Limbo Babies ¦ Part 1/4

BBC documentary about the consequences of the Roman Catholic theology of Limbo.

The Church holds that all people are born with original sin. This is because a woman without a belly button, created as a last resort because her man didn't fancy any of the beasts presented to him by God as a companion, and who was made from one of her husband's ribs, made the mistake of listening to a talking snake and ate some fruit from a forbidden tree.

Because of this absurd story, we have inherited all manner of logic twisting dogmas. One of these is Limbo, which has had many theological interpretations through the years. The sacrament of baptism is required to remove original sin, confer sanctifying grace and assure a soul of it's place in heaven. Without baptism a soul remains in limbo, which was created as a theological thought exercise as a place where un-baptised babies could reside as an alternative to hell. For surely a kind and loving God wouldn't send babies to hell because Eve ate some fruit? But, yet, they can't be in heaven. What's to be done?

In the real world outside of theological hocus-pocus, un-baptised babies were not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground, leaving countless hundreds of thousands of obedient God fearing parents burying their dead babies in fields, ditches, bogs etc, in shame and anguish. Never to share in their own belief in a final state of reunited bliss in heaven.

This is just one example of the Gordian knots religion ties itself up in when scriptures are interpreted to be literally true. If a god existed, and inspired the books that became the bible we wouldn't see these complications. And it is their presence that shows me the imperfect hand of man at work in the texts that are taken, mistakenly, to be divine.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• limbo
• dead
• babies
• roman
• catholic
• church
• theology
• baptism
• original
• sin
• god
• soul
• heaven
• hell
• belfast
• cemetery
• burial
• secret
• consecrated
• ground
• sacrement
• grace