Limbo Up, Limbo Down

What becomes of the unbaptized babies, we asked the nuns long ago. They go to limbo, of course, where they exist in happiness but they can't get in to see God. He's not taking appointments with the unbaptized. Of course, in a pinch, a mammy could do her own baptizing. Back in the day of home birth and long distances from local clergy to local parishioner, any good Catholic could baptize the baby and God would accept the emergency as a valid sacrament. Hence, we all had bottles of Holy Water in the house.

Babies not born, like those lost in miscarriage, were not at risk until 'quickening', that magical time when a woman feels the first movements. So the wise philosophers of old decreed, notables like St. Augustus and St. Thomas Aquinas. The baby isn't alive until the quickening, so there you are, missus. I didn't feel a thing, she might say, and her priest could comfort her over her loss with the assurance that the baby wasn't headed to limbo at all because it wasn't ever alive.

In this modern age of abortion, the Catholic Church decreed that babies are now alive at the time of conception. That quickening business, it's got no scientific validity since the scientists know more about gestation than was known in the Fifth Century and there's no ignoring the unquestionable facts. Lovely, we're set then, all on the same page? Slight problem, there, Your Eminence, you see, the scientists also know that a fair number of embryos never implant. Just keep right on going out the door, as it were. So there's more babies than ever going to limbo? And all the early term miscarriages, some of the ladies are getting a bit upset to imagine their unborn child getting stuck in limbo forever. A bit harsh, isn't it?

Harsh indeed. Yet the Church has always taught that all are born with the stain of original sin which is removed in baptism. Ergo, all unborn and unbaptized babies die with that stain intact, and they can't go to Heaven. But God is merciful, not a hard man at all, so how do we deal with this dilemma? You can't tell the faithful to shut up and believe what they're told, not anymore. God is just and merciful, and that concept is not in sync with the whole "unbaptized need not apply" sign that's affixed to the Pearly Gates. Time to straighten out a very crooked line of reasoning.

"Limbo reflects an unduly restrictive view of salvation," the International Theological Commission has decreed. "There are serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved..." we hope. The Commission hedged its bets, stating that their decision was not "sure knowledge", but a determination that took into account the just and merciful God hypothesis.

Fifteen centuries of limbo, wiped out by a Jesuitical decree. The vow of priestly celibacy doesn't arise from the words of the New Testament either. Will that be the next rule to fall?