In Limbo

Re: Catholic Church Buries Limbo After Centuries

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Quote:

Originally Posted by cor Doctrine means teaching. It was the teaching of Catholic schools and bishops. I don't know if it was ever the teaching of popes ... anyone know?

Speaking of abortion, Pope Sixtus V wrote:
For who would not detest a crime as execrable as this — a crime whose consequence is that not just bodies, but — still worse! — even souls, are, as it were, cast away? The soul of the unborn infant bears the imprint of God's image! It is a soul for whose redemption Christ our Lord shed His precious blood, a soul capable of eternal blessedness and destined for the company of angels! Who, therefore, would not condemn and punish with the utmost severity the desecration committed by one who has excluded such a soul from the blessed vision of God? Such a one has done all he or she could possibly have done to prevent this soul from reaching the place prepared for it in heaven, and has deprived God of the service of this His own creature.
Pope Sixtus V, Effrænatam, 29 October 1588

On the necessity of baptism for salvation, Pope Eugenius IV wrote:
With regard to children, since the danger of death is often present and the only remedy available to them is the sacrament of baptism by which they are snatched away from the dominion of the devil and adopted as children of God, [the holy Roman church] admonishes that sacred baptism is not to be deferred for forty or eighty days or any other period of time in accordance with the usage of some people, but it should be conferred as soon as it conveniently can; and if there is imminent danger of death, the child should be baptized straightaway without any delay, even by a lay man or a woman in the form of the church, if there is no priest, as is contained more fully in the decree on the Armenians.
Pope Eugenius IV, Bull of union with the Copts, 4 February 1442


The souls ... of those who die in mortal sin or with only original sin descend immediately into hell; however, to be punished with different penalties and in different places.
Pope John XXII, "Nequaquam sine delore" (Letter to the Armenians) 1321
[Denzinger, Sources of Catholic Dogma, 493a]


The punishment of original sin is deprivation of the vision of God, but the punishment of actual sin is the torments of everlasting hell.
Innocent III, Letter to the Archbishop of Arles,” 1201
[Denzinger 410]


I don't think any of these statements are meant to define a dogma, however.

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I read about the report on yahoo news here. I notice that the three Catholic commentators they picked comprised two notorious dissenters plus a Jesuit of unknown orthodoxy who was on the commission that produced the report.

Before the report, we knew that Limbo was favored by many theologians of the past thousand years and disfavored by many of the past 40. After the report we know know... exactly the same thing.