Unbaptised babies, limbo, & B16
Courtesy: The Scotsman
Pope to abandon idea of unbaptised babies forever in limbo
STEPHEN MCGINTY
THE Catholic Church is preparing to abandon the idea of limbo, the
theological belief that children who die before being baptised are
suspended
in a space between heaven and hell.
The concept, which was devised in the 13th century and was depicted in
numerous works of art during the Renaissance, such as Descent into
Limbo by
the painter Giotto, and in Dante's masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, is
of a
metaphysical space where infants are blissfully happy but are not
actually
in the presence of God.
The idea of limbo was developed as a response to the harshness of
early
Church teachings which insisted that any child who died before he or
she was
baptised would still be stained by Original Sin and so would be
condemned to
hell.
The belief, which is unique to the Catholic Church, has fallen out of
favour
over the past 50 years. It is rarely mentioned and until recently has
been
left in its own kind of limbo.
However, an international commission of Catholic theologians, meeting
in the
Vatican this week, has been pondering the issue and is expected to
advise
Pope Benedict XVI to announce officially that the theological concept
of
limbo is incorrect.
Instead, the new belief is expected to be that unbaptised babies will
go
directly to heaven.
Pope Benedict had already expressed his doubts about limbo when, as
Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, he was head of the Vatican's Congregation for the
Doctrine
of the Faith, the Church's doctrinal watchdog.
In an interview in 1984, he said: "Limbo has never been a defined truth
of
faith. 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 commentators, the reluctance of the
theologians
to use the word limbo was demonstrated in the way in which the Vatican
referred to it in its official statement for this week's meeting. It
referred to the week-long conference as a discussion on "the fate of
children who die without baptism".
Pope Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, gave the commission the task
of
looking at the issue in 2004 and there has always been speculation that
he
wanted to drop the concept after he wrote his own papal document which
gave
no clear answer to the question of what happens to children who die
before
being baptised.
The late pope had written: "The Church can only entrust them to the
mercy of
God. In fact the great mercy of God, who wants all men to be saved, and
the
tenderness of Jesus towards children allow us to hope that there is a
way of
salvation for children who die without baptism."
That view was in contrast to what Pope Pius X had declared in 1905:
"Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not
enjoy
God, but they do not suffer either, because having Original Sin, and
only
that, they do not deserve paradise, but neither hell or purgatory."
The fate of children who die before baptism has interested Christians
since
the religion's earliest days.
The idea was first suggested by St Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390 AD),
who
believed that the unbaptised would neither be punished nor access the
full
glory of God.
This was dismissed by St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), who insisted
instead that baptism was necessary for salvation and that even babies
would
be consigned to hell if they were not baptised.
He did, however, concede that once in hell their torment would be the
mildest of all its residents. This torture of the innocent was
unacceptable
to St Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274 AD), who was the first major theologian
to
speculate about the existence of a place called limbo, whose name is
derived
from the Latin limbus which means "hem" or "edge". There, on the edge
of
heaven, the unbaptised would exist in a state of what he described as
"natural happiness".
Last night, John Haldane, a professor of philosophy at St Andrews
University
and a consulter to the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, said
that
the issue of limbo was "something of a medieval curiosity" that no
longer
preoccupies people. He said that the reason the Catholic Church was
clarifying its position was that people still wrongly perceived heaven
as a
place and not as a state of being.
"The idea of limbo conjures up the image of God as some kind of
government
bureaucrat who says to people, not just babies, 'Sorry, you don't have
your
passport stamped with baptism, you'll have to wait over there'.
"Instead, God's powers are such that He can overcome the issue of
Original
Sin as He chooses, according to special circumstances."