Pope revises limbo teaching

Pope revises 'limbo' for babies (AP)

AP - Pope Benedict XVI has revised traditional Roman Catholic teaching on so-called "limbo," approving a church report released Friday that said there was reason to hope that babies who die without baptism can go to heaven.

***Will this not go against the indefectibility of the Church?

X. INDEFECTIBILITY OF THE CHURCH

Among the prerogatives conferred on His Church by Christ is the gift of indefectibility. By this term is signified, not merely that the Church will persist to the end of time, but further, that it will preserve unimpaired its essential characteristics. The Church can never undergo any constitutional change which will make it, as a social organism, something different from what it was originally. It can never become corrupt in faith or in morals; ...

It is clear, too, that could the Church suffer substantial change, it would no longer be an instrument capable of accomplishing the work for which God called it in to being. He established it that it might be to all men the school of holiness. This it would cease to be if ever it could set up a false and corrupt moral standard. He established it to proclaim His revelation to the world, and charged it to warn all men that unless they accepted that message they must perish everlastingly. Could the Church, in defining the truths of revelation err in the smallest point, such a charge would be impossible. No body could enforce under such a penalty the acceptance of what might be erroneous. By the hierarchy and the sacraments, Christ, further, made the Church the depositary of the graces of the Passion. Were it to lose either of these, it could no longer dispense to men the treasures of grace.

*The italics are mine. The "limbo" change is a substantial change from the previous teaching of the church, although most of the theologians never really expounded on it. But the problem here is - The people in the past 1,000 or so years believed in the truth of revelation that limbo is the place where they keep the unbaptized babies. What would go next? The purgatory teaching? That will not the Church anymore. Or is this still the Church?

In writings before his election as Pope in 2005, the then Cardinal Ratzinger made it clear he believed the concept of limbo should be abandoned because it was "only a theological hypothesis" and "never a defined truth of faith."

***Still, a man like me who has read a lot of Church documents, finds it hard to differentiate between what is only a theological conjecture and what is a defined truth of faith. What more the ordinary fellow who goes to mass only for fulfilling the obligation? Sometimes, the intellectualism in the Catholic Church prompts a lot of people to depart. This should be explained to the faithful. Oh, they are so few.