What is going to happen to limbo?

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inJESUS:
usually i dont specify who my prayers are for coz they dont end but i just ask Jesus’ mercy on all those who need it. Should i specify?
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Mother Teresa always said to be specific. 👍
 
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OriginalJS:
I read that the Church is going to drop limbo. Anybody else see this or am I late getting the news. I can remember the nuns explaining limbo to us in some detail. It is going away now?
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It never was here. Limbo never was promulgated by the Church. It was a theory the some theologists put forth, but it was never accepted.
 
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inJESUS:
usually i dont specify who my prayers are for coz they dont end but i just ask Jesus’ mercy on all those who need it. Should i specify?
Click to expand...
We know that within our communities that there are abortion clinics from which rivers of blood continually flow. Since one cannot possibly know personally the parents of all the infants that are put to death in these slaughter houses, we can only pray in general for the salvation of the innocent babes that have lost their precious lives.

“For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world.”
 
Catholic News Service
Closing the doors of limbo: Theologians say it was hypothesis … 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. …
 
To claim that only “formally defined truths of faith” should be believed, and everything else discarded at will, it to open a Pandora’s Box of dissent. You have to know that.
 
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Sacramentalist:
To claim that only “formally defined truths of faith” should be believed, and everything else discarded at will …
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Who has made such a wild claim?

I don’t doubt that Ratzinger’s knowledge as a theologian far exceeds my own theological understanding of these matters. I made my post to counterbalance the one-sided article you posted.
 
The article I cited, however, actually goes through the trouble to document, over the centuries, the various Magisterial statements made on the subject, and to explicate their implications.

Ratzinger’s quotation does not; he just dismisses it in saying it wasn’t defined ex cathedra. Not that I blame him: after all, that excerpt comes from an interivew, not a theological dissertation.

I know of no anti-Limbo proponent that has tried to root his opinions in the Church’s Tradition the way that Fr. Harrison has done in his essay on Limbo.
 
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Sacramentalist:
The article I cited, however, actually goes through the trouble to document, over the centuries, the various Magisterial statements made on the subject, and to explicate their implications.

Ratzinger’s quotation does not; he just dismisses it in saying it wasn’t defined ex cathedra.
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No, Ratzinger doesn’t do this, at least in the article that I linked. What Ratzinger said was this: “It [infant limbo] formed part of a secondary thesis in support of a truth which is absolutely of first significance for faith, namely, the importance of baptism,” he said.

In “God and the World,” published in 2000, he [Ratzinger] said limbo had been used “to justify the necessity of baptizing infants as early as possible” to ensure that they had the “sanctifying grace” needed to wash away the effects of original sin.
I know of no anti-Limbo proponent that has tried to root his opinions in the Church’s Tradition the way that Fr. Harrison has done in his essay on Limbo.
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Then please read these two articles by Fr William G Most: IS THERE SALVATION OUTSIDE THE CHURCH?

**UNBAPTIZED INFANTS ** Fr. Most isn’t “anti-Limbo”, but he certainly does not agree with Fr. Harrison that the “Church’s Tradition” is that fate of unbaptized infants to be condemned to eternally dwell in Hell.
 
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Sacramentalist:
To claim that only “formally defined truths of faith” should be believed, and everything else discarded at will, it to open a Pandora’s Box of dissent. You have to know that.
Click to expand...
That’s not what Cardinal Raztinger meant by “not defined.” In theology-speak, it was never *sententa certa *(certain teaching) of the Catholic Church, but was sententia communis (common teaching). Thus, it belonged to the field of free opinion. Catholics are bound to assent to the doctrines of the Church, whether infallible or not, but are not bound to assent to common teaching because it is still speculative.

John XXIII: “In essentials unity, in doubtful matters liberty, in all things charity.”
 
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