The definition of “common teaching” and what that tells us about Limbo.

imbo apol­o­gist Kevin Kuk­la is at it again. In the com­ment sec­tion of one of his many posts on this top­ic, he makes a con­ces­sion and throws the game; then, he forth­with denies that he has done so:

As oth­ers have right­ly point­ed out, no pope has defined lim­bo by an ‘ex cathe­dra’ state­ment. [That’s the part that mat­ters.] There­fore, they con­clude, any opin­ion on the mat­ter is a valid one. This is false. No pope needs to define this to be true. When it comes to lim­bo, the doc­trine has been taught by every­one, every­where, at all times through Church his­to­ry. This makes it a doc­trine we can call infal­li­ble [Not so.] and can have assur­ance is true.

Mr. Kuk­la, I am sor­ry to say, does not under­stand either “com­mon teach­ing” or infal­li­bil­i­ty. I am here to cor­rect him. When he says that the Lim­bo of Infants “has been taught by every­one, every­where, at all times through Church his­to­ry,” though nev­er defined to be true and bind­ing on the faith­ful, he is describ­ing “com­mon teach­ing.”

(A quick aside. It is false, this claim that Lim­bo has been taught “at all times through Church his­to­ry.” You’d have to chop off the first 400 years and the most recent 50–100. Lim­bo is the prod­uct (I say it again) of the­o­log­i­cal spec­u­la­tion that arose out of Augustine’s teach­ing on orig­i­nal sin. Most peo­ple through most of Church his­to­ry (75 per­cent) have believed it. The Church itself has nev­er pro­claimed that Lim­bo is an arti­cle of faith bind­ing on all Catholics. We can stop there.)

To under­stand what “com­mon teach­ing is,” one should go to Ott’s Fun­da­men­tals of Catholic Dog­ma. [The rel­e­vant sec­tion is here; but you also have it on your book­shelf; right?] Ott begins by defin­ing “the­o­log­i­cal opin­ions”:

The­o­log­i­cal opin­ions are free views on aspects of doc­trines con­cern­ing Faith and morals, which are nei­ther clear­ly attest­ed in Rev­e­la­tion nor decid­ed by the Teach­ing Author­i­ty of the Church. Their val­ue depends upon the rea­sons adduced in their favour.

Ott places these the­o­log­i­cal opin­ions with­in the larg­er cat­e­go­ry of “com­mon teach­ing”:

Com­mon Teach­ing (sen­ten­tia com­mu­nis) is doc­trine, which in itself belongs to the field of the free opin­ions, but which is accept­ed by the­olo­gians gen­er­al­ly.

Now, the fact that Lim­bo is “accept­ed gen­er­al­ly” does not, ipso fac­to, take it out of the cat­e­go­ry of free opin­ions and place it in the cat­e­go­ry of infal­li­ble and bind­ing teach­ing. It would take an ex cathe­dra def­i­n­i­tion to do that; and as Mr. Kuk­la con­cedes, there is no such def­i­n­i­tion.

Com­mon teach­ing is not infal­li­ble teach­ing. Com­mon teach­ing does not bind the con­science. We can stop there.

That is why Bene­dict XVI, while he was Car­di­nal Ratzinger and the pre­fect of the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, right­ly said that “Lim­bo was nev­er a defined truth of the faith”; and added: “I would aban­don it since it was only a the­o­log­i­cal hypoth­e­sis.” You will for­give me, dear read­er; but I con­sid­er Bene­dict XVI a high­er author­i­ty on this ques­tion than Mr. Kuk­la.

No less an author­i­ty than St. Robert Bel­larmine him­self describes Lim­bo as “com­mon teach­ing.” Odd­ly, Mr. Kuk­la cites Bel­larmine as though he lends sup­ports to his own false claims. Here is what Bel­larmine says:

The com­mon teach­ing of the scholas­tic the­olo­gians is that with­in the earth there are four inner cham­bers: one for the damned, anoth­er for those being purged of sin, a third for those infants who have died with­out receiv­ing Bap­tism, and a fourth which is now emp­ty but once held those just men who died before the pas­sion of Christ.

So not only is Lim­bo “com­mon teach­ing,” in the sense Ott defines it, but it is the com­mon teach­ing only “of the scholas­tic the­olo­gians”; not the Church itself. I know that some folks treat the scholas­tic texts as though they are the true Cat­e­chism; but it is not thus. In one of his com­ments on Mr. Kuk­la’s posts (this one), Dea­con Jim Rus­sell right­ly points out that, even if we were to find that a pope has repeat­ed this com­mon teach­ing in a Mag­is­te­r­i­al text, that “does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly ele­vate it to author­i­ta­tive mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing.” It would require an inde­pen­dent def­i­n­i­tion to do that.

Vat­i­can I, in Pas­tor Aeter­nus, defines for us the lim­its of infal­li­ble teach­ing. Infal­li­bil­i­ty exists “when the Roman Pon­tiff speaks ex cathe­dra” and “defines a doc­trine con­cern­ing faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.” Then, and only then, is a state­ment infal­li­ble.

If, as Mr. Kuk­la admits, there is no ex cathe­dra state­ment, and no def­i­n­i­tion of Lim­bo, then we may have com­mon teaching—i.e., the­o­log­i­cal opin­ion large­ly accepted—but we do not have infal­li­ble truth bind­ing upon Catholics. That means that Catholics are per­fect­ly free not to believe in Lim­bo, and that dif­fer­ences of opin­ion are to be judged sole­ly on the cri­te­ria of (in Ott’s words) “the rea­sons adduced in their favour.”