Limbo, an ancient place that is neither heaven nor hell, may be abolished
ROME —- Limbo has been in limbo for quite some time, but is now on its way to extinction.
A Vatican committee that spent years examining the medieval concept published a much-anticipated report Friday, concluding that unbaptized babies who die may go to heaven.
That could reverse centuries of Roman Catholic traditional belief...
The Vatican's International Theological Commission issued its findings —- with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI —- in a document published by the Catholic News Service...
A church decision to abolish limbo has long been expected. Benedict and his predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II, expressed misgivings about the concept. Benedict, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the church's top enforcer of dogma, said he viewed limbo as a mere "theological hypothesis." Never part of formal doctrine because it does not appear in Scripture, limbo was removed from the Catholic catechism 15 years ago.
From the Latin "limbus," for hem or edge, limbo refers to a "state of natural happiness" outside heaven, a destination for the souls of babies who were not baptized and certain virtuous people, such as faithful Jews who lived before the time of Christ.
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.
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A Vatican committee that spent years examining the medieval concept published a much-anticipated report Friday, concluding that unbaptized babies who die may go to heaven.
That could reverse centuries of Roman Catholic traditional belief...
The Vatican's International Theological Commission issued its findings —- with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI —- in a document published by the Catholic News Service...
A church decision to abolish limbo has long been expected. Benedict and his predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II, expressed misgivings about the concept. Benedict, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the church's top enforcer of dogma, said he viewed limbo as a mere "theological hypothesis." Never part of formal doctrine because it does not appear in Scripture, limbo was removed from the Catholic catechism 15 years ago.
From the Latin "limbus," for hem or edge, limbo refers to a "state of natural happiness" outside heaven, a destination for the souls of babies who were not baptized and certain virtuous people, such as faithful Jews who lived before the time of Christ.
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.