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 Editorials | Issues | April 2007 
Pope Revises Views on Limbo
 Associated Press
| | Days before Mexico City lawmakers are expected to legalize abortion in the capital, Pope Benedict XVI weighed in on the issue, saying the proposed legislation "threatens the lives of unborn children." (Dario Pignatelli/Reuters) |
Vatican City – Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of Roman Catholic teaching on limbo, approving a Vatican report released Friday that says there were "serious" grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven.
Theologians said the move was highly significant – both for what it says about Benedict's willingness to buck a long-standing tenet of Catholic belief and for what it means theologically about the church's views on heaven, hell and original sin – the sin that the faithful believe all children are born with.
Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are excluded from heaven, the church has no formal doctrine on the matter. Theologians, however, have long taught that such children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness, a state commonly called limbo, but without being in communion with God.
"If there's no limbo, and we're not going to revert to St. Augustine's teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we're left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace," said the Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.
"Baptism does not exist to wipe away the 'stain' of original sin, but to initiate one into the church," he said in an e-mailed response.
While the report does not carry the authority of a papal encyclical or even the weight of a formal document from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it was approved by the pope on Jan. 19 and was published on the Internet – an indication that it was intended to be widely read by the faithful.
Vatican watchers hailed the decision as both a sensitive and significant move by Benedict. |
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