conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

I thought that did that a couple of years ago..?

Me too. Somewhere around Vatican II.

True, Megan, but never fully...just ignored. Well, I think that is what this article seems to say.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0506867.htm

Limbo makes sense. Well, what else did you expect me to say? :)

It's a good middle way between the Scylla of universalism (a well-intended argument based on God's love) on one hand and the Charybdis of St Augustine's monstrous-sounding opinion (individually the church fathers could be wrong) on the other that the unbaptised go to hell, end of story (an argument based on, gulp, God's justice).

It is a theory/notion not defined doctrine (which in the RC system would be irreversible - contrary to popular belief the Pope can't reverse that in the RC system).

This has made the news again - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/23/wlimbo23.xml - because apparently the Pope has accepted the advice given to him a couple of years ago and teaches (but not ex cathedra) there is no limbo and unbaptised babies probably go to heaven.

Which always was allowable Catholic opinion. (So is it really news then?)

Given that these souls haven't reached the age of reason and thus are incapable of sin, why not?

(I think what's happening is the media, with an anti-Roman bias mixed with ignorance of RC teaching, are trying to discredit the Pope: 'See, he's admitted he used to be wrong so you don't have to believe anything he says!' Ha ha ha.)

As I mentioned above in the RC system the Pope can't reverse defined doctrine. 'Is the Pope Catholic?' isn't really a joke. I agree with St Robert Bellarmine that if he tried to do that he'd put himself outside the church and ipso facto no longer be Pope.

(RC doctrine since 1870: Josef Ratzinger the man is fallible; the office he holds in the context of the church is infallible as a function of church infallibility, the latter being common Catholic belief East and West. I take it you believe as a Protestant in a fallible church; we, Roman and non, believe in an infallible church guided by the Holy Ghost but with fallible people in it - paradoxical orthodoxy!)

So I have no problem with the unbaptised innocents going to heaven but won't rule out the possibility of nor make fun of limbo either (it shouldn't be defined as doctrine and it's fairly safe to say it won't be).