Father Isaac Mary Relyea

[Maggyie]

Sigh. FP if you attend seminary they will explain to you about limbo. It's not taught in the mainstream any more. It's just not. Why don't you contact a diocesan seminarian you know and ask him what he's learned about unbaptized infants and Limbo. 

It it may be helpful for you to research about how this doctrine has developed over time. Read the whole document Nihil linked to. It's a great explanation of how the teaching has evolved and why the Church no longer teaches Limbo.

For instance Augustine believed unbaptized babies were damned and Gregory the Great said the babies suffer eternal torment in Hell. Later in the Middle Ages this teaching was modified, and it was understood that while unbaptized babies couldn't be saved, they would experience less pain than adults or would even have natural pleasure (hence limbo). 

doctrine has developed further and now we understand that the church simply commits these children to the mercy of God, and there may be a way for them to be saved. This doesn't mean baptism is not important. Just that Limbo is not really the best way of solving the "problem" theologically, in light of what the Church now understands about the mercy of God. Of course we don't know individual baby's final destinations (although the Holy Innocents are celebrated as martyrs and they were unbaptized). 

 

[Maggyie]

 

 

Redemptorist Father Tony Kelly, an Australian member of the commission, told Catholic News Service "the limbo hypothesis was the common teaching of the church until the 1950s. In the past 50 years, it was just quietly dropped.

"We all smiled a bit when we were presented with this question, but then we saw how many important questions it opened," including questions about the power of God's love, the existence of original sin and the need for baptism, he said.

"Pastorally and catechetically, the matter had been solved" with an affirmation that somehow God in his great love and mercy would ensure unbaptized babies enjoyed eternal life with him in heaven, "but we had to backtrack and do the theology," Father Kelly said.

A conviction that babies who died without baptism go to heaven was not something promoted only by people who want to believe that God saves everyone no matter what they do.

Pope John Paul II believed it. And so does Pope Benedict.

In the 1985 book-length interview, "The Ratzinger Report," the future Pope Benedict said, "Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally -- and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as prefect of the congregation -- I would abandon it, since it was only a theological hypothesis.



. . .

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0506867.htm 
 

Ark, FP, please read the above. The eminent theologians who think Limbo belongs in the trash bin include members of the above Vatican appointed International Theological Commission AND Joseph Ratzinger.

don't get me wrong, we are technically "allowed" to believe in Limbo... It doesn't make one a bad Catholic to believe it, just an uneducated one. 

Ps thanks nunsense!

[PhuturePriest]

Sigh. FP if you attend seminary they will explain to you about limbo. It's not taught in the mainstream any more. It's just not. Why don't you contact a diocesan seminarian you know and ask him what he's learned about unbaptized infants and Limbo. 

It it may be helpful for you to research about how this doctrine has developed over time. Read the whole document Nihil linked to. It's a great explanation of how the teaching has evolved and why the Church no longer teaches Limbo.

For instance Augustine believed unbaptized babies were damned and Gregory the Great said the babies suffer eternal torment in Hell. Later in the Middle Ages this teaching was modified, and it was understood that while unbaptized babies couldn't be saved, they would experience less pain than adults or would even have natural pleasure (hence limbo). 

doctrine has developed further and now we understand that the church simply commits these children to the mercy of God, and there may be a way for them to be saved. This doesn't mean baptism is not important. Just that Limbo is not really the best way of solving the "problem" theologically, in light of what the Church now understands about the mercy of God. Of course we don't know individual baby's final destinations (although the Holy Innocents are celebrated as martyrs and they were unbaptized). 

 

​Who said I believe in limbo? I don't. I agree with Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict on the matter.

[Maggyie]

​Who said I believe in limbo? I don't. I agree with Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict on the matter.

So. You agree with me that the theory of Limbo has been discredited and pretty much zero serious academic theologians agree with the theory? Including ag the highest levels of the church? Because from your snotty replies it didn't appear you are aware of the overwhelming scholarly consensus on this question. 

[PhuturePriest]

So. You agree with me that the theory of Limbo has been discredited and pretty much zero serious academic theologians agree with the theory? Including ag the highest levels of the church? Because from your snotty replies it didn't appear you are aware of the overwhelming scholarly consensus on this question. 

​I was aware that limbo was merely considered a theological possibility, and that most didn't believe in it. I was replying to the snottiness of your posts, ironically enough. "No real theologian would ever believe in limbo." It's a logical fallacy. I hate logical fallacies, and so I called you out on it.

[Maggyie]

​I was aware that limbo was merely considered a theological possibility, and that most didn't believe in it. I was replying to the snottiness of your posts, ironically enough. "No real theologian would ever believe in limbo." It's a logical fallacy. I hate logical fallacies, and so I called you out on it.

Uhhhhhm. What I said was "No serious academic believes that babies get trapped in Limbo." And " The number of reputable Catholic theologians who accept the theory of limbo is minuscule." Not only is this not a logical fallacy. It's the truth. As you go further in philosophy studies you'll understand better how logical fallacies can be applied. Here you've made the common error of focusing on the wrong part of the statement to try to apply the fallacy. 

[Basilisa Marie]

Every time I look at this thread title, I keep thinking it says "Father Isaac Mary R'lyeh" instead of "Relyea." O_o

Carry on. 

 

[Ark]

Persons that die with original sin are deprived of the Beatific vision (de fide). 

< Shrugs >

[Maggyie]

Persons that die with original sin are deprived of the Beatific vision (de fide). 

< Shrugs >

Right. And we don't know for sure that anyone in particular died in original sin. Baptism is essential for salvation, but that is a rule that binds us. It does not bind God.  

[Maggyie]

Anyway my point is that Fr Isaac seems to have a damaging theological perspective. You usually see these thoughts (natural disasters, AIDs, cancer, etc are punishments from the wrath of God) amongst Protestant fundamentalists. If you ever read the theology of the Westboro Bsptists, that's their whole thing. 

I'm willing to bet Fr preaches mostly to the already converted and makes few new Christians. The pagans do not find a fear-based relationship with the almighty attractive. 

[BarbTherese]

Well said to my mind, both posts, Maggyie!

 

 

[Ark]

Right. And we don't know for sure that anyone in particular died in original sin. Baptism is essential for salvation, but that is a rule that binds us. It does not bind God.  

You'd be hard pressed to find a dogma that says God is not bound by the sacraments or that He acts outside of the sacraments. As often as this phrase is thrown around it too is not dogma.

And although we don't know what happens to the souls of unbaptized infants for sure, the Fathers and schoolmen have spoken of two possibilities and they both involve being deprived of the Beatific vision. The hypothesis that there is an alternative route outside of baptism that leads to heaven is a modern one. 

"With regard to children, since the danger of death is often present and the only remedy available to them is the sacrament of baptism by which they are snatched away from the dominion of the devil and adopted as children of God, it admonishes that sacred baptism is not to be deferred for forty or eighty days or any other period of time in accordance with the usage of some people, but it should be conferred as soon as it conveniently can; and if there is imminent danger of death, the child should be baptized straightaway without any delay, even by a lay man or a woman in the form of the church, if there is no priest, as is contained more fully in the decree on the Armenians."

http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/FLORENCE.HTM

 

 

[BarbTherese]

Hope I am not heretical, but it seems to me that God faithfully binds Himself in accord with The Sacraments as taught and enshrined in The Church, but this does not mean that within The Sacramental Life of The Church is God's only way He will act.

As for babies that die unbaptised, it seems to me that God sees the past present and the future as immediate and present as the now to Him and He would know if a baby had lived what kind of life that baby would have lived into adulthood.  It is not the baby's fault that he or she has not lived to adulthood.

Theories of hypothesis only..........hoping to avoid anything heretical

[Basilisa Marie]

Hope I am not heretical, but it seems to me that God faithfully binds Himself in accord with The Sacraments as taught and enshrined in The Church, but this does not mean that within The Sacramental Life of The Church is God's only way He will act.

As for babies that die unbaptised, it seems to me that God sees the past present and the future as immediate and present as the now to Him and He would know if a baby had lived what kind of life that baby would have lived into adulthood.  It is not the baby's fault that he or she has not lived to adulthood.

Theories of hypothesis only..........hoping to avoid anything heretical

Right, ​God might bind himself to the sacraments, but he doesn't have to. 

The problem with your idea about unbaptized babies is that it removes free will from the situation. The fact that we actually do make the choices we make is vitally important, even if God already knows all of the choices we make. You can't removed the importance of that act of will on our part, because it is through that act of will that we can send ourselves to Hell or choose to live a life in relationship with God. That may be why so many theologians of history have said that it doesn't make sense that unbaptized babies are in Hell, because while they're under the stain of original sin they still haven't committed any personal sin. That's why the idea of limbo, a not bad but not great place, was such a popular idea for so long. 

Otherwise, if you remove free will from that situation, you might as well remove it from all situations, and start entertaining ideas of double predestination like Calvinists. We believe that our free choice is what determines if we go to heaven or hell. Calvinists believe that not only does God know who's going to heaven and hell, but that the holy people who are going to heaven are set aside as part of the "elect," and you get to figure out if you're a member of the "elect" or not. The elect never lose their salvation. But if you become a Christian and then go on a serial killing spree, you don't lose salvation, you were never saved in the first place. It's an important distinction.  
 

[Basilisa Marie]

You'd be hard pressed to find a dogma that says God is not bound by the sacraments or that He acts outside of the sacraments. As often as this phrase is thrown around it too is not dogma.

But even if something isn't officially enumerated in dogma, it doesn't mean that something isn't worthy of belief.  People believed all kinds of things without them being officially canonized into dogma until much later. 

The idea that God isn't bound by the sacraments is a logical conclusion drawn from God's omnipotence. God created the sacraments for us, and might choose to only operate within the sacraments, but God doesn't have to. We, however, must operate within the sacraments, because those are the only means by which we know for sure God saves us.