On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Deepa Mohan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 3/28/08, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 14:26 +0530, Deepa Mohan wrote: > > > > they have waiting rooms called 'purgatory', 'limbo' and 'hell'. > > > > though hell has always sounded like the most entertaining one. > > > > didn't the new (supposedly less kind) pope take the kind step of > > abolishing limbo for unbaptised babies? apparently he has the authority > > to adapt procedures of this sort; the poor little things now go straight > > to heaven. > > And people can believe that it's the Pope who decides what happens to > the babies....! :) A kind of celstial traffic cop! Like the Clarke > orbit, the Pope "through-route" to Heaven....
Limbo went away last year, after long deliberation by a panel of scholars. The Pope just ratified and announced it. Strictly speaking the Pope does not "decide" the Pope tells us what God decreed and we had misunderstood. What's more, even Popes can get it wrong except when speaking Ex-Cathedra on matters of doctrine (which happens only rarely.) (Not a Catholic, just like to study this kind of thing.) -- Charles
