Professor Robert T. Miller presents what we believe is the best web-review so far of the ... indescribable document of the International Theological Commission (ITC) on the fate of unbaptized children. Some excerpts:
The ITC has now issued its document. (...) For all its faults, however, the document gets right the essential point: “Our conclusion is that [there are] . . . grounds for hope that unbaptized infants will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision” (no. 102), but “the church does not have sure knowledge about the salvation of unbaptized infants” because “the destiny of . . . infants who die without baptism has not been revealed to us, and the church teaches and judges only with regard to what has been revealed” (no. 79). In other words, after 42 pages, 135 footnotes, and more than 22,000 words, the ITC has said no more than what the Catechism had said back in 1994: (...).
In fact, the ITC even seems to back off slightly from the position taken in the Catechism, for the ITC expressly notes that the traditional teaching on limbo “remains a possible theological opinion” (no. 41). And no wonder, for in the section of the document treating the history of the question, the ITC assembles quite an array of authorities tending in various ways to oppose the view that unbaptized infants are saved. The list includes Pseudo-Athanasius, Anastasius of Sinai, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus, Augustine, Jerome, Fulgentius, Avitus of Vienne, Gregory the Great, Anselm of Canterbury, Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Innocent III, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Robert Bellarmine, Paul III, Benedict XIV, Clement XIII, Pius VI, and Pius XII.
Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, what arguments does the ITC adduce to explain why it hopes that unbaptized infants be saved? After “provid[ing] a new context” by referring to the wars of the twentieth century, the modern temptation to despair, the improvement of global communications and travel, and the fact that we all feel bad when we see children suffer (none of which, of course, is in the least relevant), and after quoting and requoting (sometimes three and four times) the same passages from Scripture—passages that the ITC had already conceded don’t settle the issue (no. 9)—the argument comes down to this: God’s universal salvific will, plus the fact that Christ entered into solidarity with all humanity in a “great cosmic mystery of communion” (no. 92), give us “grounds for hope that unbaptized infants . . . will be saved” (no. 102). Given all the doctors, theologians, and popes on the other side of the question, one might think of this argument as being the triumph of hope over expertise.
Even calling it an argument, however, is generous. It amounts to nothing more than saying, “There seems to be a tension between . . . the universal salvific will of God on the one hand and the necessity of sacramental baptism on the other,” because the latter “seems to limit the extension of God’s universal salvific will” (no. 10).
The answer to this, of course, is obvious and well-known in sacred tradition. Although God wants all men to be saved, nevertheless some men are damned to hell (a fact the ITC acknowledges by quoting from the Synod of Quercy), and if God’s universal salvific will is compatible with some men being damned to hell, then there’s no problem at all with it being compatible with some unbaptized infants enjoying a natural but not a supernatural happiness in limbo.
Miller praises the honesty of the Commission in reaching its "conclusions" - but that was the least one could expect. We disagree with him on this point, and we would add that Vatican officials were irresponsible in allowing the typical dishonest Conciliar and post-Conciliar tactics of news-distortion which allowed the world (and most Catholics around the world who heard of the document, but who will never read it) to believe that "Limbo has been abolished".
Cardinal Levada should be the one explaining to the world what Miller so aptly does in a few paragraphs. The public release of the ITC document as well as its general perception as the document which "abolished Limbo" were a new triumph of the hermeneutics of rupture and discontinuity.
Read the whole piece at First Things. There is not much else to be said, unless one wishes to be just as repetitive and pointless as the document itself.
Cardinal Levada should be the one explaining to the world what Miller so aptly does in a few paragraphs. The public release of the ITC document as well as its general perception as the document which "abolished Limbo" were a new triumph of the hermeneutics of rupture and discontinuity.
Read the whole piece at First Things. There is not much else to be said, unless one wishes to be just as repetitive and pointless as the document itself.
