How the “doctrine” of limbo made me a Catholic flip flopper
I was really shocked to see this post at Nashville Is Talking. I thought, “How dare she refer to Catholics s flip floppers over limbo”. After all, the Catholic Church has never taught limbo as doctrine. It has been nothing more than a theological speculation that such a place exists. As I was going through the Catechism though it occurred to me that she’s right. This issue has in fact made me a flip flopper. Let me explain what happened.
- Marc picks up his handy dandy pocket Catechism.
- He decides to to try to start at the end and work his way forward to see if he can find the Church’s position on limbo.
- (flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip)
- Marc can’t find anything in a cursory scan.
- Marc decides to look in the index at the back of the Catechism.
- Since going to the back of the book really fast makes a louder noise, we have…..
- (flop flop flop flop)
- Marc chuckles to himself.
So there you have it. I am officially a Catholic flip flopper.
The truth of the matter is that the Catholic Church has never taught “limbo” as doctrine. As a matter of fact, all I could find in the Catechism is the following from paragraph 1261.
As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’ allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism
Even Wikipedia got it right.
The Limbo of Children refers to a permanent status of the unbaptized who die in infancy, without having committed any personal sins, but without having been freed from original sin. The Limbo of Children is a theological speculation that never been defined as official Church dogma.
Ignoring the idea of a limbo that would separate these poor babies from God for all eternity and allowing them the possibility of being with him in Heaven makes me sleep better at night anyway.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:32 pm
With this post you have educated a dimwit heathen who was unaware of the finer points of the limbo theory/theology. I was being flippant and ignorant. I apologize if I offended. It was Friday is not an excuse, but by the end of the week I am usually pretty mentally fried. Anyway, I am going to link to this as an update to the post you mention here.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:34 pm
[...] mo’ limbo! RELATED: How the “doctrine” of limbo made me a Catholic flip flopper Spread It Around: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Aw Brittney…..You ain’t no “dimwit”. You know well that I’ve let myself be convinced by the hype. That’s all that happened here. I wasn’t really offended. If I got offended/upset every time someone stated a falsehood about the Church (if they knew it was so or not), I’d spend my life a pretty pissed off person. Instead I tried to use humor and the truth to diffuse the situation. It was not my intent to use that humor to mock or insult you. I hope you have not taken it that way. Even though you and I disagree often, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for what you’ve done with NIT. You take a hard job and make it look easy. Thanks for your hard work.
May 9th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
[...] This post I made a while back got me to thinking (again) about how many people out there have some real misunderstandings about the Catholic faith. The Catholic Church is often attacked because people are not fond of her teachings. While it is true the Catholic Church has many teachings that are hard for some people to understand, often times the so called “teachings” are really not reflective of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. I call these “teachings” of the Catholic Church that she actually does not teach “mythconceptions”. [...]