Chicago Tribune | Limbo appears doomed by Vatican theologians

Chicago Tribune | Limbo appears doomed by Vatican theologians: "ROME -- It may seem half a shame to get rid of a church tradition, however cruel and antiquated, if it can inspire poetry like 'The Inferno' or spooky lines like these from Seamus Heaney: 'Fishermen at Ballyshannon/Netted an infant last night/Along with the salmon.'

But limbo, that netherworld of unbaptized babies and worthy pagans, is very much on the way out--another lesson that while belief in God may not change, the things people believe about him most certainly do.

This month, 30 top theologians from around the world met at the Vatican to discuss, among other quandaries, the problem of what happens to babies who die without baptism. What they were really doing, as theological advisers to Pope Benedict XVI, was finally disposing of limbo--a concept that was never official church doctrine but has been an enduring medieval theory of a blissful state among the departed, somehow different from both heaven and hell.

Unlike purgatory, a sort of waiting room to heaven for those with some venial faults, the theory of limbo consigned children outside of heaven on account of original sin alone. As a concept, limbo has long been out of favor anyway as theologically questionable and unnecessarily harsh. It is hard to imagine depriving innocents of heaven. These days it prompts more snickers than anything, as evidenced by the titter of headlines here along the lines of 'Limbo Consigned to Hell.'

But it remains an interesting relic, strangely relevant to what the Roman Catholic Church has been and what it wants to be. The theory of limbo bumps up against one of the most contentious issues for the church: abortion. If fetuses are human beings, what happens to their souls if they are aborted? It raises questions of how broadly the church--and its new leader--views the idea of salvation.
"