VATICAN:At last, it is official. The Vatican yesterday consigned limbo to oblivion. For many centuries it was taught by the Church that limbo was where upbaptised babies, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and all good people who lived before Jesus went, on death. There they languished for all eternity deprived of the beatific vision.
The long-awaited document, titled The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised and released yesterday by the Catholic Church's International Theological Commission, has concluded that limbo reflected an "unduly restrictive view of salvation".
In 2005, while still prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Benedict himself expressed doubts about limbo. The concept should be abandoned, he said, because it was "only a theological hypothesis" and "never a defined truth of faith". It was he who authorised the publication of yesterday's document.
The end of limbo had been expected and was well-flagged over recent years. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992, does not mention it at all. The document published yesterday is also being seen as probably the Church's final word on the subject.
Limbo was never officially part of Catholic Church doctrine, although it was taught to Catholics at least until the advent of the Second Vatican Council.
"The conclusion of this study is that there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness, even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in revelation," the document said. "There are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible [ to baptise them] ."
The Catholic Church teaches that baptism removes the stain of Original Sin with which all of humanity has been born since Adam and Eve fell from grace in the Garden of Eden.
The document stressed that its conclusions should not be interpreted as questioning Original Sin or be "used to negate the necessity of baptism or delay the conferral of the sacrament".
"People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness, whether they are Christian or non-Christian."
It added that a study of the matter was made all the more urgent as "the number of non-baptised infants has grown considerably, and therefore the reflection on the possibility of salvation for these infants has become urgent".
The word "limbo" comes from Latin and means "border" or "edge". It evolved as a traditional teaching of the Church in medieval times. In his Divine Comedy, so recently referred to also in the context of the Pope's regrets that hell was not getting the attention it deserved, Dante placed virtuous pagans and the great classical philosophers in limbo. - (Additional reporting: Reuters)