The Divine Lamp

Father Al Kimel of Pontification has up a series of post on the subject of Limbo.  I would like to summarize some of them.

The first article begins with these words:  I am fascinated by the current discussion on limbo. We are watching the development of Catholic doctrine in action. Some folks are pointing to this development as a counter-example to the claim of the Catholic Church to be the authoritative and reliable steward of revelation; but I do not see it this way. The Church knows more than she can speak, and this speaking may take many lifetimes, many generations, before she finds the needed language and achieves the needed clarity to say what she must say.

This is a very important point.  In fact, it seems to be to be the main point of the entire series:  limbo never rose above what it in fact is, a theological hypothesis.    Those who think it is more than just a hypothesis therefore cannot appreciate what is happening before their very eyes-the development of doctrine.

Father Kimel begins his second post on the subject by noting that many contemporary theologians find the opinion of limbo inadequate, or, to use Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s word “unenlightened.”  He in fact quotes two statements by the Cardinal on this question:

Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally—and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as Prefect of the Congregation—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 faith, namely, the importance of baptism. To put it in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (Jn 3:5). One should not hesitate to give up the idea of “limbo” if need be (and it is worth noting that the very theologians who proposed “limbo” also said that parents could spare the child limbo by desiring its baptism and through prayer); but the concern behind it must not be surrendered. Baptism has never been a side issue for faith; it is not now, nor will it ever be. (The Ratzinger Report, pp. 147-148)

Twelve years later Cardinal Ratzinger elaborated his position:

The question of what it means to say that baptism is necessary for salvation has become ever more hotly debated in modern times. The Second Vatican Council said on this point that men who are seeking for God and who are inwardly striving toward that which constitutes baptism will also receive salvation. That is to say that a seeking after God already represents an inward participation in baptism, in the Church, in Christ. To that extent, the question concerning the necessity of baptism for salvation seems to have been answered, but the question about children who could not be baptized because they were aborted then presses upon us that much more urgently. Earlier ages had devised a teaching that seems to me rather unenlightened. They said that baptism endows us, by means of sanctifying grace, with the capacity to gaze upon God. Now, certainly, the state of original sin, from which we are freed by baptism, consists in a lack of sanctifying grace. Children who die in this way are indeed without any personal sin, so they cannot be sent to hell, but, on the other hand, they lack sanctifying grace and thus the potential for beholding God that this bestows. They will simply enjoy a state of natural blessedness, in which they will be happy. This state people called limbo. In the course of our century, that has gradually come to seem problematic to us. This was one way in which people sought to justify the necessity of baptizing infants as early as possible, but the solution is itself questionable. Finally, the Pope [John Paul II] made a decisive turn in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, a change already anticipated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, when he expressed the simple hope that God is powerful enough to draw to himself all those who were unable to receive the sacrament. (God and the World, pp. 401-402)

After noting that the Cardinal does not go into details concerning why he find the hypothesis problematic, Kimel gives us two reasons of his own detailing why he himself dislikes it.  “Limbus infantium,” he notes, “undermines the freedom of God.”  In this part of his post he gives an interesting and not very well known account of the great Cardinal Cajetan’s experience at the Council of Trent:

Cajetan’s view on vicarious baptism of desire was discussed by the Tridentine fathers during their deliberations on baptism in February 1547. Thanks in large part to the arguments of Cardinal Seripando, the fathers refused to condemn Cajetan and left the question of waterless baptism dogmatically open (see comment by Dr Thomas Pink).

The comment by Dr Thomas Pink which appears in the Pontifcator’s combox reads:

The non-salvation (in limbo or hell) of children who die before receiving ordinary sacramental baptism by water simply is not a defined truth or dogma of the church, and no serious theologian supposes otherwise. What is a dogma is the necessity for salvation of baptism in some form. But the reference to Cajetan above makes it worth pointing something out of great importance. The issue of how the necessity of baptism was to be understood was discussed at Trent, in February 1547, at the formulation of the decree on baptism.

Such was the prevailing suspicion of ‘Pelagianism’, Cajetan’s view was found very shocking by many council fathers, and there were requests that it be condemned. But Cajetan’s view was saved from condemnation by Seripando, who defended its licitness by, amongst other considerations, invoking the Divine will that all be saved. Following Seripando’s intervention, the council legates made it very clear that the Council’s definition that baptism is necessary for salvation should not be understood to exclude theories of salvation by ‘waterless’ baptism or baptism-equivalents such as Cajetan’s. By the council’s own will and its understanding of its own decree, the question was to remain dogmatically open. (For the discussion at Trent, see that highly interesting source, the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, volume 2, columns 305-06.) Emphasis in the above quote is mine. Click here for the rest of the doctor’s comments.
All of this helps lead to an important point:

Salvation is by the Incarnate Word alone, for in him divinity and humanity have been reconciled and forever united. He is the mediator between God and man. Salvation is by the Church, for the Church is the sacramental, Spirit-filled body of the glorified Christ and Christ is never found without his body. Salvation is by the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, because Baptism incorporates the believer into the Church, in which he is reborn by the Holy Spirit. If we would properly understand the necessity of Baptism, we must understand the salvific relations between Christ, Church, and sacramental initiation. Baptism is not a mere legal requirement, as if God has arbitrarily decreed that he will not save anyone except those who have been washed with water in the Name of the Holy Trinity. Baptism saves because the Church saves, and the Church saves because Christ saves, and Christ saves because he is the Almighty Creator who has redeemed and deified human nature in himself.

Every person born into the world is born into a state of alienation from God. Every person, therefore, needs to be regenerated in the Holy Spirit; every person needs to be restored to a state of grace and supernatural life. The ordinary and normative “place” for this rebirth is the Sacrament of Baptism. “The Church does not know,” declares the Catechism, “of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude” (1257). But our ignorance is not the limit of God’s power and freedom. God has covenanted himself to the sacramental actions of the Church; but he has not restricted himself to them. If the Holy Trinity can baptize infants in his Holy Spirit through sacramental washing, he can, if he so wills, baptize infants in his Holy Spirit apart from sacramental washing.

The second reason Kimel gives for his dislike of the theory of limbo is that “Limbus infantium undermines the Chruch’s apprehension of God’s universal salvific will.”  (As we have just seen the Council of Trent refused to allow this to happen)

This section of his post begins with an historical overview of the idea that “unbaptized children are destined to the fires of hell.”  It is, of course, precisely this idea that led to the development of the concept of limbo as an attempt to do justice to the mercy of God.  Unfortunately, this concept doesn’t do justice to the Universal salvific will of God; and it is exactly on that point that the question of the fate of unbaptized infants must be addressed:

But as popular as the massa damnata, along with the cognate theory of reprobation by preterition, may have have been in portions of the Church in the past, it has never been formally defined by the Magisterium and appears now to have been excluded by the emphatic affirmations of God’s universal salvific will by Vatican II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the encyclicals of Pope John Paul II. The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes is decisive and clear: “For since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” (22). Who would dare to exclude the unbaptized infant from the possibility of sharing in the divine life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

This has only been a thumbnail sketch of the first two posts in Kimel’s five part series; do go and read them for yourself.