This was mentioned on Gerry Ryan yesterday morning, where he asked the obvious question – what on earth happens all those people in limbo? Where do they go now. Sinead has also brought the subject up.
Yes the Catholic Church is an easy thing to take the piss out of on occassions such as this. I like the history of the idea though:
…in 1905, pope and now St Pius X made a definitive declaration confirming the existence of limbo. “Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either, because having original sin, and only that, they do not deserve paradise, but neither hell nor purgatory.”
However the statement was not made infallibly.
Imagine if it was made infallibly, oh the horror! The Church wouldn’t be able to back track once an idea became untenable.
The reason the Catholic Church gets itself into such binds is, like all religions, it makes absolute statements in order to explain or defend itself. So, at the time it seemed like a good idea to invent Limbo to explain a particular problem. When it holds power and there is little science, there is no problem. If one challenges the ‘word’ one burns. Now that the chuch has lost power and scientific progress continues to make these absolute statements look more and more ridiculous religion is forced to ‘review’ the situation. This, of course, only makes matters worse because it exposes the Catholic Church for what it really is – An organisation that exploits the natural tedency of humans to be superstitious to gain power over them. Long live the power of science