The Catholic Church does away with Limbo

Catholic Church likely to abolish state of Limbo


WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. ?- The Catholic Church is considering abolishing Limbo, a sort of shadowy fourth state of the afterlife, where the souls of unbaptized and aborted infants go, to keep company with the righteous Hebrew prophets who lived before Jesus Christ was born, the authoritative Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reports.

"In limbo," a phrase that has won universal understanding in English, and which is used by everyone from priests to politicians, may soon signify "nowhere." To be in limbo will be, strictly speaking, to be utterly nonexistent.

The International Theological Commission, an arm of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is about to issue a new catechism of Catholic doctrine that does away with Limbo, the Corriere reported this week. The catechism is likely to be approved by Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, because as cardinal, Ratzinger was the gatekeeper of Catholic doctrine under the late Pope John Paul II.

Rabbi James Rudin, a Jewish theologian formerly serving in Boca Raton, Fla., said he would welcome the change in Catholic doctrine, if it took place, and called it a "very serious thing."

"Anytime a religious body of 1 billion people moves on the issue of the afterlife, it's very serious. This could be seen as part of an ongoing process, where the Roman Catholic faith is moving past a narrow, exclusionary view of other religions, toward a more pluralistic view.

"It means that the Catholic Church is willing to treat other religions with more respect. This may have an impact on other Christian churches," said Rudin, who serves as senior inter-religious adviser to the American Jewish Committee.

The idea of Limbo goes back to the Middle Ages and was a reaction on the part of Peter Abelard to the severe doctrine put forth by St. Augustine in the fifth century A.D., that every unbaptized soul must go to hell where, however, they would be subjected only to a mitissima poena, a very mild pain, if they had led good lives.

Abelard argued that even this light pain was too harsh a punishment for innocent unbaptized children whose only sin was that of being born with Original Sin, the legacy of the first man, Adam, and which can be washed away only by the sacrament of baptism.

Abelard said such babies should not suffer the torments of hell but only the loss of the Beatific Vision, the glorious sight of God Himself, which only the blessed may enjoy in Paradise. Therefore they should dwell in a rather foggy but painless place called Limbo, derived from the Latin word limbus, meaning "edge." To be "in limbo" was to be on the edge of happiness, suspended between delight and pain, feeling neither.

The babies would not lack for company. There was a section of Limbo called the Limbus Infantium, for children, and another called the Limbus Patrum, the Limbo of the Fathers, for Hebrew prophets. These righteous, far-seeing men merely had the misfortune to be born before Jesus Christ. Obviously, they didn't deserve hell for being born too soon. So they could stay in Limbo.

Abelard's view found favor with Innocent III (1161-1216), the most powerful pope in history, who had been a lawyer before he was elected. Innocent liked the idea of Limbo, a neat fourth drawer in the afterlife where untidy leftovers could be kept. He published a Body of Canon Law, in which he said that those in Limbo would suffer "no other pain, whether from material fire or from the worm of conscience, except the pain of being deprived forever of the vision of God."

From here onward, Limbo gradually became kinder and kinder, gentler and gentler.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor" of the church, said in the 13th century that Limbo must be completely painless. Babies can't miss what they have never known or seen, so the deprivation of the sight of the Beatific Vision cannot hurt them. Indeed, St. Thomas said, Limbo must be a place of positive happiness, because it is so close to heaven and God.

The ecumenical Council of Florence in 1438 came close to abolishing Limbo but got sidetracked by the question of Purgatory and attempts to reunite the Greek Orthodox Church with the Rome-based Latin church.

In 1904, Pope Pius X defined Limbo in his catechism. "Babies dead without baptism go to Limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but neither do they suffer, because, having Original Sin alone, they do not deserve Paradise, but neither do they merit Hell or Purgatory."

In 1992, Pope John Paul II took another step. "The Church can do no more than trust in the mercy of God, who desires that all men be saved," says the catechism published that year, citing the biblical epistle of Timothy (I.2;4) "Who will have all men to be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth."

John Paul II also cited the Gospel of St. Mark (10:14) where Jesus says: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God."

The draft catechism goes before a board headed by William Josef Levada of the Vatican's Holy Office, which will issue its recommendations to the Pope today, the Corriere della Sera reported.

If it is adopted and ratified by "Papa Ratzi," as the Italians call him, Limbo will no longer be in Limbo. It will cease to exist altogether. Billions of babies, along with the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel and the other great Jewish seers, will finally get into Catholic Heaven.