Pope Benedict has done away with "limbo". No, it's not the dance under the pole. For you non-catholics, Limbo is the place that babies go to if they die before being baptized (instead of hell). Afterall, the innocent babies were not so innocent...they were born with "original sin".
"The conclusion of this study is that there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in revelation," it said.But the church cautions that this does not mean that the concept of "original sin" should be questioned or that it's ok to delay baptism of babies.
"There are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible (to baptize them)."
Ratzinger never really cared for "limbo" because it was "only a theological hypothesis" and "never a defined truth of faith." So he has done away with it. Now maybe he can get on with the job of allowing women to be priests and male priests to marry and have families.
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And who was the head of the theological commission? None other than Cardinal Joe Ratzinger before he became Pope. I guess now that he is Pope he won't accept his own commissions report huh?
A conviction that babies who died without baptism go to heaven was not something promoted only by people who want to believe that God saves everyone no matter what they do.
Pope John Paul II believed it. And so does Pope Benedict.
In the 1985 book-length interview, "The Ratzinger Report," the future Pope Benedict said, "Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally -- and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as prefect of the congregation -- I would abandon it, since it was only a theological hypothesis.
Of course, it's always possible the Catholic News Service got this wrong like the rest of the media.
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