I'm out of my depth here, but I find it interesting that some gathering at the Vatican has recently, as I understand it, decided that limbo doesn't exist after all. Until recently my Catholic friends could tell me in perfect detail to exactly what level of heaven or hell or, by inference, limbo they and any other believer or non-believer are headed. So what do they do now? Just change the entries in their address book? More to the point, what dicta are subject to similar elimination by decree? And what might that say about the whole litany of beliefs? How sure can we be that those biblical statements (the ones not contradicted by other passages in the same bible) that are accepted came to be held (and written down) in any way different from those that are subject to modern erasure?
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01-17-06, 09:19 PM
juanruiz
Limbo was never an official doctrine of the RC Church. Thus, its elimination doesn't mean much, since it never existed. I believe it was invented as a place where neo-natals went. Traditionally, belief in it spanned so many centuries, that it became part of RCC popular culture.

01-17-06, 09:26 PM
juanruiz
To follow up, from the Catechism (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..."

01-18-06, 09:04 AM
philalethist
Things Which are Not

Could this be by chance a case of: things which are not, to bring to nought things that are?

It was also written: Let the dead bury the dead and who do we find officiating at the funerals but the churches?

Then also it was written: God is the God of the living and NOT the God of the dead?

Yet people stop not to think of the truth and fiction of it all and really what it is all about. Jerusalem (Place of Peace) is separated from the Hill of Evil Councel ( Bad Advice) by the valley of the dead (Hell). So following out this line to its conclusion we get as follows; Hell is that void between peace of mind and bad advice.

01-19-06, 12:50 PM
Diarmait
Juanruiz is correct in saying limbo was never an official doctrine in the Church. Purgatory, however, remains, so your friends can still tell you where they might be going after death.

01-19-06, 12:57 PM
philalethist
IF
If people fail to pay attention to the very life they are living today why worry about tomorrow and what it may bring be it Limbo or Purgatory. Hebrews 3:7

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