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Vatican puts limbo in a state of, er ... limbo
By DOUG SAUNDERS
Globe and Mail, Wednesday, November 30, 2005
In Latin, it means "the lip," and for centuries devout Roman Catholics have tried to avoid thinking about its full meaning: the edge of hell, where those who have died without baptism -- notably babies -- are sent for eternity.
Now it seems that limbo, a place invented in the Middle Ages that soon became a well-known part of the architecture of the cosmos, is about to be struck from the theological blueprints as part of the Vatican's lengthy renovation of its heavenly layout.
Its place, alongside such well-known medieval additions as the gates of heaven, the nine circles of hell, purgatory and the heavenly vestibule, has become increasingly shaky, and yesterday, the Italian media reported that an international commission of high-ranking theologians intends to advise Pope Benedict to banish the notion of limbo from all teachings of the Catholic catechism.
Last October, seven months before he died, Pope John Paul asked the commission to come up with "a more coherent and enlightened way" of describing the fate of such innocent babes.
It was then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected Pope in April.
It is now headed by his successor at the Vatican's doctrinal department, Archbishop William Levada, an American from San Francisco.
If the commission, which has been meeting behind closed doors, recommends banishing limbo, it will put an end to more than 700 years of fear, unease and ambiguity in one of the church's most awkward and embarrassing areas of faith.
One Australian cardinal, George Pell, once dismissed limbo as "not the best seats in the house." The last four Popes have tried to eradicate it from church teachings. Within the church, though, limbo remains in a state of, well, uncertainty.
The fate of unbaptized babies has been a subject of obsession among the faithful since the earliest centuries of Christianity. The Old and New Testaments are extremely vague on the precise functions and operations of heaven and hell.
According to the French historian Jacques Le Goff, limbo and the adjoining netherworld of purgatory both have their roots in the Gospel of Nicodemus, which is part of the Apocrypha (testaments that were never considered credible enough to include in the Bible).
As early as the fourth century, scholars had addressed the fate of the unbaptized. Saint Augustine made it clear that unbaptized babies went straight to hell, though he did note that their suffering was somewhat mitigated.
This was hardly reassuring to parents, especially considering the infant-mortality rates of the Middle Ages, so holy thinkers were quick to reach for the Apocrypha in an effort to prevent a crisis.
Medieval scholars came up with two new locations in Middle Earth. There was limbus patrum, the limbo of the fathers, which solved the tricky theological problem of determining the mortal fate of those holy figures such as Abraham and Moses, who died before Christ's followers created the Church. This limbo was a temporary outbuilding, closing its doors with the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The other place, limbus infantium, the limbo of infants, proved more enduring. Since all infants, in Catholic belief, are stained with original sin but are likely free from mortal sin, limbo provided a place free from the fires of hell but without the rewards of heaven — "a giant daycare centre," in the words of the U.S. theology professor Gerald Fagin, "where children were well cared for and lived happily, even if separated from their parents."
To many Catholics, this still sounded more like hell than heaven, and thus was born the long-standing practice of baptizing babies at the moment of birth — or even before. Even very recently, divinity students were taught "intrauterine baptism," to be performed on dying fetuses.
This proved discomforting to Catholic authorities, as did the notion that non-Catholics could never enter heaven.
The Second Vatican Council in 1962 diminished the importance of limbo, and Pope John Paul II issued a new catechism in 1992 that appeared to settle the issue: "As regards children who have died without baptism, the church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them."
In other words, they have as much access to heaven as anyone else. In an age when other Catholic teachings are growing more conservative, it is one effort to send a message of moderation.
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Here's a semi-serious question about limbus infantium. I had remarked that it would be filled with primary non-believer babies, that is, if you were born in India in, say, 504, and died right away, you would go into Limbo because you had no mortal sin, only original sin. In other words, non-Catholics would also exist in a state of limbo in possibly great numbers. But someone else told me that limbo could only be for potentially Catholic babies, or babies born to Catholic parents. It seems to me a bit unfair if that is so, since anybody today really could become "Catholic" later in life. I'm not sure how you'd apply those rules.
If it were a government program you could have a "Limbus Infantium Appeals Tribunal" to discuss the thornier cases, but the RC church doesn't tend to operate that way.
By DOUG SAUNDERS
Globe and Mail, Wednesday, November 30, 2005
In Latin, it means "the lip," and for centuries devout Roman Catholics have tried to avoid thinking about its full meaning: the edge of hell, where those who have died without baptism -- notably babies -- are sent for eternity.
Now it seems that limbo, a place invented in the Middle Ages that soon became a well-known part of the architecture of the cosmos, is about to be struck from the theological blueprints as part of the Vatican's lengthy renovation of its heavenly layout.
Its place, alongside such well-known medieval additions as the gates of heaven, the nine circles of hell, purgatory and the heavenly vestibule, has become increasingly shaky, and yesterday, the Italian media reported that an international commission of high-ranking theologians intends to advise Pope Benedict to banish the notion of limbo from all teachings of the Catholic catechism.
Last October, seven months before he died, Pope John Paul asked the commission to come up with "a more coherent and enlightened way" of describing the fate of such innocent babes.
It was then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected Pope in April.
It is now headed by his successor at the Vatican's doctrinal department, Archbishop William Levada, an American from San Francisco.
If the commission, which has been meeting behind closed doors, recommends banishing limbo, it will put an end to more than 700 years of fear, unease and ambiguity in one of the church's most awkward and embarrassing areas of faith.
One Australian cardinal, George Pell, once dismissed limbo as "not the best seats in the house." The last four Popes have tried to eradicate it from church teachings. Within the church, though, limbo remains in a state of, well, uncertainty.
The fate of unbaptized babies has been a subject of obsession among the faithful since the earliest centuries of Christianity. The Old and New Testaments are extremely vague on the precise functions and operations of heaven and hell.
According to the French historian Jacques Le Goff, limbo and the adjoining netherworld of purgatory both have their roots in the Gospel of Nicodemus, which is part of the Apocrypha (testaments that were never considered credible enough to include in the Bible).
As early as the fourth century, scholars had addressed the fate of the unbaptized. Saint Augustine made it clear that unbaptized babies went straight to hell, though he did note that their suffering was somewhat mitigated.
This was hardly reassuring to parents, especially considering the infant-mortality rates of the Middle Ages, so holy thinkers were quick to reach for the Apocrypha in an effort to prevent a crisis.
Medieval scholars came up with two new locations in Middle Earth. There was limbus patrum, the limbo of the fathers, which solved the tricky theological problem of determining the mortal fate of those holy figures such as Abraham and Moses, who died before Christ's followers created the Church. This limbo was a temporary outbuilding, closing its doors with the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The other place, limbus infantium, the limbo of infants, proved more enduring. Since all infants, in Catholic belief, are stained with original sin but are likely free from mortal sin, limbo provided a place free from the fires of hell but without the rewards of heaven — "a giant daycare centre," in the words of the U.S. theology professor Gerald Fagin, "where children were well cared for and lived happily, even if separated from their parents."
To many Catholics, this still sounded more like hell than heaven, and thus was born the long-standing practice of baptizing babies at the moment of birth — or even before. Even very recently, divinity students were taught "intrauterine baptism," to be performed on dying fetuses.
This proved discomforting to Catholic authorities, as did the notion that non-Catholics could never enter heaven.
The Second Vatican Council in 1962 diminished the importance of limbo, and Pope John Paul II issued a new catechism in 1992 that appeared to settle the issue: "As regards children who have died without baptism, the church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them."
In other words, they have as much access to heaven as anyone else. In an age when other Catholic teachings are growing more conservative, it is one effort to send a message of moderation.
--------------------
Here's a semi-serious question about limbus infantium. I had remarked that it would be filled with primary non-believer babies, that is, if you were born in India in, say, 504, and died right away, you would go into Limbo because you had no mortal sin, only original sin. In other words, non-Catholics would also exist in a state of limbo in possibly great numbers. But someone else told me that limbo could only be for potentially Catholic babies, or babies born to Catholic parents. It seems to me a bit unfair if that is so, since anybody today really could become "Catholic" later in life. I'm not sure how you'd apply those rules.
If it were a government program you could have a "Limbus Infantium Appeals Tribunal" to discuss the thornier cases, but the RC church doesn't tend to operate that way.