The death of Purgatory Limbo
I was just speaking with the other ACM students today about this: the Pope has declared that there is no longer a purgatory. I guess now that the Church isn’t using it as a way to embezzle money out of people, Purgatory no longer serves a purpose.
I was just speaking with the other ACM students today about this: the Pope has declared that there is no longer a limbo. Highlights from the original article:
The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went.
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Limbo, which comes from the Latin word meaning “border” or “edge”, was considered by medieval theologians to be a state or place reserved for the unbaptized dead, including good people who lived before the coming of Christ.
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In writings before his election as Pope in 2005, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made it clear he believed the concept of limbo should be abandoned because it was “only a theological hypothesis” and “never a defined truth of faith”.
So limbo is not purgatory, as a commenter pointed out.
I’ll try to be more careful in the future.
Possibly relevant posts:
- And now… Christmas! (12/25/2004)
- Election and other evil notions (8/4/2001)
- The Church and the Jedi (5/26/2005)
Actually, the concepts of “limbo” and “purgatory” are unrelated. Limbo is (or apparently, was, now) the place where unbaptized infants who died were placed, since they hadn’t sinned yet (no chance to), so they couldn’t go to hell, but they hadn’t been baptized, so they couldn’t go to heaven, either. (The theology is actually quite a bit more complicated than this, but this is the gist.) On the other hand, purgatory is the place where baptized and saved people may have to go after they die to be cleansed (or “purged”) of the consequences of their sin before they are purified enough to enter heaven. Limbo is (er, was) a permanent place, whereas purgatory is only temporary. So while the Roman Catholic Church has backed off on the existence of limbo, there is no indication (and it would be extremely shocking) that the concept of purgatory will follow suit.
By the way, I’m Protestant, and I don’t believe in either limbo or purgatory.
That’s a shame, ‘coz Limbo sounds like the sort of place that babies would like, i.e. really boring. Do they go to Heaven now? They’ll love all that perfect whiteness and chanting monks, I don’t think. Or maybe that’s not so bad nowadays either, maybe plants and rabbits go to Heaven now too, so it’ll be more like Tellytubbyland?
There are many differences between limbo and purgatory, both in what and how the Church teaches about it, and in what the implications are for lay people. And I would expect a LiterateProgrammer, not to mention a mathematician, to actually *read* what he’s commenting on…
To think I was just Googling around for higher-order finite difference methods…
Anonymous, I see your point: I shouldn’t have assumed that purgatory and limbo are the same. But in my defense, that’s at least partly due to the article itself– I was thinking of the bit at the end about virtuous pagans, etc.
I’ll update the post. Thanks.
Alex, I apologize for the unnecessarily defensive sarcasm of my comment. There is tremendous confusion, even amongst faithful Catholics, on the differences between limbo and purgatory, so I certainly should have been more charitable in my response.
Not to beat a dead horse, but should you or anyone have questions on this or any Catholic topic, I’ll gladly (and non-defensively) do my best to answer them. (The thread could also be moved off-site if necessary.)
Anon.
Limbo or purgatory?/ who cares! they existed only in the credulous masses!!