DJPoopypants
10 Jan 2006, 09:40 PM
How did this get left off the new thread list?
Purgatory and or Limbo are pretty interesting concepts too, ain't they?
And, go figure, the new pope is revisiting the concept of limbo - tasking key theologians to debate whether it really exists...
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2324222005
THE Catholic Church is preparing to abandon the idea of limbo, the theological belief that children who die before being baptised are suspended in a space between heaven and hell.
The concept, which was devised in the 13th century and was depicted in numerous works of art during the Renaissance, such as Descent into Limbo by the painter Giotto, and in Dante's masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, is of a metaphysical space where infants are blissfully happy but are not actually in the presence of God.
The idea of limbo was developed as a response to the harshness of early Church teachings which insisted that any child who died before he or she was baptised would still be stained by Original Sin and so would be condemned to hell.
The belief, which is unique to the Catholic Church, has fallen out of favour over the past 50 years. It is rarely mentioned and until recently has been left in its own kind of limbo.
I also chuckle at the religious devotees that go around 'baptising' graves of dead people in cultures that never received the word of christianity. That strikes me as weird too (and incredibly insensitive) - it obviously ain't faith that's doing the magic, and if Jesus loved them anyway, they'd be in heaven already. Or something like that
But limbo aside, purgatory is a neat concept too - or is it only a catholic church thing?
Maybe I should write a new book - "The 5 people you meet in Purgatory"...
Purgatory and or Limbo are pretty interesting concepts too, ain't they?
And, go figure, the new pope is revisiting the concept of limbo - tasking key theologians to debate whether it really exists...
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2324222005
THE Catholic Church is preparing to abandon the idea of limbo, the theological belief that children who die before being baptised are suspended in a space between heaven and hell.
The concept, which was devised in the 13th century and was depicted in numerous works of art during the Renaissance, such as Descent into Limbo by the painter Giotto, and in Dante's masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, is of a metaphysical space where infants are blissfully happy but are not actually in the presence of God.
The idea of limbo was developed as a response to the harshness of early Church teachings which insisted that any child who died before he or she was baptised would still be stained by Original Sin and so would be condemned to hell.
The belief, which is unique to the Catholic Church, has fallen out of favour over the past 50 years. It is rarely mentioned and until recently has been left in its own kind of limbo.
I also chuckle at the religious devotees that go around 'baptising' graves of dead people in cultures that never received the word of christianity. That strikes me as weird too (and incredibly insensitive) - it obviously ain't faith that's doing the magic, and if Jesus loved them anyway, they'd be in heaven already. Or something like that
But limbo aside, purgatory is a neat concept too - or is it only a catholic church thing?
Maybe I should write a new book - "The 5 people you meet in Purgatory"...