A Vatican panel has issued a report that concludes that unbaptized babies go to Heaven, not limbo, as the Catholic church has been claiming for centuries.
In the 5th century, St. Augustine declared that all unbaptized babies went to hell upon death. By the Middle Ages, the idea was softened to suggest a less severe fate, limbo.
In his Divine Comedy, Dante characterized limbo as the first circle of hell and populated it with the great thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as leading Islamic philosophers.
The document published Friday said the question of limbo had become a "matter of pastoral urgency" because of the growing number of babies who do not receive the baptismal rite. Especially in Africa and other parts of the world where Catholicism is growing but has competition from other faiths such as Islam, high infant mortality rates mean many families live with a church teaching them that their babies could not go to heaven.
Father Thomas Weinandy, executive director for doctrine at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the document "addresses the issue from a whole new perspective — if we are now hoping these children get to heaven, there is no longer any point in worrying about limbo."
Reader comment:
Kevin says:
Your post today about limbo was an example of how the media misunderstands the Church. I have immense respect for people who make an effort to understand a position opposite to theirs before publicly rejecting them, but your post, as well as the LA Times article, shows that you are rejecting something you don't understand.
Limbo was never part of official Church teaching. St. Augustine did think limbo existed, but that does not mean that it was part of Catholic belief. For example, you will not find it in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a dense summary of what the Church believes produced by the Church. I've heard it classified as a "theological hypothesis" which no Catholic must assent to, but it would no be contrary to the faith to believe in it. This was not a reversal of Church teaching, although in many places limbo was taken as a given by people in their local Churches and many universities.
So that means that this panel did not reverse anything. They just pointed out that there is merit to the position that unbaptized babies may go to heaven. The Church did not change Her mind.
