Far-reaching consequences

Despite its consequences for the welfare of children in their afterlife, a recent recommendation of the Holy See's International Theological Commission has gone largely unnoticed by Child Rights activists worldwide. After a week-long deliberation, the Theological Commission recommended to Pope Benedict XVI that he abolish limbus infantium which has been in existence for the last 700 years. Speaking on behalf of the Commission, and referring to infants, the San Francisco prelate Archbishop William Levada said that the church could not "renounce reflecting on, in its role as mother and teacher, the destiny of all the men created in God's image, and in a particular way, on the weakest and those who are not yet in possession of the use of reason and of freedom."

Since early days, Christians have wrestled with the thorny question of the fate of unbaptised prophets, as well as the fate of children who die before they are baptised. Catholics believe that all human beings, with the exception of Mary and Jesus, are born in original sin and that only the ritual of baptism will cleanse their sins and will redeem them. Without baptism, there can be no union of the believer with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, and there can be no holy communion with God, either in this life or in the next. Such a person cannot go to heaven even if he or she has never committed sin.

To help solve the problem, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390 AD) proposed that the unbaptised should neither be punished nor could they access the full glory of God. However, the hardliner St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) rejected this idea, insisting that baptism was necessary for salvation, and that even babies would be consigned to hell if they were not baptised. Though St. Augustine made the generous concession that their torment would be the mildest of all of hell's residents, this torture of the innocent was unacceptable to St Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274 AD), the first major theologian to speculate about the existence of a place called limbo where these souls would be lodged for ever. Limbo is now a part of Canon Law.

A Giant Step for Humanity

Pope Benedict XVI is widely expected to accept the recommendation which comes on behalf of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition) which he himself headed for twenty years, till his elevation to the papacy. Despite fears of a deeply conservative papacy, by accepting this revolutionary recommendation, Benedict XVI will be breaking ranks with many of his illustrious predecessors like Pope Pius X who declared just a hundred years ago in 1905: "Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either, because having Original Sin, and only that, they do not deserve paradise, but neither hell or purgatory." In accepting this recommendation, Pope Benedict will also be bringing Catholics closer to Protestants whose unbaptised children have always had unrestricted access to heaven.

The Theological Commission makes no reference to Limbus Patrum or the Limbo of the Fathers to which Jesus Christ descended after his crucifiction, to free the Old Testament patriarchs. This is a matter of deep concern - specially since Dante's Inferno had populated it with the ancients viz. Virgil, Homer, Horace, Ovid, as well as the Muslim warrior Saladin and the philosophers Avicenna and Averroes (and some of them confirmed the visit of Jesus Christ!). But we have not heard of these illustrious men after that and do not know what became of them since. The Commission's recommendations are also silent on the status of purgatory which is where already saved souls are cleansed of sin before they are allowed into heaven to see the holy face of Almighty God.

Safe Passage?

Some devout ultra orthodox Catholics have questioned this radical restructuring of the heavens, and ask whether a pope has the authority to change what God has created. But Benedict XVI had already clarified this point when as Cardinal Ratzinger he pointed out in 1984 that Limbo has never been a Church dogma: "Limbo has never been a defined truth of faith. Personally, speaking as a theologian and not as head of the Congregation, I would drop something that has always been only a theological hypothesis". Unlike heaven, hell and purgatory, one presumes.

This safe passage to heaven that the Catholic Church now assures children who are dying young is a significant step in the right direction. One should now hope and pray that in the Catholic heaven the children will also receive adequate protection from sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Since the Church did not deem sexual abuse by its clergy a matter worthy of punishment in this world, they will all no doubt now be going to heaven too. The Church needs to take immediate steps to ensure that the millions of little children who are now being admitted to heaven are adequately protected in line with the Holy See's international obligations as an early ratifier of the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Babu Gogineni