State Of The Qusan: Released From Limbo

See! It's BS like this that keeps me intellectually unable to be a true practicing Catholic. I seem to remember this "limbo" mess from religion class in 6th grade. I cannot fathom what kind of doctrine would tell people that if their baby died before it was baptized, it wouldn't go to heaven and would be stuck in limbo forever. I thought it was a mean idea when I was a kid and I think it is utterly ridiculous now. At least the new Pope is now declaring it an invalid concept but how is it that one man is even able to decide this kind of thing? It was a crock then and releasing the faith from such a crock is hardly what I'd call an accomplishment!

Limbo, the state between heaven and hell where almost eight centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching consigned the virtuous but unbaptized, is expected to be abandoned soon by Pope Benedict XVI.

The only one entitled to sanction the limbo’s abolition, the Pope has blessed a 41-page report of the International Theological Commission, titled, "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized."

An advisory body to the Vatican, the 30-member commission concluded that the concept of limbo reflected an "unduly restrictive view of salvation."

"There is greater theological awareness today that God is merciful and wants all human beings to be saved. Grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ's special love for the little ones," the report, posted on the Catholic News Service Web site, said.

Following a three-year study, the document concluded that "serious theological and liturgical grounds" provide hope that "unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision."

Limbo, which comes from the Latin word meaning "border" or "edge," has never been defined as church dogma.

Nevertheless, it has been a strongly debated issue since the time of St. Augustine, who persuaded a church council in 418 A.D. to reject any notion of an "intermediary place" between heaven and hell.

Augustine’s view was based on the assumption that only baptism removes the stain of original sin — which all children are born with. Thus, unbaptized babies would simply go to hell, though their punishment would be the mildest of all.
Immortalized by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as the "first circle of hell," where souls were not punished but doomed never to see God, the idea of limbo was still strong in 1905. At that time, Pope Pius X stated: "Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer, either."

Belief in limbo began to change with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), in which the church conceded that everyone — baptized Christians or not — could actually have a chance to be saved.

The idea of scrapping limbo and examining the afterlife fate of unbaptized infants was first proposed by Pope John Paul II. Indeed, the new Catholic Church's catechism, issued in 1992, does not contain any mention of limbo.

"Limbo has never been a definitive truth of faith. Personally, I would let it drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis," then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and now Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in the 1980s.
According to Vatican sources, the commission's findings could be ratified by the Pope by the end of the year.

While urging parents to continue to baptize their children, the document also states that the salvation for unbaptized babies who die is an urgent pastoral question since their number is greatly increasing and parents can experience deep anguish thinking that their unbaptized children are in a place where God is not present.

As the document stated, "People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness."