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Shin
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In the audio sermon I linked to, it describes the traditional separate portions of the underworld… Hell proper… Limbo of the Infants… Limbo of the Fathers… Purgatory… each a distinct place… as the doctors consider it…
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Shin
Guest
There’s a lot of material earlier in this thread that answers the questions people have put forth already if people avail themselves of it. 
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LoyalViews
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Yes, true. It is not worth the argument here.There’s a lot of material earlier in this thread that answers the questions people have put forth already if people avail themselves of it.
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una_fides
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Actually, the Church, even since the days of the early Church fathers, has taught that there are varying degrees of punishment and intensity in hell. It’s not just one big pit of most intense fire. People are punished there according to the degree of gravity of the sins they have actually committed. If you have never committed any sins and can’t get into heaven because you’ve never been baptized, then we can only then conclude that there must be a place in hell where there is no pain of sense, and this place would therefore exist in its highest point away from the flames. Also, a question for you, where did the souls of the just go in the OT? They couldn’t get into heaven yet. Did they too suffer in the fires of hell while they waited? I suggest researching “Abraham’s bussom” and seeing what you come up with.
No problem. I don’t feel you diverged here, and you actually raise an interesting point. Do baptized infants actually “know” God? I would say that they are filled with the divine life of God, but that they do not yet “know” him in the cognitive sense. They have no actual knowledge of God. I would say too that in that state, they do not yet have the capacity to have actual faith in Jesus, though their souls do have the capacity to be infused with the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which infants receive in baptism. You can have an infused virtue but not have the capacity to know of its existence. We also know that we experience a greater degree of enjoyment of God in heaven depending upon our capacity for love that we have for him and develop on earth. As such, infants would attain the beatific vision and as being purely innocent would not have any purgatory or suffering to enter heaven, but they also arguably would not experience as great of extent of the beatific vision as someone who has merited a great extent on earth. That is why God does not just take us to heaven when we are baptized. The end state of our suffering on earth and meriting actually helps us to grow closer to him and united more perfectly to him then when we first believed.Furthermore, you write that “For infants that die without baptism, they never had the capacity to know God.” This is not true: God made us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this life in order to be happy with Him in the next life. Babies – because they are human persons – have the capacity to know God. Perhaps you are thinking of actual mental cognizance of a superior being, but this is not a requirement for heaven. If so, then realize that even baptized babies lack the capacity to know God in this active sense, yet they can enter into heaven and realize the full joy. So I see this point as irrelevant to the discussion.
Regardless, I suppose we should stick to the discussion of limbo as being true or not, rather than what “edge” of the final states in resides in. Sorry if I knocked things off track.
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una_fides
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Interesting theory. Do you have any tradition (Church fathers), Magisterial teachings, doctors of the Church, or Scriptures you can cite to support this idea? If so, I would be interested in reading. I’m pretty sure, however, that the Church has definitively taught that there can be no choices made after death, and that as soon as the soul separates from the body, one’s eternal destiny is set forever and cannot be changed. It can be compared to the state of the angels after they were given their test and 1/3 fell from heaven and can no longer choose or repent because their decision became permanent and eternal. Our state at death in a similar way too becomes the permanent destiny of our soul for all eternity.
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una_fides
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Very interesting argument. Wouldn’t we also then say that anyone who dies without ever exercising his own conscious decision would not have a free will? In which case infants that die after being baptized would also not have a free will. The key distinction and understanding is not just in the fixation of the will, since infants are not able to exercise their will for themselves. They key is whether or not that soul had sanctifying grace or whether it lacked sanctifying grace at the point of its death. The state of the soul determines the state of the will. In the case of baptized infants, they have been filled with sanctifying grace and are no longer enemies but then becomes friends and children of God. In the case of the unbaptized, the state of their souls are at enmity with God. Adam chose on behalf of all his descendants to declare war against God and he chose the side of the devil. As a result we are born enemies of God. We are enemy combatants and as such we are “by nature children of wrath” as Scripture teaches.
Is it fair? Is it fair that we are not born with a gift that none of us deserve, a gift which God owes to no one? God does not owe us baptism. He does not owe us grace. He does not owe us heaven. No one deserves it, and no one is entitled to it. God determined that the means by which he communicates his grace is through the sacrament of baptism. For those infants who died without receiving baptism, we know because of God’s mercy, he would not let them suffer the punishment for sins, which they never committed, but we also know God to be true to his Word when he declares without error in Scripture that unless one is born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
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una_fides
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I listened to it. Great sermon!! I think everyone on this thread definitely should listen to it before commenting further.
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Benadam
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The theology that supports the Christ Child as a certain reality because eternity entered time when God Incarnated supports this idea. It’s a certain reality that Christ lives at every stage of human developement from conception to death. Human souls are united by likeness. Knowledge is a union of likeness. In the likeness of soul that lacks experimental knowledge a union can happen. " We will see Him as He is because we will be like Him" (pp) That is the theology that supports the ‘possibility’ that Christ could be revealed even to children who were never born. Does that theology violate anything we have believed since the beginning?
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Shin
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‘With death the possibility of merit or demerit or conversion ceases.’ (sent. certa.)
‘Immediately after death the particular judgement takes place, in which, by a Divine Sentence of Judgement, the eternal fate of the deceased person is decided.’ (sent. fidei proxima.)
‘Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma’, Ludwig Ott
‘Immediately after death the particular judgement takes place, in which, by a Divine Sentence of Judgement, the eternal fate of the deceased person is decided.’ (sent. fidei proxima.)
‘Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma’, Ludwig Ott
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Shin
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Glad you liked it!!
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Benadam
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If this is in response to my post. A developed faculty of reason as a necessity to accept faith in Christ is what I’m trying to get around. An act of faith before death would be necessary of course. Thank you for clarifying that point for me.
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dang71
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i think Shin really brings up some good material/quotes. one thing that has not been discussed here in this thread (that i have seen) is the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. since she is a mother, i hardly see her standing by and doing nothing about the most innocent being “blocked” from heaven. the full truth of limbo (and many other things) will most likely never be known until we actually die, but i think it is better to have hope and so i will hope and trust in Jesus and His Mother that they will have some (right now hidden to us) way for these innocents to enter into the full beatific vision.
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kbharbert
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**i agree.
i just can not even imagine my Lord being so cruel to innocents.
it was this very subject that was the stumbling block for my mother when i converted in '06. in addition, years and years ago, she knew a family whose infant children were refused burial in the catholic graveyard because they hadn’t been baptised. **
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Shin
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Canon 1239
- Those who die without baptism are not to be accorded ecclesiastical burial.
- Catechumens who through no fault of their own die without baptism are to be reckoned as baptized.
Chapter II. Those To Whom Ecclesiastical Funerals Must Be Granted or Denied
Can. 1183
§1. When it concerns funerals, catechumens must be counted among the Christian faithful.
§2. The local ordinary can permit children whom the parents intended to baptize but who died before baptism to be given ecclesiastical funerals.
Code of Canon Law 1983
Note can permit – can also deny.
Daring to call God or the Church or saints by association cruel… is quite amazing to me. But that is the approach people take to this matter, rather than theology it’s our personal feelings becoming religion. An approach I might say, that is fundamentally flawed, and is fundamentally a flawed approach towards all Church teaching making decisions so.
I don’t want to be too strict here but that is what it amounts to.
"By reason of my tender love, I even show mercy to the infants of pagans.
If any of them die before reaching the age of discretion, given that they cannot come to know me face to face, they go instead to a place that it is not permitted for you to know but where they will live without suffering. Those who have advanced from the one road reach those two roads, that is, the age of discretion between good and evil. It is then in their power to choose what pleases them most. Their reward will follow the inclination of their will, since by that time they know how to read the sign written at the crossroads telling them that it is better to experience a little pain at the start and joy ready and waiting for them than experience joy at the start and pain at the end."
The Lord Jesus Christ, to St. Bridget of Sweden
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kbharbert
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right or wrong, i stand by what i said. to deny a child heaven would be cruel.
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Shin
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Do you believe anyone goes to Hell or Purgatory?
Do you believe any suffering at all for children caused by God is cruel?
How about circumcision?
What is cruel about natural happiness without suffering?
Heaven is not something we deserve by default, no one deserves Heaven. At all. Ever.** It’s a gift, God may give or not give at His discretion.
Our Lady of Fatima spoke to the children and told them not to be afraid. “I come from Heaven,” she said. The oldest of the children was Lucía who was ten years old. She asked Our Lady of Fatima, “Will I go to Heaven?” “Yes,” Our Lady of Fatima answered. “And Jacinta,” who was her seven-year-old cousin, “Will she go to heaven too?” “Yes,” answered Our Lady of Fatima. “And Francisco,” the brother of Jacinta who was nine years old, “Will he go to Heaven?” “Yes,” answered Our Lady of Fatima, "but he will have to say many rosaries."
The siblings were victims of the great 1918 influenza epidemic which swept through Europe in 1918. Both lingered for many months, insisting on walking to church to make Eucharistic devotions and prostrating themselves to pray for hours, kneeling with their heads on the ground as instructed by the angel who had first appeared to them.
Francisco declined hospital treatment and died peacefully at home before reaching his eleventh birthday, while Jacinta was dragged from one hospital to another in an attempt to save her life which she insisted was futile. She developed purulent pleurisy and endured an operation in which two of her ribs were removed. Because of the condition of her heart, she could not be anesthetized and suffered terrible pain, which she said would help to convert many sinners. On February 20, 1920, Jacinta asked the hospital chaplain who heard her confession to bring her Holy Communion and give her the Anointing of the Sick because she was going to die “this very night”. He told her that her condition was not that serious, and that he would return the next day. A few hours later Jacinta was dead. She had died, as she had often said she would, alone: not even a nurse was with her.
“From that time Jesus began to shew to his disciples, that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the ancients and scribes and chief priests, and be put to death, and the third day rise again. And Peter taking him, began to rebuke him, saying: Lord, be it far from thee, this shall not be unto thee. **Who turning, said to Peter: Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men. **Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
Matthew 16:21-24
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kbharbert
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the subject is limbo and that is what i am commenting on. i won’t be dragged into a conversation about anything else. i’ve made my opinion clear. let it go.
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una_fides
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If that is the case, then why has the Church taught that the only way that a soul can be cleansed from original sin is by baptism? If it’s just through similarity with Christ that a soul is cleansed from original sin and filled with sanctifying grace then we would all be conceived without sin and thus we would deny Adam’s transmission of original sin to his descendants. The Church has always taught that we inherit this original sin through our human nature that lacks the gift of sanctifying grace at its conception. Furthermore, the Church teaches that the Blessed Virgin Mary received a singular grace of being preserved from original sin; she was the only one. The end result of this new theology that is not rooted in the handed down tradition is a denial of original sin itself and its transmission to us. We all become “baptized” by Jesus in the womb just by likeness and no longer need water baptism. Do you see the destructive nature and how it results in denying what the Church has always taught cannot be denied? The sources have already been demonstrated earlier in this thread; otherwise, I would re-post them all again myself.
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una_fides
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By our human standards and through our sin-tainted human eyes, all infants, baptized or not, seem to be most innocent. In reality, we are conceived in original sin and are born defective, lacking sanctifying grace, and on the side of the enemies of God. We are born spiritually and entirely bankrupt. Christ provided the cure to this problem through water baptism. Those who are water baptized truly become most innocent. Those who do not are still in a state of original sin and though they are innocent in the sense of not committing actual sins, their souls they inherited are not innocent, their souls are empty, their souls are lacking the life of God that they need to get to heaven. For this reason, baptism is so important for everyone. Because we have a merciful God, we trust that these souls that die without committing any actual sins will not suffer at all, but we cannot expect him to grant them grace that he does not owe them nor can we expect him to save them. He does not owe them heaven just because they did not commit any actual sins. Those souls are not “blocked” from heaven. They are in a state of being enemies of God. Think of it as enemy combatants in a war of good and evil. Their default state is one of “wrath” one of evil and without reception of the sacrament of baptism (being born of water and of spirit) “they cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
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una_fides
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Shin, Excellent quote! Do you have the link to this text online by chance? If not, where did you get it? Thanks.
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