![]() ![]() Allowing Limbo to be a hypothesis is the theological equivalent of reforming the liturgy but allowing people to continue attending the traditional Latin Mass, in the belief that it will eventually die out. Rather, it has to find some way to pretend it was all a misunderstanding. Of course, the church would never admit something it was teaching or doing for centuries was dumb. Strictly speaking, the International Theological Commission was only willing to affirm that there are "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." He threw open the gates of heaven for the unbaptized, reversing centuries of church teaching.Īnyone who pays attention to what Jesus says about his Father will have not only strong hope but absolute certainty that unbaptized children go directly to heaven. No good Catholic could question such teaching.īenedict threw it out the window. When I grew up in the 1950s, this was all clearly taught in the Baltimore Catechism along with all the other dogmas we had to accept to be a Catholic. It was also open to the millions of good people who had never heard of Jesus. Residing there were not only unbaptized children but also the patriarchs and other good people from the Old Testament. Limbo eventually came to be seen as a temporary holding area or waiting room at the edge of hell where the unbaptized would be kept until the end of time, when they would be admitted into heaven. For an example, see the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia. Theologians twisted themselves into pretzels trying to reconcile what Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, church councils and others said about Limbo and unbaptized infants. Also debated was whether they would remain in Limbo forever or just until the end of time. They experienced natural happiness but not supernatural happiness. Medieval theologians debated how much innocent babies suffered in Limbo, and as time went on, the consensus view was that they did not suffer at all. This is distinguished from purgatory, where sinners are purified before they go to heaven, and hell, where the biggest sinners spend eternity. Augustine was such a theological giant that there was reluctance to question his teaching, especially when all theologians at the time were men without children.Īround 1300, the term Limbo, from the Latin "limbus," meaning edge or boundary, became used for the dwelling place of the good or innocent dead who were not baptized. Augustine, however, believed unbaptized children would experience the misery of the damned but be consigned to the mildest part of hell. No church father before Augustine thought unbaptized children would be punished. Thus, in the creed when we say Jesus "descended into hell," we are not speaking of the place of eternal damnation but the domain of the dead. We need to remember that for the ancients, hell or Hades was the underworld, the place of the dead. How could God, who is described as merciful and loving in the parable of the prodigal son, do such a thing? Catholic teaching said baptism was necessary to wash away original sin, which we inherited from Adam and Eve.īut sending unbaptized infants to hell seemed especially cruel. The New Testament is full of passages that say baptism is necessary for salvation. Limbo was a theological solution to the problem of what happens to good but unbaptized people after they die. It is not mentioned, for example, in "The Catechism of the Catholic Church." Limbo will become a theological anachronism that historians of theology note but everyone else ignores. Hypothesis or not, no one is going to teach it. Make no mistake about it, though, Benedict killed Limbo just as much as the Second Vatican Council killed the Latin Mass. In other words, you don't have to believe in Limbo, but you can if you want. It no longer must be presented as church teaching. ![]() Many conservative Catholics are upset with Pope Francis, who they complain is changing church doctrine, but they hardly blinked when Pope Benedict got rid of Limbo, a Catholic doctrine that had been taught for centuries.Ĭareful readers will note that rather than closing Limbo, as reported by the media, what the International Theological Commission did under Benedict in 2007 was downgrade Limbo from church doctrine to a hypothesis or theory. ![]()
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