A Commentary on Limbo & Pope Pius VI &, “The Jubilant Dead All Pray:” by Thomas Merton

Limbo Never Official Church Teaching
Father Richard Kunst, Curator

Father Richard Kunst, Curator & Commentator

Recently (on All Souls Day) I wrote on the subject of purgatory.  Keeping with the same theme, I will address the church’s teaching (or lack thereof) on limbo, especially in light of recent Vatican discussion of the topic.

Any priest can tell you the anguish families can experience from a stillbirth or SIDS or whenever a child has died prior to baptism.  Perhaps your own family has experienced this terrible tragedy.  The age-old question is: What has happened to the soul of this baby, since we have the understanding of the necessity of baptism for salvation?

In the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” it is written, “Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament: (1257).  So what happens to the souls of unbaptized infants, or even of those who may have been aborted?

The term limbo is derived from Latin “limbus,” which literally means the hem or boarder of a garment.  The word is neither used in the Scriptures nor mentioned by the early church fathers.  Since the 13^th century, it has come to be used to designate the place, or state, of souls who did not deserve hell, but had not been baptized.   In essence, the idea of limbo was to explain that these souls could not experience the fullness of the beatific vision (heaven) because they were indeed without the necessary sacrament of baptism, but experience a state of happiness.

So has the church ever really, officially taught a doctrine of limbo?  The answer is no, which may surprise many readers.  The church has never officially taught anything about limbo, but there have been many theologians, some of them canonized saints, who have written or spoken about the existence of limbo.

In 1786, there was a group of heretical theologians who gathered at what is referred to as the Synod of Pistoia, in Italy, which proclaimed that all unbaptized infants who have died go to hell.  (Now you know why they were heretics.)  In answer to this heretical proclamation, the pope at the time, Pius VI, forcefully came out with the papal bull “Auctorem Fidei,” which condemned the false belief.  It is the only official document in the history of the church that has ever contained the word “limbo,” and then only to condemn a heresy.

Any discussion of limbo must also include mention of other forms of baptism.  The church believes that there is a baptism of blood, which could be somebody who died for the faith before they were baptized in it.  This happened regularly in the early church, when it took years of preparation to be initiated by baptism.  The church honors the Holy Innocents, the babies who were killed by Herod the Great when he was trying to kill the infant Jesus.  These babies were baptized only in their blood, but they are now saints in heaven.  A number of contemporary theologians believe this same baptism by blood can also apply to aborted babies, although the church has not spoken to the issue.

There is also the baptism of desire, which could result from someone dying in an accident while in preparation for baptism into the church.  Some theologians believe this baptism by desire carries over into the desire of the parents to baptize their babies.

Most theologians and historians now see that the idea of limbo arose out of the tension between the church’s teaching on the necessity of baptism and the fact that these children had no personal sin.  The possibility of an eternal state of natural bliss, separate from heaven, or the beatific vision, is never addressed in any official church teaching.

We can look to the funeral right for unbaptized babies to see the compassion and mercy of God spelled out in the liturgical prayer.  Here in full is the beautiful opening prayer for a funeral of an unbaptized baby: “God of all consolation, searcher of mind and heart, the faith of these parents is known to you.  Comfort them with the knowledge that the child for whom they grieve is entrusted now to your loving care.”

God is all merciful.  His mercy even transcends our imagination.  It is this reality that gives us the assurance that these children are now with him.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives us further reason to hope in the salvation of these children when he says, “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them” (10:14).

Thomas Merton
The Jubilant Dead All Pray

The Jubilant Dead All Pray

In the cemetery I looked up at the sky and thought of the great sea of graces that was flowing down on Gethsemani as her hundredth year was ending.  All the crosses stood up and spoke to me for fair this time.  It was as if the earth were shaking under my feet and as if the jubilant dead were just about to sit up and sing.

     And I got some taste of how much there is to be glad for in the world…Not that I am looking for any such taste anymore: only how to serve God better and belong more completely to him.

     Father Amadeus was speaking today of the need for a concrete spiritual ideal.  What strikes me is the need of something absolutely concrete and definite–poverty, humility: not something abstract, off in the heavens, but here…Not for other people first, fut for myself first.  To make it a real ideal you work for, not just one you occasionally think and preach about.  To ask God somehow to make me the quietest and meekest and most unobtrusive man in the whole house, the poorest man, the one with nothing.  I am right at the other end of the pole from that–but in the circumstances God has given me to work with, there are still graces–and all the Fathers of Gethsemani, whom I love, will all pray for me.  —-Thomas Merton (1915-1968), a Trappist monk of the abbey of Gethsemani