All Babies Go To Heaven

Well, not officially ... yet.

It's things like this that really drive me crazy about the Catholic Church. All these crazy rules and decrees that make no sense in the first place then get rescinded. How the heck did they know where babies went? They need to review a hell of a lot more "teachings" than that!

Limbo -- the place where the Catholic Church teaches that babies go if they die before being baptized -- may have its days numbered.

According to Italian media reports on Tuesday, an international theological commission will advise Pope Benedict to eliminate the teaching about limbo from the Catholic catechism.

The Catholic Church teaches that babies who die before they can be baptized go to limbo, whose name comes from the Latin for 'border' or 'edge,' because they deserve neither heaven nor hell.

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 innocents.

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.

The commission, which has been meeting behind closed doors, may make its recommendation soon.

I guess I really do have a love/hate relationship with the Catholic Church. I don't buy into some decrepit old white man making up the rules of the church and expecting people to just fall in line. As I've said before, THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE IS OVER! That concept of "limbo" for unbaptized dead babies is totally random and just plain lame! I may have to go back and study similar teachings just to dispute them.

At the same time, for the most part I had a wonderful upbringing in the Catholic School system and in my parish. I think gained a deep sense of spirituality and good knowledge about the teachings of Jesus Christ (whom we really should be following, not some Pope) about compassion, charity and service. Add to it the hyper-focus on drawing one's own conclusions by my Jesuit Philosophy and Theology professors in college and I just get no value out of church decrees and revolving edicts that change at the whim of the Vatican. I prefer, instead to study the works of men like Jesus (divine or not - different topic) the Dali Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh.


(link via Shakespeare's Sister)