Baptism

[texas1966]

Can a stillborn baby be baptized? And where does the baby go?

 

[Barbkw]

I believe that baptism in only for the living. Hopefully someone more knowledgable than I will give you an absolute answer on that.

The souls of all babies return to their loving Maker.

 

[ConstantineTG]

The souls of all babies return to their loving Maker.

We don’t know for sure. We trust in God’s mercy that the innocent souls return to Him.

 

[PilgrimToChrist]

Can a stillborn baby be baptized? And where does the baby go?

If the baby dies during childbirth, yes. We don’t know exactly when death occurs, so it is possible to have Extreme Unction (part of the Last Rites) or baptism up to 60-90 minutes after what the doctors consider “death”.

Philosophically, the soul is what makes a body alive – it is what separates a live person from a corpse, or a live dog from a dead dog or a living tree from firewood. Death is the separation of that principle of life, the soul, from the body. We can clearly see when something is alive – if it is growing, moving and making sounds and performing other actions proper to living beings of its kind. We also can clearly see when something is dead – that opossum on the road wasn’t going anywhere. Decay is one way in which we tell that something is dead. Sometimes at funerals, people will say that the deceased looks as though he is just sleeping and could wake up at any moment, they would not say this if he had been reduced to a skeleton.

But when we try to look closer at the line between life and death, we have a very difficult time pointing out where that occurs. On one end of the scale, some doctors now are pushing something they call “brain death”, which is declaring someone to be dead while they are clearly alive – they are breathing, their heart is beating, but the amount of brain activity is so low that they want to consider them dead. Of course, they want to do this in order to take their organs, which results in murdering the person since they aren’t really dead.

Often, we think of death as when the heart stops beating. Sometimes people will say they went in surgery and they “died” twice on the operating table. Well, clearly they are walking and talking and so they aren’t really dead, their heart just stopped beating twice.

So if a baby is a miscarriage – that is, he or she died while in the womb and was expelled several hours or even days later, no they cannot be baptized because they are clearly dead and it’s been too long. But if they are stillborn when just five minutes ago their heart was beating but something went tragically wrong, they can be baptized because they might still be alive even though the doctors declare them dead.

As for where unbaptized children go, we have to look at the afterlife. There are five states in the afterlife:

• Heaven
• Purgatory
• Limbo of the Children
• Limbo of the Patriarchs
• Hell

Heaven is for the perfect – those with no stain on their soul at all. Purgatory is a temporary place for those destined for Heaven but who have some imperfections that need to be worked out. Hell is for the reprobate, those who have died in their sins as enemies of God. The Limbo of the Patriarchs is where the just men and women of the Old Testament went when they died (the sinners went to Hell) because Heaven had not yet been opened by Christ, since Christ has indeed come and Heaven is open, the Limbo of the Patriarchs is closed.

The Limbo of the Children is the most contentious teaching. Unlike Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, it is not dogma, which means you can still be Catholic and not believe in it. But it is a long-standing teaching of the Western Church – St. Augustine talks about it, for instance. Jesus says that you must be Baptized in order to enter Heaven, so those who are not Baptized cannot enter Heaven. But God does not damn souls to Hell for anyone else’s fault but their own, so we cannot go to Hell simply because Adam sinned. So if they cannot go to Heaven because they are not Baptized and they will not go to Hell because they have committed no sin, there must be another state – Limbo. Those in Limbo do not see God as He is (Beatific Vision) but neither do they suffer from this as the souls in Hell do (this pain of separation is the chief pain in Hell – the poena damni), rather they probably enjoy the greatest extent of natural happiness possible, something like the Garden of Eden (Paradise).

Whether they go to Limbo or Heaven (some say God just waives the necessity of Baptism for them), we don’t know but God is just and he will do what is right – whatever gives Him the greater glory.

 

[thistle]

If the baby dies during childbirth, yes. We don’t know exactly when death occurs, so it is possible to have Extreme Unction (part of the Last Rites) or baptism up to 60-90 minutes after what the doctors consider “death”.

Philosophically, the soul is what makes a body alive – it is what separates a live person from a corpse, or a live dog from a dead dog or a living tree from firewood. Death is the separation of that principle of life, the soul, from the body. We can clearly see when something is alive – if it is growing, moving and making sounds and performing other actions proper to living beings of its kind. We also can clearly see when something is dead – that opossum on the road wasn’t going anywhere. Decay is one way in which we tell that something is dead. Sometimes at funerals, people will say that the deceased looks as though he is just sleeping and could wake up at any moment, they would not say this if he had been reduced to a skeleton.

But when we try to look closer at the line between life and death, we have a very difficult time pointing out where that occurs. On one end of the scale, some doctors now are pushing something they call “brain death”, which is declaring someone to be dead while they are clearly alive – they are breathing, their heart is beating, but the amount of brain activity is so low that they want to consider them dead. Of course, they want to do this in order to take their organs, which results in murdering the person since they aren’t really dead.

Often, we think of death as when the heart stops beating. Sometimes people will say they went in surgery and they “died” twice on the operating table. Well, clearly they are walking and talking and so they aren’t really dead, their heart just stopped beating twice.

So if a baby is a miscarriage – that is, he or she died while in the womb and was expelled several hours or even days later, no they cannot be baptized because they are clearly dead and it’s been too long. But if they are stillborn when just five minutes ago their heart was beating but something went tragically wrong, they can be baptized because they might still be alive even though the doctors declare them dead.

As for where unbaptized children go, we have to look at the afterlife. There are five states in the afterlife:

• Heaven
• Purgatory
• Limbo of the Children
• Limbo of the Patriarchs
• Hell

Heaven is for the perfect – those with no stain on their soul at all. Purgatory is a temporary place for those destined for Heaven but who have some imperfections that need to be worked out. Hell is for the reprobate, those who have died in their sins as enemies of God. The Limbo of the Patriarchs is where the just men and women of the Old Testament went when they died (the sinners went to Hell) because Heaven had not yet been opened by Christ, since Christ has indeed come and Heaven is open, the Limbo of the Patriarchs is closed.

The Limbo of the Children is the most contentious teaching. Unlike Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, it is not dogma, which means you can still be Catholic and not believe in it. But it is a long-standing teaching of the Western Church – St. Augustine talks about it, for instance. Jesus says that you must be Baptized in order to enter Heaven, so those who are not Baptized cannot enter Heaven. But God does not damn souls to Hell for anyone else’s fault but their own, so we cannot go to Hell simply because Adam sinned. So if they cannot go to Heaven because they are not Baptized and they will not go to Hell because they have committed no sin, there must be another state – Limbo. Those in Limbo do not see God as He is (Beatific Vision) but neither do they suffer from this as the souls in Hell do (this pain of separation is the chief pain in Hell – the poena damni), rather they probably enjoy the greatest extent of natural happiness possible, something like the Garden of Eden (Paradise).

Whether they go to Limbo or Heaven (some say God just waives the necessity of Baptism for them), we don’t know but God is just and he will do what is right – whatever gives Him the greater glory.

There is no longer Limbo for the Patriarchs. That was before Christ only.

Limbo for Infants is only a theological hypothesis. It is NOT and never has been a Church teaching.

 

[Sirach2]

This story was on a non-catholic religious program last week and it helped me think about God’s mercy for these infants who were never baptized.

A young boy had died for a short time before being resuscitated. He told his mother that he saw his little sister in heaven. Due to his young age, he had no way of knowing about his mother’s previous miscarriage, yet he was sharing his knowledge of it with his mother after he came back to life. He told her that he knew she was in mommy’s tummy but did not live.

Whether or not we can fully trust these after death stories is debatable. But when I consider the words of St. Faustina about some souls at the point of death being given the opportunity to accept God, I won’t say it cannot happen that way. Nor does it bother me that there was not sufficient mental development at the time of death. That pertains only to the body, not the soul.

When we are resurrected with our new bodies, who knows what they will be? Will we resurrect at the age of an undeveloped fetus lacking mental cognizance? Or will we keep the body of a 90-year old if that’s when we died? All we know is that whenever God breathes forth a soul (at conception), that body, however imperfect in formation, will be resurrected along with its soul in the age to come.

I seriously doubt that God will confine these souls to a separate place (Limbo?) for all eternity, apart from the parents and family to which God intended for them to live. If it pleased God to create the soul at conception, why would He deprive that resurrected being from enjoying His eternal presence and cast it into a separate place of happiness apart from Him?

We just don’t know. - God has not committed that to us in Revelation.
“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” (Nicene Creed) Does anyone doubt that these souls will resurrect, even if their brief life form did not come to full term?