October, I wrote in this space about how the Vatican’s International Theological Commission (ITC) was preparing a document on the fate of unbaptized infants that, by some accounts, would say that such infants are saved and enjoy the beatific vision. I noted then that the Catholic Church has never taught de fide on this topic, and I argued that the ITC’s taking the position rumored would be a serious mistake. The reason, I said, is that the Scriptures are simply silent...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In its recent document on unbaptized children, the Vatican's International Theological Commission demonstrated how church teaching can be responsive to changes in theological thought, Christian beliefs and the "signs of the times." The document, published April 20, critiqued the traditional understanding of limbo, arguing instead that there was good reason to hope unbaptized babies who die go to heaven. Some people saw that as a reversal of a centuries-old Catholic principle. But rather than announcing a radical break with the past, the commission said it was assessing an issue in theological evolution. The very first sentence...

The Pope Banishes Limbo Saturday, Apr. 21, 2007 By AP/NICOLE WINFIELD Article 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...

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...

SACRAMENTO — Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has spent nearly $1 million defending himself against a federal probe into whether he illegally funneled money to family and close associates. But more than two years after the harsh light of suspicion first fell on the 61-year-old Oakland Democrat, the FBI investigation appears to have fallen quietly into a black hole of obscurity. The flurry of subpoenas flying out of FBI offices in San Francisco has slowed to an apparent stop. There haven't been any publicly acknowledged FBI interviews of witnesses since last summer. Images of FBI investigators carting off computer...

No date set for N Korea nuke talks From correspondents in Beijing November 29, 2006 09:15pm THE US, China, and North Korea agreed today to reconvene six-nation talks on dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs "as soon as possible", China said, without giving a date. A statement released by China's Foreign Ministry said envoys from the three nations held "frank discussions" on the issue in Beijing today. "The three sides agreed to strive to convene the next round of six-party talks at an early date and to achieve positive progress," said the statement, which gave no other details. It was not...