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No Longer In Limbo at The New Atheist

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No Longer In Limbo

By bk | April 23, 2007 20:39

There have been a number of articles (Reuters), and some excellent blog postings regarding Pope Benedict’s declaration that the Catholic concept of limbo is no longer. In one fell swoop of dogma, this single man sent - according to Catholics - thousands, if not millions of infant souls to heaven. Now, this seems like a great idea, but why did those infant souls have to sit there in limbo for so long?

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Catholic dogma, but these sorts of things just seem funny to me. I am reminded of one of my favorite movies, Kevin Smith’s Dogma, in which two fallen angels try to take advantage of a loophole in Catholic dogma to get back in to heaven. If you haven’t seen it, it is really quite amusing (though a little crude at times) and is even funnier knowing Smith is a devout Catholic. The loophole is based on a doctrine of amnesty (see Papal and Church infallibility) that would allow anyone to get to heaven by entering a church on its 100th anniversary. Like I said, I’m no expert, so I don’t know if this particular doctrine actually exists, but it makes for a good film. And with George Carlin as a Cardinal and Alanis Morissette as God we reach a whole new level of irony. But what I like most about this film, to circle back to the topic, is that it points out the ridiculous nature of many of the dogmatic teachings.

There is a part of me that wants to become an expert on dogma to be better able to refute it, but most of the time these teachings refute themselves to anyone but a myopic believer in the Catholic church - they require the suspension of logic in favor of the infallibility of the church and Pope. Yet, how can the church or Pope be considered infallible if the doctrine of the Catholic church can be changed so easily, simply by edict - logic says someone along the line was/is wrong - either there is limbo or there isn’t and either all these little infant souls shot up to heaven recently or they didn’t. And it is all gross speculation since there is no experiment anyone can do to show either way. I think the more logical conclusion is to assume neither is correct until someone can show some proof.

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One Response to “No Longer In Limbo”

  1. […] you know, the Catholic Church has reconsidered limbo, The Onion shares some other Catholic reconsiderations. Hmmm, funny […]

    Posted by: Limbo and More at The New Atheist on May 20th, 2007 at 19:43

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