(ANSA) – Vatican City, November 29 – The Catholic Church appears set to definitively drop the concept of limbo, the place where it has traditionally said children’s souls go if they die before being baptised .
Limbo has been part of Catholic teaching since the 13th century and is depicted in paintings by artists such as Giotto and in important works of literature such as Dante’s Divine Comedy.
But an international commission of Catholic theologians is meeting in the Vatican this week to draw up a new report for Pope Benedict XVI on thequestion. The report is widely expected to advise dropping it from Catholic teaching.
The pope made known his doubts about limbo in an interview published in 1984, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal department .
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Limbo has never been a defined truth of faith," he said. "Personally, speaking as a theologian and not as head of the Congregation, I would drop something that has always been only a theological hypothesis." According to Italian Vatican watchers, the reluctance of theologians to even use the word limbo was clear in the way the Vatican referred in its official statement to the question up for discussion. [Source][Via Zadok]
I guess the theological speculation of Limbo is now in Limbo. The question now is where do theological speculations go when they die?
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The question now is where do theological speculations go when they die?
Into the hands of the Church’s attackers who will use this as another ‘example’ of the Church having ‘changed’ its teachings.
Sad, but true, BillyHW
In Limbo, silly!
The Church doesn’t “drop” teachings. If something happens here, it must necessarily take the form of a positive teaching in line with the tradition.
If they do “drop limbo”, that would amount to a positive teaching stating that people can only go to heaven and enjoy the beatific vision, or else suffer in hell; nothing in between.
This issue has to do with children who die without baptism, in the state of original sin but with no personal sin.
The consequence of such a teaching would be that all unbaptized babies who die go to heaven and enjoy the beatific vision. This would be a great consolation to many people who have lost children.
“Where do theological speculations go when they die?”
Theological speculations NEVER die. Or anyway, they never SHUT UP. Even when they’re dead, they still talk and talk and talk and talk. Especially the false ones…..
I guess that’s one definition of HELL.
How can the Church “drop” a teaching it never held? Limbo has always been a theological speculation and, as then Cardinal Ratzinger said, it never made it to the level of “teaching”. But I guess these distinctions are lost on many people, hence the charge of “changing the teaching”.
As for where theological speculations go when they die, I suspect they join all those action plans developed by ad hoc committees…
Where do they o when they die? I assume they have to pass under the limbo pole.
The church can drop a teaching, as long as it is not defined dogma or already taught by a Previous Pope. But that seems to have went out the window as the church seems to evolve her teachings especially in these past 40 years, leading many to wonder what exactly is in today as a sin or a teaching will soon be out tomorrow so why not pracitice birthcontrol?
The biggest debate among conservative traditionalists and the Modernists of the church (is a Modernist really Catholic?) is the Papal Bull Quo Primium. An instrument or document of the Catholic Church or royalty is called a papal bull. Originally, it was a circular plate or boss of metal. By the Middle Ages, it came to be a leaden seal which authenticated important writings, papers, and charters. After the thirteenth century, the name bull was a popular term for most papal documents.
The Catholic Church views the pope to be the “Vicar of Christ.” Statements from the Vatican Council in 1962-1965 says: “We believe in the infallibility enjoyed by the Successor of Peter when he speaks ex cathedra as shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, an infallibility which the whole Episcopate also enjoys when it exercises with him the supreme magisterium” (Vatican Council II, vol. 2, p 392).
Looking back at historical facts though, popes have contradicted other popes by changing views on prior decrees especially on matters of morals and faith. If the original decree was infallible, how can a later decree that changes positions be infallible also?
The Inquisition in 1471-1484, which was established by a Papal Bull under Sixtus IV, was called ‘the greatest error in Church history’ by Pope John Paul II. Thus opinions and contradictions mar the infallibility of the papacy.
So it seems that most of the contradictions have taken place these past 40 or 50 years, and the church has in turn gone into a tailspin.
The Inquisition in 1471-1484, which was established by a Papal Bull under Sixtus IV, was called ‘the greatest error in Church history’ by Pope John Paul II. Thus opinions and contradictions mar the infallibility of the papacy.
How? Policies of pontifs are not possibly bound by Infalibility. Mistakes can be made.
I wonder what St. Thomas would have to say for his Limbo hypothesis if he were sitting with that panel of theologians. Pooh, pooh, Thomas, your thought is so pre-conciliar, how lame!
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1110
Lets see..St Thomas or:
Hans Kung
Karl Rahner
Andrew Greeley
Father Ratzinger (before his “conversion” at Tubaggen)
I think St Thomas would and should win every time, except ask any seminarian if one can even find his books anymore
I recall and in talking to my Uncles how right after Vatican II and in the early 70’s we would go to the Catholic thrift book stores near the seminaries where the church was getting rid of all of their old catechism and books that were no longer being taught in the seminaries, which we bought up. My uncle asked what the priests and Bishop told him to do if the books did not sell, and he was told “burn them”!
Were we any better than Luther and Calvin and Bucer?
The consequence of such a teaching would be that all unbaptized babies who die go to heaven and enjoy the beatific vision. This would be a great consolation to many people who have lost children.
It would also be a great consolation to many people who are about to “lose” one at an abortion clinic. After all, if the baby is going to go to heaven then the pro-aborts chant is right. “Abortion is a Sacrament”
I agree Mike.
By committing a sin of Abortion your mother would be fast-tracking you to Heaven if this theology was correct. I’ve heard of God drawing good from evil, but this is absurd.
Why would any rational person want to live on this earth? I would prefer to have been aborted by my mother and therefore not have any chance of losing my soul to eternal damnation through my sins here on earth. Life here on earth is just not that good that it would be worth risking losing heaven for the chance to experience it. An living to the age of reason (and therefore the chance to commit a mortal sinc and die unrepentant) would be a RISK.
Why am I studying hard at the University of Life, if first-class honours degrees can be bought on e-bay for �5, providing I can show “experience of conception”?
According to Pope Ratz those of us who have been born and baptised have been short-changed by destiny.
This theology is manifestly irrational.
We all die eventually. When is immaterial in the scheme of eternity. All a woman who has an abortion has done, after all, is deprive her child of the CHOICE of going to Hell.
It gives “Pro-Choice” a new meaning.
Without dire consequences ‘Sin’ is a hollow concept. The Pope criticizes moral relativism but his theology supports it.
Anyway what makes newchurch think God so NICE? And why does such a ‘nice’ God drown 300,000 poor people in a Tsunami and crush, maim and freeze 80,000 in Pakistan?
Theologize that Pope Ratz!
Whoa, Jim, you’ve just committed a huge logical fallacy yourself.
How, in any way, would the sin of the mother besmirch the soul of the aborted child?
Each of us is responsible for our own sins. We are not responsible for the sins of our parents. No matter how old we are or how we die. Period.
If I took my two precious children out tonight and drowned them, would they go to hell for my sin? (Heaven forbid, I would never do such a thing!) Nope, they wouldn’t. I would when I died if I had not given a truly repentant confession.
If I killed my precious ones, thinking about them being in heaven may give some respite for my guilt during this lifetime — but that would not help me in the fires of hell.
I have miscarried a baby at twelve weeks — a blighted ovum. There was not enough of the baby to baptise. It is a great consolation to me that that child is sitting in the lap of Our Lady, praying for my family and awaiting the happy day in which we are reunited.
God is just. We choose hell by our actions. The unborn, no matter how they die, do not have a choice in this matter. Free will is required in order to choose sin and hell.
Why would God punish the Innocents, the most lowly and humble, who never even drew air?
One final thought….. before my conversion, I spent a great deal of time in an abortion clinic (may God forgive me for this sin which I have divulged in confession.) The women I met were not concerned for their child’s soul. They were thinking about themselves.
Jim:
God has His reasons for tragedies like this. One is atonement for sins, another is atonement for another’s sins, and the last one is self-purification. God destroys the idols of His creations so that they might worship Him, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Besides, it is God who said “you shall not know the hour of my coming, so be prepared” and that he would be like “a thief in the night”. He could come for me or you in a second, just like he came for those people.
And God is not “nice”. That’s a relative, mushy word. He is righteous. He only does things that are righteous. God has not changed, He always was and will be righteous. His decisions are right.
Also, things like this happen so that our compassion and mercy could be tested. How we respond to their suffering counts. Complain all you want about them suffering over on the other side of the world, but it won’t be helping you get to heaven.
The devil plants ideas like having an uncaring God in the hearts of men so that they might turn against Him.
And we are unsure whether or not unbaptized babies are sent to heaven immediately or not. If they weren’t, it would be the fault of the one who aborted them, wouldn’t it? That person would be responsible for not only killing a person, but also causing them to not be unified with the Lord immediately after death, and there was nothing to be done about it. It would be terrible. And if they were, it wouldn’t be more right, because then God would be with the child, and free it from all pain and suffering, and He would turn against the woman in anger. He wouldn’t hate her, but He would be angry with her, and she would have severed her relationship with God by committing mortal sin (which can, of course, be restored, but only after atonement for the sin).
But also, when the woman doesn’t give the child a “choice”, she is acting in the place of God. She says that she doesn’t trust Him through her actions, and she crowns herself (perhaps unknowingly) her own god.
Either way, sinning against God is still bad any way you look. Sure the woman has a choice, but need she exercise her free will to disobey God? We can’t live without Him. As I’ve said before, He has the right to take our lives away at ANY TIME, regardless of our will. Just so, He lets us stay alive. If we abuse this life, we will pay dearly in the next.
Relativism is when people think “one religion is about the same as another” or “we’re all generally ok”. Our religion does not support that theory. We are the opposite. Jesus says that He is the only way to get into heaven, and that we must be “as perfect as His Father is perfect”. It does not seem that one could get into heaven through more than one path. If one is following another path, then someone is heading the wrong direction.
Overall, when a woman chooses to have an abortion, she limits her options with God, and she limits her child’s options by playing the part of God. God is righteous, so to offend God is incredibly stupid. God knows what is best for men, whether it be death or life. We are not the ones who should decide.
You know even as a child, and I was being taught about limbo, I thought, “Why would God not want those babies? Is He going to just put them up on a cloud all by themselvees with no mommy, and then not let them into heaven?” It didn’t seem right then, and I even thought then, “They have this all wrong”. God gives us free will, and babies don’t have that ability, so the thought of limbo to me is, as it was then “Nah, I don’t think so”.
Relativism is when people think “one religion is about the same as another” or “we’re all generally ok”.
No Mia, that is syncretism. Relativism is “A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.”
See http://www.thefreedictionary.com/relativism
As to syncretism I am afraid our religion does VERY MUCH support that theory in this day and age.
http://www.rcf.org/about/philosophy.htm
It is a heresy, but the point is that the current Catholic hierarchy does support a syncretic philosophy.
C
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Cin,
As to my HUGE logical fallacy you need to learn to read properly. What I wrote was is deprive her child of the CHOICE of going to Hell. That meant that a mother who has an abortion has stopped the child from going to Hell. Since you cannot be damned to hell unless you live a life and commit actual sin.
Equally, at that point a baby has done nothing to merit Heaven either.
Finally another of your comments. Each of us is responsible for our own sins. We are not responsible for the sins of our parents
Oh yeah??? What is Original Sin then but a responsibility for the sins of our parents?
Where is the Garden of Eden Cin? I demand to be let back in if I am not in some way responsible for the sins of my parents.
Unbaptised aborted babies are guilty of Original Sin (not actual sin). They can’t automatically merit Heaven and if they do then baptism is a waste of time.
Finally, if you are right and aborted babies go to Heaven with a free pass then why, pray tell, did not the saints and prophets of the old testament go to Heaven when they died? Why was heaven empty until the resurection of Christ. Where were the souls of all the good and pious souls that died hundreds or thousands of years before Christ died?
It doesn’t seem right to me that aborted babies could merit heaven when they have done absolutely nothing good to merit it other than be conceived.
Lucy,
God is not going to put them on a cloud. That would be boring for them. Limbo is normally defined as a place of happiness. i.e. They’ll be naturally happy, just as you are happy on your birthday or on a beautiful sunny day when having a picnic with friends. They will not be supernaturally happy as people will be in Heaven. Nor will they suffer as souls in hell do.
St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of theologians, grew in his understanding of limbo over the years. In 1255 St. Thomas said that children are aware of their lost destiny but feel no regret. In 1265 he said they feel no regret because they have no idea of what they have lost:
�Thomas, it is clear, ruled out the pain of sense as a punishment for original sin. But the pain of sense is not the greatest torment of the damned. By divine decree the children in limbo are eternally exiled from the vision of God. Do they chafe under their misfortune? Do they rebel against the providence that banished them? St. Thomas had a more difficult problem here than he did in dealing with the pain of sense. Augustine and John Chrysostom alike had insisted that the loss of heaven was a far greater torment than the fire of hell. And surely this loss would be felt far more keenly by one who was innocent of any personal guilt! How, then, could children help resenting their exile, and the providence that had decreed it? Thomas gave two answers to the question over a period of some ten years; and in doing so he shifted ground remarkably.
�In the year 1255 Thomas completed his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. At that time he remarked that no one regrets the lack of something which he is totally unequipped to have. A man may regret the loss of his home, his family, his good name; but no reasonable man permits himself to be distressed over his inability to fly like a swallow. The analogy holds good in the case of the child in limbo. The child will know that he was meant for the beatific vision; he will know, too, why he lost his chance to enjoy it, but it won�t distress him. He will see too clearly that he has no natural ability to enjoy the beatific vision. The intuitive vision of the divine nature is farther beyond his reach than flying is beyond the corner butcher�s. It is conceivable, of course, that there are people who get upset over their inability to fly like birds; but such people are confined to institutions. We don�t find them in the reasonable world of limbo. (II Sent. d. 33, q. 2, a. 2)
�Some ten years later St. Thomas had a second thought on this problem. (De Malo, q. 5, a. 3) Children, he finally decided, will not be disturbed over their loss simply because they will not know what they have lost. They will go through eternity unaware of their supernatural destiny, never dreaming of the sin that put it beyond their reach. They will, of course, reason to the fact that they were meant to possess God. Since they have not the knowledge of faith, they will never guess the divine decree that would admit man to the vision of God; and what they don�t know won�t hurt them. They will spend eternity contemplating God so far as their nature permits, never dreaming that they were destined for something immeasurably more glorious.
�St. Thomas had shown that children were not unhappy in limbo. Still another question remained: were the children happy? The difference between these two states of mind is not especially subtle. We may ask our neighbor how he is feeling and have him reply that at least his ulcer isn�t bothering him. The answer tells us little aside from the absence of an obvious torment; it is one thing not to be unhappy, and quite another to be happy. Did the green meadow and the glistening river of Dante�s poem speak of a natural happiness? Most theologians would say that the question is to some extent an unreal one. Man was meant to spend his eternity enjoying the vision of God. That is the final purpose of our lives; in it we find our God. That is the final purpose of our lives; in it we find our fulfillment or �beatitude�, as theologians would say. Deprived of this fulfillment, could any human being find real happiness?
�St. Thomas says that the children of limbo can be happy, in spite of their exclusion from heaven. It is true that they are separated from God insofar as they do not enjoy the beatific vision, but they are united to God by their native ability to know and to love him; and in this they find their happiness.�
Jim,
None of us merit heaven, except through Jesus. No one.
Second, we’re talking about aborted babies in the present and near past. Christ opened the gates of heaven, and then the righteous and innocent were accepted. Where were they before that? Purgatory, of course, which, unlike limbo, is an established doctrine.
Third, there is a big difference between inheritance of original sin and inheriting the individual sins of our immediate parents.
Original sin is corporate: it is born by all humans because the only humans at the time both were involved. Other examples of corporate sin are found throughout Genesis, when God’s people collectively turn their back on God. The punishments for corporate sin are collective: for example, expulsion from the garden, or mass sterility (the Isrealites bore sterility and miscarriages collectively after one fall in Genesis.)
As for the aborted and miscarried: it seems reasonable they would enter purgatory, so as to be cleansed of original sin. And everyone in purgatory eventually enters the heavenly kingdom.
Nothing you argue could make me think the souls of aborted are somehow differently treated than the souls of the miscarried or stillborn, because their mothers sinned and killed them.
Finally, I suggest you pull out your catechism of the catholic church. It makes it clear that we don’t know what happens to the unborn dead, but that we may have hope of heaven for them.
PS. Just because I’ve asserted a logical fallacy on your part does not mean you need to personally insult me on my ability to read. I am a fellow Catholic, and I expect charity from a brother in Christ. Thank you.
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