The Roman Catholic Church is set to renounce the centuries-old doctrine of limbo.
Doctrine?
For centuries many in the Church claimed that the souls of infants who die before they can be baptised go to a place called limbo, which is between heaven and hell ('Limbo' comes from the Latin limbus, meaning 'edge'.)
Already we've gone from doctrine to what many people claimed for a long time. It surprises me that people at a philosophy magazine would equate those. As to why it was suggested souls would go to limbo,
Being innocents, they don't deserve to go to hell, but being burdened by Original Sin, and unredeemed by baptism, they cannot reach heaven.
Whether or not it was doctrine, it made sense.
However, the new Pope is a long-term critic of the concept (which never had the status of official doctrine), and a commission of cardinals is expected to denounce it soon.
Presumably saying that limbo, which was not a doctrine, is not a doctrine.
While they're at it, they might address the relationship of a limbo which does not exist to the hell into which Christ descended.
After all, others have issues they think the commission's report might touch. For example, Father Richard McBrien claimed in this recent column
The theological stakes are high because, if Limbo goes, so, too, does the traditional view of Original Sin. It may be that everyone is born in the state of grace, and that grace is ours to lose through mortal sin alone.
Which, though he doesn't say so explicitly, would mean there is no need for Baptism, contrary to what you might have read.
Yah, hey...
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to hear exactly how McB goes from 'a denial of Limbo's existence' to 'a [change] in the traditional view of Original Sin.'
Perhaps by way of Buddha?