From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Stuck in the Middle No More
The Catholic Church ends "limbo." What now?
When word went out from Rome recently that the pope's theological advisers were prepared to abandon the idea of "limbo," it was clear that the medieval notion of a place where unbaptized infants, among others, go was as good as dead. Two decades ago, when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was new to his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he said that he personally thought the church should "let [limbo] drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis." Now, as Pope Benedict XVI, he can have his way.
But this is a case of a pope validating a change in the church, not creating one on his own. Time was when infants were routinely baptized at birth or shortly thereafter to ensure that they would not, through crib death or other misfortune, be denied access to heaven. Now, Catholic priests and parents wait weeks or even months to perform the ceremony--a clear sign that they no longer take the idea of limbo seriously. The limp reaction of the Catholic press--a nod here and there, but mostly a yawn--is further evidence that limbo has already died the death of indifference.
While it's true that limbo was never formal church doctrine, it was always more than just a hypothesis. Limbo was formulated by the church as a serviceable solution to genuine theological problem. If, as the church had long maintained, baptism is necessary for the removal of the original sin of Adam and Eve, what was to be the fate of infants who died before they could be baptized? Heaven was beyond their reach. On the other hand, infants are incapable of committing sin, least of all the mortal kind that merits eternal punishment in hell. So, the question became: What is their portion in the afterlife? The practical answer was limbo, a place of eternal but purely "natural" happiness, bereft of the divine presence that heaven promised.
The same sort of problem arose over the question of salvation for revered figures of the Old Testament. If redemption was possible only through death and resurrection of Christ, how could these admirable men and women be saved? The solution was the "limbo of the Fathers," a place where the just who predeceased Christ--including Plato and Virgil--waited until released into heaven by Christ's salvific act on the cross. Thus, that limbo disappeared long ago.
For at least 700 years, though, the limbo of infants was very much a part of the common teaching of the church. Chiseled into the Catholic imagination, limbo was as real as heaven or hell, a kind of celestial day-care center set aside for innocent victims of circumstance--miscarriages, crib deaths and, especially in more recent times, abortions. But to aggrieved parents, limbo could seem cold comfort: After all, one of the anticipated joys of heaven, besides seeing God "face to face," is reunion with loved ones. Intuiting this problem, the church once instructed doctors and nurses in Catholic hospitals to baptize stillborn infants. Many still do.
Limbo, it should be noted, is not an exclusively Catholic concept. It has analogues in other religions. Hindus and Buddhists have a wide range of heavens and hells, some of them rather like limbo in that residents there enjoy earthly comforts. But they are all temporary abodes before the cycle of rebirth again kicks in.
Most Protestants have rejected limbo as a Catholic invention unsupported by biblical texts. Mormons, however, believe that there are three kingdoms or "degrees of glory" in the afterlife. Like limbo, the "terrestrial" kingdom is the lesser abode of those who led honorable lives on earth but refused baptism into the Church of Latter-day Saints.
One problem with all religious constructions of the afterlife is that they tend to be much too concrete. A literary construction, however, like Dante's "Divine Comedy" continues to awe and instruct because it works magnificently on so many levels, literal and figurative.
The Catholic habit is to let outworn theological idioms disappear through benign neglect. That appears to be what has happened to limbo. Already in the new "Catechism of the Catholic Church," published in 1994, we read of children who die without baptism that "the church can only entrust them to the mercy of God." But aren't we all in that position?
Heaven has always been a matter of hope. That's why Catholics have always prayed for the souls of the "faithfully departed." Extending that hope to unbaptized infants seems like a long-overdue corrective. As for limbo, I hope it survives as a useful metaphor for feeling incomplete, stalled or overlooked. We know that limbo exists because we've all been there ourselves.
Mr. Woodward, a contributing editor of Newsweek, is at work on a book on American religion and culture since 1950.
