Crazy Catholic Question #45: Limbo

Do Catholics believe that babies who die before being baptized go to Limbo?
It was once widely held that if a baby should die without being baptized that they didn't have God's life within them; they were missing the grace needed for salvation which is given at the time of baptism. Limbo wasn't a place of suffering, but not a place of intimacy with God either. This funky theological idea formally emerged for the first time during a 5th century controversy between St. Augustine and the British monk Pelagius.

But even before this public debate there was an intriguing bit of ancient lore circulating that claimed that sometime around the early 4th century some random monk was reading about how we receive grace and the erasure of original sin through the sacrament of Baptism and he wrote a little note in the margin of the book he was studying “What about un-baptized babies?” perhaps with the intent to follow up on this question later or remember to ask his professor about it. This question that was scribbled in the margin of the book in the days before the printing press was then inadvertently copied into another edition of the book by a scribe, and then copied over and over again. Aaaand here’s the twist….the word for “margin” in Latin is "limbo"! So it eventually it became common language to say that un-baptized babies are in the "margin" or "limbo" state. True story? Who knows…but fun nonetheless.

The bottom line is limbo has NEVER been and is not now a bonafide Catholic doctrine. But it definitely continues to linger in our Catholic imagination because whenever I ask people “Hey, do you have a Crazy Catholic Question I could use for this week’s bulletin?” their question usually has to do with limbo, hell, or purgatory (or they just take the opportunity to tell me how awful their experience of confession was when they were a kid. Not sure if there’s a question in that last one or not, but we’ll have to find one for a future article because the “ack!” of confession seems an almost universal experience. For another time…).

So, the church has never taught or held limbo as a doctrine of the faith…ever. This concept of limbo does not appear anywhere in scripture. The word is not even mentioned in our Catechism. Sadly for many years it was taught AS IF it was official teaching, leading to much unnecessary and downright cruel suffering for already devastated parents and families.

Now, have theologians debated it? Yes. But thankfully limbo gets about as much attention and debate today as the question of how many angels can sit on the head of a pin, and rightly so, because it is a rather trivial discussion at best. Would any of us ever doom an infant that died before being baptized to eternal life separate from God? Of course not! I think it’s safe to assume that God is AT LEAST as merciful as us, no? Our church teaching instructs us to trust the fate of un-baptized babies to the boundless love and providence of God knowing that we have no power to limit or shackle God’s grace. God’s very essence is love…God in God’s self IS mercy.

Since Vatican II our language around Baptism has shifted too, from erasure of sin to the centrality of Baptism as a sacrament of Initiation. Baptism is a ritual that celebrates our belonging to the body of Christ.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser once said “To submit to love is to be baptized, that is, to let one's life be forever interrupted. To not let one's life be interrupted is to say no to love.”