Limbo

The Roman Catholic church is debating the issue of ‘limbo’ and it’s role in the church and the teachings of Christianity.

Limbo is basically nowhere land.  According to the church, it is a place where babies who die before baptism and people who were born before Jesus are sent.  Before limbo existed, the early church preached that these lost souls would go directly to hell.  But this was seen as too unfair and in direct conflict with the idea of a loving God.  So Limbo was introduced – a state of pain-free but Godless existence.  As it currently stands, all those poor babies who died before they got the chance to be baptised and all those born beforeJesus came are in this state of limbo.

The church has a real dilemma here because it preaches that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, a person needs to have received the sacrament of baptism, usually by water but not neccessarily, in order to be cleansed of original sin and reborn.   You can clearly see how this is a very sensitive issue for the church and for Catholic families whose babies have died before being baptised.  But any decision that the church decides on this must be Scripturally based and I’m not sure how they can reconcile the two.  

If limbo is abolished, the church needs to find a place for these babies to go to because it will be unacceptable to revert back to the cruel pre-limbo days of the un-baptised going straight to hell but it will be equally unacceptable to contradict such a long and fundamental doctrine of *baptismal salvation* that has been a part of the church since it’s origin by suddenly *allowing* them to enter heaven.   And what will happen to all those babies and pre-Jesus people who are already in limbo once limbo is abolished? 

Not an easy one for the church.