The Catholic Review of Limbo

The curious byproduct of a religion governed by mortal men is a faith whose rules can be decided as easily by committee as by a proclamation from the heavens. The Catholic Church has had to consider its stand on one issue or another to keep up with our changing times, and in early October 2006, Pope Benedict XVI and his council faces a decision on limbo.

Jokes about the party dance aside, limbo is a state of neither heaven nor hell where, Catholic teachings dictate, unblessed souls are sent; this includes, for example, everyone who lived virtuously but did so before the time of Christ. (No Christ, no Catholicism; makes sense?) Limbo is also historically where un-baptized babies, dying in innocence, have been believed to end up. It is Catholic belief that we are all born into "original sin" courtesy of Adam and Eve, and that only baptism washes this away. But this is hardly the sort of thing any priest wants to tell a grieving mother whose child has been taken from her too soon.

Limbo has never been officially made part of Catholic rule, though it has been around as a concept since the 13th century and was part of the traditional catechism until the early 1990s. It is not thought to be an unpleasant place, merely a sort of long, peaceful, perhaps even blissful if unenlightened sleep while the souls wait to enter paradise. Early gloom-and-doom, fire-and-brimstone scholars were quick to classify pre-baptized infants as doomed to hell, but the modern Church has softened, believing that a just and loving God would not doom innocent children to the flame.

The decision to review this notion of limbo is part of a long and sweeping trend of modernizing the Catholic Church, but more than that, some speculate the Vatican is looking to expand into developing, impoverished nations with high infant mortality rates; families undergoing such suffering would find more comfort in Islam, where stillborn babies ascend to paradise, rather than the Christian limbo. Benedict's papacy has been a time of marked and vocal concern about the de-Christianization of outer nations, and this might be a step in a more popular direction.

Pope Benedict's advisors, in the form of the Vatican's International Theological Commission, are expected to recommend amending limbo; however, the decision from Benedict has not come as swiftly as predicted. As an issue, this may mean little to non-Catholics, but it offers a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of a religion in a state of flux, with as much a political component as any earthly government. Whether limbo being amended means anything spiritually is a matter of belief; whether it means anything politically is a matter of analysis.