Theologians to ask Pope to suspend limbo?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051130/od_nm/pope_limbo_dc;_ylt=AjspErvxCw7T4Z8B76uzO2qs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-
Theologians to ask Pope to suspend limbo?

Wed Nov 30, 9:32 AM ET

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Limbo -- the place where the Catholic Church teaches that babies go if they die before being baptized -- may have its days numbered.

According to Italian media reports on Tuesday, an international theological commission will advise
Pope Benedict to eliminate the teaching about limbo from the Catholic catechism.

The Catholic Church teaches that babies who die before they can be baptized go to limbo, whose name comes from the Latin for "border" or "edge," because they deserve neither heaven nor hell......

So, we end up knee-deep in dead babies?

Great. And with storage costs going through the roof.

I've got to get more pitchforks.

Funny that is your new sig line. I spent about 2 days last week trying to remember what comes after: Time flies like an arrow.

Good thing we've got syncronicity around, I'm getting CRS disease.

WHAT?

You see those BIRDS?

<ducking>

Hey, if we can't remember it, we either don't need it or we'll find it on DU when we least expect it.

See?

SEE THOSE BIRDS???????

Freakin religious masters made shit up as went go along.

It ain't Biblical, it's man made gospel, which is, as you say, a pant load if not worse.

te dum-dump.

Good Grief! Think a little before you go calling on Popes to make wacky changes.

It's metaphysical abortion.....

We are pro-imaginal-life!!!!

edited for proper metaphysical terminology spelling.

Frankly if Limbo exists its a hugely crowded place. Must be 6-10 billion souls never baptised. Plus all those protestants (whose baptism doesn't count).


And what about all Pre-Chistian peoples? I always thought Limbo was tremendously unfair. They actually taught us to baptise people if they were gonna die and hadn't been baptised, so they wouldnt go to limbo.

Think of all those miscarriages! Think of all those people who existed before Jesus imitated John the Baptist! Think of all those poor folks all over the world who haven't benefited from missionaries coming in and making them sick enough to die just after baptism!

They can't send these folks to heaven, not with their silly doctrine of original sin. They can t eliminate baptism as the requirement, because that's what "cures" original sin. They can't send them all to hell, because hell is a bad place for bad people to be tormented, and who'd torment an innocent bay-bee?

My guess is that the Pope, after due consideration, will find some bit of the bible to take out of context and twist like a pretzel so he can keep all those pore bay bees where they are.

Mostly fun... But a little scary too!

If you can only be saved through 'faith' and not 'works' and you have no 'faith' then you couldn't be saved, no matter how good you were, ergo, you end up in hell (since there is no more Limbo).

I always thought 'Limbo' was the Catholic equivalent of Einstein's Cosmological Constant -- ie, a fudge factor to balance the equation. With no Limbo for 'good but not Christian' people, either God is unfair for sending babies to hell, or there's no point in 'faith', since you'd end up in heaven anyway as long as you were 'good'.

It's those lazy-ass Baptists who are always looking for an easy way out.

...and bad Christians go to hell, that means that there's no point to the Church -- it all boils down to your good works or 'sin'. Faith and baptism make no difference either way.

See, this is what I mean about balancing the equation. Without Limbo to carry the 'remainder', the whole motivational framework seems to fall apart.

totally.

That what confession is all about. The nuns explained it..

The soul is like a white gown. When your born you have 'original sin' that baptisms washes off the dirt of the original sin. Then when you do a veneal sin you dirty up your soul further. Confession cleans that off.

If you do a mortal sin. its like tearing your gown and Confession can mend it but you have to be really really sorry and contrite and maybe God will let you in.

Basically you need a clean white gown to get to heaven, certainly not ripped to shreads thru mortal sin.

in between kindof place between lives. There the souls are 'guided' to their rebirth. Very complicated stuff in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead".


"Heaven" or Nirvana is a place were the souls of enlightened beings go when they are 'done' reincarnating. So essentially LIFE is like 'hell'. Also there are very nasty places, more nasty than earth, that you can be reborn in like Mara (Demon world basically). People who were really bad get reborn there.


Who knows?

There's an equivalent in Orthodox Judaism too, but I'm too lazy to go look up the info right now.

One theory is as good or stupid as the other.

Part of Hell to be put on ice?

The worst part...where Himself is. You don't want to send little babies there.

...with literary accumen.
"Part of Hell to be put in cold storage?"
How's that? :evilfrown:

Anyway, who in hell says Dante was right?
:evilgrin:

notoriously hard to read.

and I can vouch for that having tried to do some shopping today. But, Dante kind of had it in for Virgil. He put him in Hell when he clearly believed that pagans could be saved.

Why am I arguing with a talking dog? How many heads do you have?

You don't fight the Pope and get away with it, so Dante is probably still writing travelogues for Old Nick.

Which sounds much more threatening than "proto-Renaissance on his ass."

My whole world is collapsing! I'm just confused now.

were buried in unholy ground ... thats where the suicides...use to go

Somewhere in the distant past, I'm sure one or more of my European ancestors paid good money in the form of indulgences to spring some dead babies from Limbo, and now they're just gonna scratch the whole idea? What a ripoff!

(1960s - Dodge City KS)insisted that there was no such place, and that we'd never been taught such a thing. Some of the kids in the class from good Catholic schools in New Jersey were really up in arms. I don't know if the priest was trying to teach us actual church teaching (I suspect it's an old nuns' tale) or floating a trial balloon or trying to open a discussion. Man was a hateful hypocrite so I didn't listen much to what he said that I didn't have to know for tests.

As we got older, we were taught by lay people who never brought up such things. When we reached high school age, we were told by the priest (in the young mens class) that limbo, and other things, were allegory, and not to be considered as doctrine.

would just take thier billions and go home.

It's the join-a-club tax deduction. How about a bowling team. They donate way more money to a real charity, percentage-wise.

:thumbsup:

I was going when I did. I was told I wasn't good enough to expect heaven as my next stopping place. So everytime I got in trouble, I thought I had this long chain in limbo waiting for me that had another link added to it that would take me longer to work off to get the heaven ...sick, sick, sick!! LOL!!

...as they go along. Don't like something? Just ask daddy to change it!

That whole stupid religion is just a bunch of made up crap, as are all the others. When babies die, they're dead, that's all. Like everyone else.

Dead!

i.e., if something happens before baptism but the parents intended to baptize the child, the child is considered to have been baptized. That has been claimed to have been the case with Patrick (Bouvier) Kennedy.

I don't understand how educated Catholics put up with it. In fact they don't. The sophisticated people leave and figure out their own faith. Meanwhile all that is left in the Church is the Cowed and the Survile.

when my daughter was baptized. We were told by the instructor that limbo is just a theory, but that it was promoted as offical doctrine. (Probably so that more people would bring their babies in to be baptized!!) The instructor said the church has no offical stance on what happens to unbaptized babies.

such as ours, struggling with war, famine and possible catastrophic climate change that there are some folks who have time to fret about the well being of imaginary dead babies.
I think it's time to read Catcher In the Rye again. Not sure why.

When the Catholic church is encouraged to alter its position on things like birth control, women in the priesthood, marriage for priests, homosexuality, condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS, etc., they claim they can't do it because their teaching is God's word and that can't be altered ... yada, yada, yada.

But now they are eliminating limbo from their teachings? Isn't that changing the rules? Doesn't that qualify as altering the word of God? :eyes:

Damn hypocrites! :grr:

and it's not just unbaptized babies. Of course, they are singling out BABIES, but neglecting who else. According to the Catholic Church, anyone who wasn't baptized (Catholic) yet led a good life (including MUSLIMS lol), will go to Purgatory, or the vernacular term of Limbo.

This must really stick in the craw of the Fundies. You become a Christian or you are going to HELL. Belief in Jesus - not how you live your life.

Purgatory is where souls go of baptized people who have committed sins but had not repented/confessed before death. They will spend a certain amount of time in purgatory before they can enter heaven. Purgatory is a kind of punishment.

Limbo is different. It is not a punishment. It is a place where those who are not baptized because they died as babies before baptism, or because they had no chance to be baptized and who led good lives, go. It is indeed an edge. It is not hell or purgatory, where souls suffer.

But because of no baptism, those souls cannot get into heaven where they are in god's presence. So they're in this limbo place which is not unpleasant or punishing, it's just not heaven.

That said, I'd thought that the Church had abolished the concept of limbo a while ago.