Some further responses to Limbo apologists.

t the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter, Dr. R. Jared Staudt has respond­ed to my two arti­cles there about Lim­bo [first / sec­ond]. In order to avoid back-and-forth blog posts at the Reg­is­ter, I am going to use this blog to reply to some of the points Dr. Staudt rais­es.

Before I do that, though, I want to clar­i­fy, once again, what I do not say. I made these same dis­claimers in the sec­ond of my two posts; but a few folks in the com­ment sec­tion were too busy being scan­dal­ized to read all of what scan­dal­ized them; and so, I will repeat myself.

• First, I do NOT say that the Church has taught one way or the oth­er about Lim­bo, or the fate of infants who die with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of bap­tism.

What I DO say is that, because the Church has no such dog­ma, Catholics are free to spec­u­late as they wish. (Pro­vid­ed, of course, that they do not deny any­thing the Church has taught.) My two articles—in par­tic­u­lar, the second—were my attempt to spec­u­late. The Church per­mits me to do so. At no time did I try, nor would I, to impose my views on oth­er Catholics or to claim I speak for the Church. If peo­ple who inhab­it a com­box choose to be scan­dal­ized by a lib­er­ty the Church allows, that is not my grief of spir­it.

• Sec­ond, I do NOT say that par­ents may delay hav­ing their liv­ing chil­dren bap­tized. I specif­i­cal­ly said: Do not do that. I specif­i­cal­ly said: Do not pre­sume upon God’s mer­cy.

Indeed, I was specif­i­cal­ly address­ing the ques­tion of infants who die with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of baptism—miscarried chil­dren, still­born chil­dren, abort­ed chil­dren. You can’t just leap from that dis­cus­sion to the con­clu­sion that bap­tism may be delayed where it is pos­si­ble. That’s a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion alto­geth­er.

• Third, I do NOT deny orig­i­nal sin. One per­son sug­gest­ed to me (since evi­dent­ly I know noth­ing of such things) that I read up on the Pela­gian heresy. I am not sure why. My argu­ment is not about the real­i­ty or effects of orig­i­nal sin; but about whether, in the absence of bap­tism, God removes it in some oth­er way. Catholics who deny Lim­bo agree that orig­i­nal sin needs to be removed some­how; that part is not in dis­pute.

I say all this one last time, lest Lim­bo apol­o­gists spend much breath try­ing to edu­cate me on points I know per­fect­ly well and in no way deny.

•••

Dr. Staudt com­pos­es his arti­cle as a list of points, and so I will take them up one by one.

• His first point is that Lim­bo is not “a dis­tinct, fourth place in the after­life” but “a part of Hell.”

Which is true; and in my first arti­cle I quot­ed Kevin Kuk­la, who described Lim­bo as being “on the edge of Hell.” And so, one more time: I know.

Dr. Staudt goes on:

The teach­ing on Lim­bo sim­ply acknowl­edges that those who die with­out sanc­ti­fy­ing grace, and thus may not enter heav­en, have not mer­it­ed pun­ish­ment for sin. This point is found in the Mag­is­teri­um of the Church, at the Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cils of Lyons and Flo­rence. This point fol­lows from an under­stand­ing that there is a gra­da­tion both of pun­ish­ment in hell and reward in heav­en (cf. 1 Cor 15:41–42).

But wait. If by “Lim­bo” Dr. Staudt sim­ply means a mild gra­da­tion of pun­ish­ment in Hell for “those who die with­out sanc­ti­fy­ing grace,” I do not deny that; but that as not my top­ic. I wrote about the sup­posed Lim­bo of Infants, not the exis­tence of greater and less­er pun­ish­ment in Hell.

Let us avoid shift­ing the def­i­n­i­tions of terms.

Let me point out, too, that the assump­tion that chil­dren who had no pos­si­bil­i­ty of bap­tism die “with­out sanc­ti­fy­ing grace” is the very thing that’s in dis­pute. Dr. Staudt refers to the Coun­cil of Lyons and the Coun­cil of Flo­rence as though they have set­tled the mat­ter; but he begs the ques­tion. Where there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of bap­tism, does God sup­ply sanc­ti­fy­ing grace in some oth­er way? Is God lim­it­ed by the sacra­ments, or no? That is the ques­tion. Dr. Staudt avoids it.

Dr. Staudt goes on:

This point is not the­o­log­i­cal spec­u­la­tion. The Church has def­i­nite­ly taught in two Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cils that there is a dis­tinct pun­ish­ment for those who die only with orig­i­nal sin and not actu­al sin [Begs the ques­tion.] (which is what is meant by the word lim­bo). The the­o­log­i­cal opin­ion relat­ed to lim­bo per­tains to the asser­tion that all unborn chil­dren nec­es­sar­i­ly would enter this state.

Actu­al­ly, “Lim­bo” does not mean “dis­tinct pun­ish­ment” but “out­er edge.” And I thought that the Lim­bo of Infants was a place with no pun­ish­ment: No pun­ish­ment is mer­it­ed, for there was no actu­al sin. It is a “place of per­fect nat­ur­al hap­pi­ness,” only apart from the Beatif­ic Vision.

Lim­bo apol­o­gists can’t seem to make up their mind what Lim­bo even is.

One last point here: When I said that Lim­bo is a “the­o­log­i­cal hypoth­e­sis,” I was quot­ing Car­di­nal Ratzinger in the Ratzinger Report:

Lim­bo was nev­er a defined truth of the faith [and] I would aban­don it since it was only a the­o­log­i­cal hypoth­e­sis. It formed part of a sec­ondary the­sis in sup­port of a truth which is absolute­ly of first sig­nif­i­cance for the faith, name­ly, the impor­tance of bap­tism. [T]he very the­olo­gians who pro­posed “lim­bo” also said that par­ents could spare the child lim­bo by desir­ing its bap­tism through prayer.

So he cer­tain­ly seemed to think that it is Lim­bo itself that is the “hypoth­e­sis,” not who will end up there. I will accept the word of Car­di­nal Ratzinger on this.

• Dr. Staudt’s sec­ond point is to won­der whether there might be a “Lim­bo” for unbap­tized chil­dren who die out­side the womb but before the age of rea­son. Or what about the unbap­tized who are men­tal­ly impaired in such a way that they nev­er could be respon­si­ble for actu­al sin?

Dr. Staudt refers us to Pope Pius VI’s bull Auc­to­rum Fidei (1794), in which, he says, “the Mag­is­teri­um has spo­ken defin­i­tive­ly on this point.”

In Auc­to­rum Fidei, Pope Pius VI con­demns the errors of the Syn­od of Pis­toia, and here is what he says on the ques­tion at hand.

The doc­trine which rejects as a Pela­gian fable that place of the low­er regions (which the faith­ful gen­er­al­ly des­ig­nate by the name of lim­bo of the chil­dren) in which the souls of those depart­ing with the sole guilt of orig­i­nal sin are pun­ished with the pun­ish­ment of the con­demned, exclu­sive of the pun­ish­ment of fire […] is false, rash, inju­ri­ous to Catholic schools.

If this is a defin­i­tive, Mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing that the “lim­bo of the chil­dren” does exist, one nat­u­ral­ly won­ders how Joseph Car­di­nal Ratzinger missed it. And I empha­size the word “doc­trine” in what Pius VI writes since it is the key word that must not be missed: What he con­demns is the denial of Lim­bo as a doc­trine. That’s a nuance that we must not miss.

I don’t pass off my denial of Lim­bo as a doc­trine that must be held by all Catholics. If I did that, then I would be under the con­dem­na­tion of Pius VI. But since I hap­pi­ly con­cede that I am writ­ing noth­ing oth­er than my own opin­ion, Auc­to­rum Fidei has no appli­ca­tion to me.

[See the update below on this point.]

• Dr. Staudt’s third point need not delay me too long, since in it he mere­ly wor­ries that those who reject Lim­bo might “deny the real­i­ty of orig­i­nal sin” and assume that sal­va­tion is some­thing we have “auto­mat­i­cal­ly.”

I say noth­ing of the sort, of course; nor does any oth­er Catholic I know who dis­putes Lim­bo; and so I won’t linger but move on.

• His fourth point is to claim that the Bap­tism of Desire applies “only to cat­e­chu­mens.”

He says:

It is, of course, pos­si­ble to make an argu­ment for how this teach­ing could be extend­ed to chil­dren who die with­out the grace of Bap­tism, but an argu­ment is nec­es­sary. We can­not sim­ply take texts out of con­text and apply them to a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion. How is an unborn child like a cat­e­chu­men? Obvi­ous­ly a key point is the inten­tion of the par­ent, but it is the inten­tion of anoth­er, not one’s own entrance into the cat­e­chu­me­nate. The inten­tion of the par­ents and the faith of Church suf­fices for infant Bap­tism and so we can see how this same prin­ci­ple could apply. But has the Mag­is­teri­um made this point explic­it?

Well, I’m not sure that the Mag­is­teri­um needs to make it “explic­it.” Since the Church declares no dog­ma of Lim­bo, but per­mits spec­u­la­tion, would­n’t that be super­flu­ous?

But let us back up to Dr. Staudt’s claim that the Bap­tism of Desire is “for cat­e­chu­mens.” That is not what Car­di­nal Ratzinger said. Let me quote him again:

“[T]he very the­olo­gians who pro­posed “lim­bo” also said that par­ents could spare the child lim­bo by desir­ing its bap­tism through prayer.”

Was Car­di­nal Ratzinger wrong? I would be very care­ful to look into the mat­ter fur­ther before mak­ing that claim. And indeed, Car­di­nal Caje­tan, in his com­men­tary on the Sum­ma III.68.11, said “that chil­dren still with­in the womb of their moth­er are able to be saved … through the sacra­ment of bap­tism that is received, not in real­i­ty, but in the desire of the par­ents.” Aquinas’s orig­i­nal obser­va­tion was that, though chil­dren can­not be bap­tized inside the womb, “[t]hey can, how­ev­er, be sub­ject to the action of God, in Whose sight they live, so as, by a kind of priv­i­lege, to receive the grace of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

So we need not won­der “how this teach­ing could be extend­ed to chil­dren who die with­out the grace of Bap­tism,” since Aquinas and Caje­tan have already done so.

I will go by what I read in Aquinas and Caje­tan.

• Dr. Staudt’s fifth point also need not delay me. I have said myself that the Mag­is­teri­um has not “defin­i­tive­ly assert­ed” that unbap­tized infants will be saved.

The sec­tion of the Cat­e­chism Dr. Staudt quotes to estab­lish this point, I quot­ed myself in the first of my two arti­cles at the Reg­is­ter. The Church lim­its itself to what it knows for cer­tain, and does not decide ques­tions about which I can spec­u­late to my heart’s con­tent. It urges prayer­ful hope; I give rea­sons for my prayer and my hope.

• In his sixth point, Dr. Staudt won­ders about infants whose par­ents (not being Chris­t­ian) do not desire bap­tism for them.

This is a ques­tion worth con­sid­er­ing; but it would take too much length to do so here, since there is a sec­ond issue involved: the sal­va­tion of non-Chris­tians. That com­pli­cates the ques­tion beyond the lim­it­ed scope of my orig­i­nal arti­cles. So I am con­tent to defer it for now.

•••

Dr. Staudt ends his arti­cle by wor­ry­ing that the denial of Lim­bo might be an occa­sion for “over­step” which would “pre­sume the sal­va­tion of unborn chil­dren” and there­fore pre­vent us from pray­ing for them and offer­ing Mass­es for them.

On that ques­tion, I can only speak for myself and say that I have Mass­es said for my daugh­ter, Cait­lyn, who was still­born in the sev­enth month. I would strong­ly urge par­ents who have lost chil­dren to have Mass­es said for them. I can believe that Cait­lyn enjoys the Beatif­ic Vision even as I write this, with­out pre­sum­ing that I know it with infal­li­ble cer­tain­ty. And so I pray for her and have Mass­es said for her. Of course I do: She’s my daugh­ter; I love her.

At the same time, I do ask her to pray for me. Every day.

•••

Update: See the Face­book dis­cus­sion on this post, in which Jonathan Pre­jean adds a cor­rec­tion:

I would … dis­pute your sec­ond point on the Coun­cil of Pis­toia. The fact that the con­dem­na­tion says ‘doc­trine’ is irrel­e­vant; with respect to errors, doc­trine is sim­ply an erro­neous belief. You’ve treat­ed it as if there were par­i­ty between true doc­trine and false doc­trine, so that the error is only if one teach­es as doc­trine … that Lim­bo is false. But that is not real­ly the error that the Pope is con­demn­ing. The error that is being con­demned is the false belief that Lim­bo must nec­es­sar­i­ly involve pun­ish­ment by fire in order to avoid Pela­gian­ism. In oth­er words, the Pope is con­demn­ing the idea that pun­ish­ment must always involve pun­ish­ment by fire in order to avoid Pela­gian­ism.

You are sug­gest­ing that you are off the hook from the con­dem­na­tion because you are spec­u­lat­ing, not teach­ing your rejec­tion of Lim­bo as doc­trine. That would not be enough to avoid the con­dem­na­tion. Rather, you sim­ply don’t hold the belief that is con­demned, viz. the belief that even orig­i­nal sin must be pun­ished by fire.