Given all of these “reasons for hope,” one might think the conclusion of the commission would be absolutely certain and definitive. But it was not. The conclusion was that we cannot have the same level of certainty of the salvation of infants who die without baptism that we do for infants who have been baptized. Hence, the commission emphasized what the Church has emphasized for 2,000 years: there still is and always will be the absolutely crucial need for parents to baptize their babies! This truth is paramount.
Interestingly, one of those articles which @DrDeth shared indicates that, prior to becoming pope, Cardinal Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI) was, in fact, advocating for getting rid of Limbo:
Why should they? Because it used to be taught, and now it is winked at.
I asked this question because the answer has been hinted at, but never actually answered.
Make no mistake about it, though, Benedict killed Limbo just as much as the Second Vatican Council killed the Latin Mass. Hypothesis or not, no one is going to teach it. Limbo will become a theological anachronism that historians of theology note but everyone else ignores. It is not mentioned, for example, in “The Catechism of the Catholic Church.”…Benedict threw it out the window. He threw open the gates of heaven for the unbaptized, reversing centuries of church teaching.
sorry, I should have scrolled down before replying; but what you cited as unbaptized babies being ‘sinless’, doesn’t that contradict Psalm 51 which says “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me”, so there are no ‘sinless’ persons
It still is an income stream, at least it was in the 80s in Germany. I was an altar boy at my local Catholic parish, and whenever my parents or other relatives ordered a mass to be read for one of our deceased, they gave me a an envelope with a 50 Deutschmarks bill to hand out to the priest. There was no fixed price, but it was an unofficial custom that it cost money. Wedding or funeral services probably were even more expensive (us altar boys even sometimes got 10 Deutschmarks for a wedding service from the family, but I surely didn’t invest it in my salvation ) . I don’t know what the priests/parishes do with that cash, if it’s properly taxed, but I suspect that’s still a thing in many parts of the world.
I’m not a theologian, much less a Catholic theologian, so I can’t really answer that for you. The Catholic Church does believe in “original sin,” but Catholic theologians in the past and present have clearly held that babies and small children were free of “personal sin,” and that they would not go to Hell if they were unbaptized.
Maybe it was just a rationalization or “carve-out” made to counter the argument of, “but what has a baby done to deserve eternal damnation?”
So Dante doesn’t have it all his own way regarding purgatory. That’s good to know. I studied The Purgatorio in college. All these decades later, all I remember is that, for the sin of sloth, souls were required to jog.
Purgatory is Canon/Dogma. Limbo is not and never has been either. Now, apparently babies just go to heaven- or so they say.
Not far off, but no torture or anything. Just realizing what you had done that was wrong, and giving you chances to repent. But not a happy place either.
Not just pray for them, pay for them. Every year there was a drive to collect nickels and dimes so that a PB could be “ransomed” and brought into the bosom of the Church.
I have an “adoption certificate” for one such lucky waif which is an absolute non-pc hoot (and loaded with symbolism to boot). I haven’t had the best of luck embedding Imgur links, but here goes:
As I told my siblings when I shared it with them (it had gone missing for decades), there is absolutely no evidence that “Cornelius Thomas” ever existed. My bet is that Richard, Emory and Lawrence used the proceeds to get drunk on sacramental wine in the sacristy; but we’ll never know.
) . I don’t know what the priests/parishes do with that cash, if it’s properly taxed, but I suspect that’s still a thing in many parts of the world.
