EmperorSolo51 wrote:
I Would like to ask where in either in Sacred Tradition or in Sacred Scripture you will find an official Church statement that accepts Limbo as Church Teaching. You can't becuase the Church on a whole in the various councils it has held has never accepted or Rejected the idea of a Limbo. Most Catholic Priests and Apologists usually will tell you even before today that Those unborn who have died since the Death, resurrection, and ascenion of Our Lord into heaven, that they are left to the Mercy of HIM Alone.
Though I should say that the Church has not abolished the idea that at one point there was a Limbo, after all as part of Sacred Tradition, we firmly believe that Christ went into Hell or Limbo (If you prefer) To rescue all of those Jews and Patriarchs of the Old Testament who lived a just life but could not enter heaven becuase of the fact that the Gates of Heaven was closed to the Church Militant until Christ came to wipe away the sin of Adam from Mankind.
The issue is the supine elegance of the formulation, from a philosophical point of view, which has gradiations of Hell based on the nature of Sin; that all sin results in eternal separation from God is undeniable but it makes little sense, and is indeed rather repulsive, to suggest that the tortures of a robber and a murderer should be the same, let alone that any children should ever suffer any torture at all simply being unbaptized--nor should anyone who has led a virtuous life and died at a later stage.
Therefore the idea of Limbo--a place where the only punishment is the mandated one for the unbeliever, that is to say, separation from God--is functionally at once both appealing and necessary to form a coherent moral code and system of punishments in Hell which matches broadly to the crimes involved, yes? The idea that all sins are equal in the eyes of God is a protestant idea, and a dangerous one, because it destroys a moral code much more quickly than atheism ever could (as Kant demonstrated).
I'll just leave the theological matters to the
Catholic Encyclopedia, which contains all the necessary references I should think.
This part is certainly the most interesting, though:
What the council [of Florence] evidently intended to deny in the passage alleged was the postponement of final awards until the day of judgement. Those dying in original sin are said to descend into Hell, but this does not necessarily mean anything more than that they are excluded eternally from the vision of God. In this sense they are damned; they have failed to reach their supernatural destiny, and this viewed objectively is a true penalty. Thus the Council of Florence, however literally interpreted, does not deny the possibility of perfect subjective happiness for those dying in original sin, and this is all that is needed from the dogmatic viewpoint to justify the prevailing Catholic notion of the children's limbo, while form the standpoint of reason, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus pointed out long ago, no harsher view can be reconciled with a worthy concept of God's justice and other attributes.
-- Asuka
