Children of Limbo: Will the Pope Finally Set Them Free?

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Children of Limbo: Will the Pope Finally Set Them Free?

Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit

Counterpunch - May 11, 2007

http://www.counterpunch.org/brauchli05112007.html

The Children of Limbo

Will the Pope Finally Set Them Free?

By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

>From time to time events ecclesiastical eclipse things political. It's

happened before and will happen again.

On October 31, 1992 it was reported that Pope John Paul II was prepared

to close an investigation into the condemnation some years earlier of

Galileo. In 1632 Galileo published his proof of the Copernican theory

of the solar system, a proof that put him in bad odor with the church

since it contravened the Ptolemaic theory that all heavenly bodies

orbit the earth. Unsuccessful at convincing the powers that were that

his findings did not constitute heresy, on June 21, 1633, he was found

guilty of having "held and taught" the Copernican doctrine and was

ordered to recant. Recanting, he was placed under house arrest where he

remained until his death at age 77 and his study of the solar system

was placed on the list of church-banned books where it remained for 122

years. His rehabilitation was delayed until 1992 when Cardinal Paul

Poupard, who was the head of an investigation by the church into

Galileo's theory, said: "We today know that Galileo was right in

adopting the Copernican astronomical theory." Galileo, wherever he now

is, was undoubtedly delighted. Shortly after his restoration to the

ranks of the reputable, Charles Darwin's theories of evolution that had

once given the church ecclesiastical heartburn, were embraced. That

happened in 1994.

That was the year in which the Pope announced to the Pontifical Academy

of Sciences that Darwin's theories are sound so long as they take into

account that creation as described by him was the work of God. The Pope

said that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of

evolution as more than just a hypothesis".

Commenting on the two rehabilitations, Francesco Barone, a philosopher

on scientific issues said: "With Galileo's recent 'rehabilitation' and

with this message by Pope John Paul II, the tear between the church and

science has been strung together."

The most recent good news from the Vatican was Pope Benedict XVI's

approval of a Vatican report released April 20 by the International

Theological Commission that said there were "serious" grounds to hope

that unbaptized children might get into heaven. Prior to this report it

was believed that unbaptized children went to a place called "limbo".

Theologians (none of whom, I have it on good authority, has ever

visited) describe "limbo" as a place where children enjoy an eternal

state of perfect natural happiness. It almost certainly has enough

teeter-totters and swings for everyone as well as cotton candy,

lemonade, computer games and all the other things children enjoy.

According to those in the know, the only thing lacking in limbo is

communion with God which in the vernacular means the children there

have no adult supervision, a condition that most of the children would

find very much to their liking and in many cases probably comports with

their idea of heaven.

If the International Theological Commission in its continuing studies

of this issue concludes that the unbaptized can go straight to heaven

without passing limbo and that view becomes church doctrine, there are

two obvious questions. Will the new policy be retroactive and will

there be an age or geographical cutoff?

With respect to the first question, it seems likely that in the divine

order of things there are a certain number of unbaptized infants who

die each year and if they are now permitted to enter heaven, their

entry will occur in an orderly fashion. Those presently in limbo

present an entirely different problem. There are surely billions of

unbaptized infants cavorting about in unsupervised perfect happiness in

limbo. Although all may not want to leave their perfectly happy state,

others may welcome the chance to get to heaven which, even though none

of them as been able to visit it, almost certainly enjoys as good a

reputation in limbo as it enjoys here on earth. If billions decide all

at once that they want to go to heaven, the question is can heaven

accommodate what might be described in today's parlance as a "surge".

The second question is whether there is an age or geographical cutoff

for invocation of the dispensation. At what age does failure to be

baptized become an offense that warrants limbo or, worse yet, hell, and

is there consideration of where the child is located geographically. It

is a lot easier to get baptized in Manhattan than in a remote village

in Tibet. Those are questions that I, being a columnist and not a

theologian, cannot hope to answer. I suspect the Vatican will appoint

yet another commission with an appropriate Latin moniker to study the

question and make appropriate recommendations to the Pope. The children

in limbo as well those still on earth will eagerly await its

conclusions.

[Christopher Brauchli is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. He can be

reached at: Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. Visit his website:

http://hraos.com/ }

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