Pope doing away with limbo

[hmkpoker]

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But now I demand an answer to this, and you can ask the Pope. Where do unbaptized babies go when they die?

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Why bother? He doesn't know any better than you or me.

[BluffTHIS!]

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You claim to represent the 2000 year Magisterium when the current Magisterium is contradicting the previous one.

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The reason you see distinctions here is because you are view God's church in historical slices, and fail to see that the magisterial teaching of church and the church itself form an historical integral whole. You can't see the forst for the trees.

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and he is contradicting the premier theological authority of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas. So is Ratzinger right?

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Do you realize that you are spending all this time arguing over theological speculation? This is how many angels can dance on the head of a pin stuff. And yet from such arguements over speculative possibilities you fashion a whole speculative theological world where heresy is around every corner.

The words of St. Paul are very appropriate to these types of bogus disagreements.

[Peter666]

No, this goes much further than theological speculation due to the consequences of the new thinking. If there is no middle ground for the unbaptized infants to go to after death, than infants must either go to Heaven or Hell. There is no where else. So now that the modernist theologians and the Pope who is appeasing them have gotten rid of the middle ground, I again have to ask: Where do unbaptized babies go when they die?

It would be funny to hear that they go to Hell and thus maintain the Augustinian view thus backfiring on all the modernist theologians and their need for "compassion". God knows the unbaptized cannot go to Heaven because there is no way that a human born with the stain of original sin can have the possibility of salvation until reachng the age of reason.

If anyone maintains that that is possible, then they are really claiming universal salvation and denying Original Sin. Plus contradicting the 2000 year teachings of the Church on the necessity of Baptism for infants.

[Peter666]

This is true in a sense. The Pope does not have more magical powers than anyone else except in a very particular circumstance in defining dogma.

But as Pope, he should know what his Church teaches in regards to salvation, particularly the fact that Baptism is necessary for anyone to enter Heaven, and to hope for the salvation of infants, who by definition have not reached the age of reason, is heresy.

[hmkpoker]

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This is true in a sense. The Pope does not have more magical powers than anyone else except in a very particular circumstance in defining dogma.

But as Pope, he should know what his Church teaches in regards to salvation, particularly the fact that Baptism is necessary for anyone to enter Heaven, and to hope for the salvation of infants, who by definition have not reached the age of reason, is heresy.

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Out of curiosity, where do you believe the unborn go? (You're Catholic, right?)

[BTirish]

I would suggest that everyone wait for the actual release of the document before jumping to any wild conclusions. Just as with the Instruction on the admission of homosexuals to the seminary, the media's ignorant characterization of the document and the actual content of the document may very well be rather different. If someone has actually seen a draft of the Commission's document and can correct me, please do so.

It is an error to assert the existence of Limbo with the same degree of certainty that one believes in the existence of Heaven and Hell. It is, as Peter has pointed out, a theological possibility inasmuch as it is a logical possibility.

There is a difference between ceasing to teach the existence of Limbo and definitively asserting the non-existence of Limbo. From all reports that I have seen, the new document will be suggesting the former rather than asserting the latter. Whether this is a prudent judgment remains to be debated, but as much as Limbo is itself a speculative hypothesis, this debate and the variety of opinions possible concerning it shouldn't trouble a faithful Catholic.

This document will be a product of a theological commission that is meant to advise the Pope and the magisterium. The document itself carries no weight. His Holiness did assert around 20 years ago that he, speaking not as the head of the CDF but as a theologian, would "drop" discussion of the theological hypothesis that is Limbo. Again, as I have said, there is a difference between dropping it from discussion and asserting that it is not a possibility.

One would think that someone who is familiar with Ott and who knows the various degrees of certainty attached to doctrinal propositions would also know the difference between a theological commission's documents and a magisterial pronouncement.

(There has been some confusion about exactly who will be publishing the document. It is the International Theological Commission, not the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that has authored this document. I think the confusion has arisen because the head of the CDF, Archbishop Levada, is also the president of the ITC.)

[Stu Pidasso]

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If anyone maintains that that is possible, then they are really claiming universal salvation and denying Original Sin. Plus contradicting the 2000 year teachings of the Church on the necessity of Baptism for infants.

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Hi Peter,

How about the Holy Innocents? The Church has always held these babies are in heaven and to my knowledge they did not recieve baptism.

Stu

[Stu Pidasso]

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Now I am of course exaggerating somewhat by calling Peter protestant when he belongs to a dissident sect of catholicism.....

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I find it funny when you make that exaggeration. SSPX appears catholic while the Church post Vatican II appears protestant.

Stu

FWIW I go to a sede vacante church, but would not have a problem going to a SSPX service.

Can you all see that your religion is being made up as you go along?

You are witnessing the discussion of the invention of this limbo theory. Someone made it up on the basis of no facts because it answered a question they didnt have an answer to, and now someone else has said it is wrong. Neither seem to have any evidence.

Can you just for a second try to extrapalate and see that at some point heaven and hell were imagined as answers to impossible questions. Genesis descibes how some writer imagined the earth was created and it turns out he was wrong.

Can you not then extrapalate to realise that the God concept was probably a figment of someones imagination when trying to answer a difficult riddle?

No? okay nevermind.

[tomdemaine]

Thankyou for eloquently making the point that my bad joke was grasping for.