(Pause for moment of scruple-driven angst.)
Aaaaannnnddd......I'm over it.
So, I found myself in a discussion, the base of which was the question of what happens to babies who are killed in abortion. Do they go to heaven?
The answer is NO, they do not.
If you are recoiling in disgust and red-faced rage at this point, I would urge you to humble yourself and receive instruction, as this is a nuanced yet incredibly important bit of theology - and a lesson in logic. When you're done reading it, I guarantee you will have learned something. If you are Catholic, you will see how shallow and inadequate your catechisis has been, and if you are Protestant you will see how much you are missing.
1. The Church teaches and has taught from day one that baptism is essential for salvation. This comes straight from Our Lord Himself:
He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.
Mark 16:16
(*The notable and particularly relevant caveat to this is if the baptizer says the right words, but consciously means something completely different by the words "Father", "Son" and "Holy Ghost". I'm talking about the cult of Mormonism here. Did you know that Mormons teach and believe that God the Father is one of many "gods" who came from another planet and just happens to be the "god" of this particular planet, and that "God the Son" was once a non-divine mortal man, and that satan was his brother, and that the man they call "Jesus" at some point achieved divinity and was made the god of this world? Further, Mormons teach that when they die that they will also become gods and be given their own "celestial kingdoms" to rule? Mormons also teach that the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost are two completely separate and distinct beings.
Bottom line: Mormons are NOT, NOT, NOT Christians and Mitt Romney is NOT, NOT, NOT a Christian. Does that piss you off? Wow. I SO don't care. It is the truth. Deal with it.
Oh, and for the record, Obama is not baptized either. One of the huge selling points of Jeremiah Wright's Trinity "church" is the fact that he DOES NOT baptize muslims. Thus, muslims who are engaging in the war tactic of KITHMAN, that is pretending to be non-muslim while infiltrating a culture for stealth jihad, flock to Wright's "church" because they can pose as Christians while avoiding the sacrament of Baptism. If you don't believe me, just call Trinity and ask them yourself. Their number is (773) 962-5650. Be polite.
Not that this election is real, and not that the First American Republic still exists, but I do think that it is VERY interesting and telling that NEITHER candidate is Christian, which would be a first, and is certainly apropos.)
2. What is heaven? Heaven is nothing less than indwelling INSIDE the Trinity, contemplating the Trinity for all eternity. This is hard to understand from the "outside", but we know that this is the case from the words of Our Lord Himself:
That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.This is called "the Beatific Vision", which could perhaps be simplistically stated as "seeing and contemplating God from the inside."
John 17:21
3. Who DESERVES the Beatific Vision as a mere corollary to their existence? Nobody. Not even the Angels. The Angels had to choose to serve God even before the creation of the world. They were created by God, and then shown the plan of Salvation History before the Big Bang (Let There Be Light). Those who chose to serve God were granted the Beatific Vision. Those who chose not to serve God, specifically the Second Person, the Divine Man, Whom they resented as being "beneath them", were cast out of heaven, never having seen the Beatific Vision, and never to see it. Satan and demons are real.
Even the Blessed Virgin Mary doesn't DESERVE the Beatific Vision merely as a corollary to her existence. She says so in her Magnificat:
And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. Because He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because He that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is His name. And His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear Him.
Luke 1:46-50Given these realities, does an unborn baby DESERVE the Beatific Vision? The answer is obviously "no".
4. But an unborn baby (Or even a born and yet unbaptized baby) has committed no sin. Their fate can't be hell. So where do they go? The answer is, they go to a "place" (for lack of a better word) called Limbo, specifically The Limbo of the Innocents. There is another Limbo called the Limbo of the Fathers which was filled with the righteous people who died on earth before Christ opened the gates of heaven on Calvary. The Limbo of the Fathers no longer exists - Christ emptied it while He was in the tomb.
At this point many are screaming, "BUT THAT ISN'T IN THE BIBLE!"
Oh, yes it is. If you bother to READ IT. And again, from the lips of Our Lord, no less:
And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell.Abraham's Bosom is NOT the Beatific Vision. When Our Lord spoke these words, the Gates of Heaven were yet closed because He had not yet opened them. Abraham's Bosom was the Limbo of the Fathers.
Luke 16:22
The proof for the Limbo of the Innocents actually comes from the very first scripture I quoted above:
He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.Read that VERY carefully. Note that the second phrase does NOT tie non-baptism to condemnation. Condemnation (hell) is for those who reject Christ, but the baptismal state is left open. Note that in the first phrase that baptism is only tied to the Beatific Vision. What does this tell us? It tells us first that a person MUST be baptized in order to reach the Beatific Vision. It also tells us that those who die unbaptized and yet without any sin (which can only mean babies, both pre-born and born, and children who have not reached the age of reason, and therefore cannot be guilty of sin) DO NOT GO TO THE HELL OF THE DAMNED.
Mark 16:16
Makes sense, huh? And remember, NOBODY deserves the Beatific Vision.
So, the "place" these innocent yet unbaptized babies and children go is the Limbo of the Innocents. The Limbo of the Innocents is a "place" wherein these souls experience MAXIMUM NATURAL HAPPINESS, but do not experience the SUPERNATURAL happiness of the Beatific Vision.
Let's think about this. Maximum natural happiness. Guys, you have never, ever experienced anything even close to maximum natural happiness. In fact, if you were given the gift of five seconds of maximum natural happiness, I'll bet that you would swear up and down that you had just seen heaven and that there is no way that there could be anything better. You would be wrong. Heaven, the Beatific Vision, is so far above Limbo that Limbo is considered to be at the edge of hell by comparison, simply because it is outside the Beatific Vision. But it is still better than anything you have ever experienced.
5. Now, we have to answer the question, "Why can't unbaptized babies go straight to heaven?"
It is a great question, with a great answer. On the surface it sounds "unfair" that a baby, especially a baby that was murdered in cold blood by its own mother, couldn't go straight to heaven, especially when we consider the fact that the mother could sacramentally confess her sin and die in a state of grace and achieve the Beatific Vision herself.
Boo! Not fair, the critics say.
Again, let's think this through. WHAT IF all aborted babies went straight to heaven? How would the logical truth table from that false premise play out?
Well, if all aborted babies are GUARANTEED heaven, but a born person who lives to the age of reason runs the risk of living a life wherein they reject Christ and end up in hell, wouldn't it be an act of charity and mercy for every mother everywhere to abort every child they conceive so that the child will absolutely, positively spend all of eternity enjoying the Beatific Vision?
Let's put a context to it. Let's say a poor woman who lives in an urban slum gets pregnant. She looks around and sees a terrible environment. She knows that her child will be raised fatherless. She knows that the odds of her child escaping the grasp of the gangs and the Marxist overlords are very slim. What should she do? If all aborted babies go to heaven, then the young mother should kill the child in utero, thus guaranteeing her child heaven and sparing it the risk of life in this world and thus the high risk of being lost to hell. In fact, it would be selfish and uncharitable for her NOT to abort the child....
Do you see what happens when we try to form a logical truth table off of a false premise? We end up with abortion as a charitable act of mercy. And satan SQUEALS with delight.
6. Now the question must be answered, "Why SHOULD the young mother allow her child to be born even with the high risk of the child eventually being lost to hell?"
The answer comes from Lesson Number One in the Catechism:
Q: Why did God make you?
A: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
Every person is made by God with the desired end of the Beatific Vision. If the mother aborts the baby, the baby can never see the Beatific Vision, which is what God created the child for, and nothing less. In order to achieve the Beatific Vision, a person must be born and baptized, and die in a state of grace. Because remember, NOBODY deserves the Beatific Vision. Nobody.
No matter how long the odds seem, that baby is born with the Beatific Vision within grasp. Human beings CAN NEVER deprive a child of that chance.
And Jesus beholding, said to them: With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible.
Matthew 19:267. What about miscarriages?
True miscarriages and stillbirths are God's will, and remember, those babies, like the aborted babies, are granted maximum natural happiness in the Limbo of the Innocents. We must trust God in these matters. It is possible that God in His omniscience and Divine Providence allows miscarriages and stillbirths in order to bring about the best possible outcome for the child. This is a very difficult idea to face, but again, it comes straight from Our Lord Himself:
The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of Him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed: it were better for him, if that man had not been born.It would have been better for Judas Iscariot to have been miscarried because then he would have the maximum natural happiness of the Limbo of the Innocents. Instead, Judas betrayed Our Lord, doubted His mercy and never sought forgiveness and instead committed suicide, thus choosing the hell of the damned for all eternity.
Matthew 26:24
But remember, ONLY GOD can make that call. No man can ever, ever play God and induce miscarriage, which is to say MURDER a pre-born child.
8. Why have I never heard anything about any of this up until now?
First, if you are Catholic and under the age of 60 or so, it is because the Church has been infiltrated by Marxist-homosexualists tasked with destroying the Church from the inside. Their father, satan, wants to convince as many people as possible that abortion is "morally neutral" or "contingent on the circumstances".
Beyond that, satan actually does want people to believe that aborted babies go to heaven so that eventually he can convince people that abortion can be a MORAL GOOD. Satan gets two things out of this. He maximizes the number of people who murder their own children and then DO NOT REPENT, thus dying in mortal sin and going to hell. The second thing satan achieves is keeping as many human beings from achieving that which he himself rejected and RAGES against: The Beatific Vision. Satan is willing to compromise and cut his losses. He'll take the baby going to the Limbo of the Innocents, never seeing the Beatific Vision PLUS the damnation of the unrepentant mother AND the damnation of the apostate priests, nuns and clergy who told the woman that her abortion wasn't a sin because "the baby is in heaven."
If you are Protestant, it is because Protestantism is intrinsically stupid and insipid. That's it. Superfun Rockband church. Jimmy Swaggart. Brain dead Methodist "we're just here to keep up appearances". Don't believe me? Okay. Ask your pastor on Sunday if aborted babies go to heaven, and after reading this, stand back and bask in the bumbling ignorance of his (or her, shudder) answer. Yep. You can almost visualize it right now, can't you?
UPDATE: Limbo Citations
By Ann Barnhardt
This is just excellent. I'll pick out just a few of the 24 reasons. Do read the whole thing.
Source Link HERE.
24 Reasons Why Not To Reject Limbo
John Vennari
Limbo is in the news. A new document from Rome's International Theological Commission [ITC], released on April 20, states that Catholics may virtually ignore the teaching on limbo and may have "many reasons for hope" for the salvation of unbaptized infants.
Practically every major newspaper carried the story. Headlines such as "Vatican Abolishes Limbo;" "Vatican Report Rejects Limbo;" and "Concept of Limbo Now Assigned to Oblivion" appeared throughout the world.
Yet despite this latest study, many intend to hold to the conventional teaching that the souls of infants who die before Baptism do not attain Heaven, because they have not obtained the remission of Original Sin that only Baptism provides. They go to Limbo, a place of natural happiness wherein they suffer no pain of punishment since they are guilty of no personal sin.
Listed below are 24 of the chief reasons why I, and thousands of Catholics the world over, will not reject the Catholic doctrine of Limbo:
1. Because Pope Pius VI, in a formal magisterial decree, denounced the rejection of Limbo as "false, rash, slanderous to Catholic schools";
2. Because the ITC's study on Limbo is neither a papal document, nor a magisterial document, but a modern theological exercise that does not bind the conscience of Catholics in any way;
4. Because it is an unchangeable article of Faith, taught infallibly by the Second Council of Lyons and the Council of Florence that the souls of those who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision;
5. Because Pope Sixtus V taught in a 1588 Constitution that victims of abortion, being deprived of Baptism, are "excluded from Beatific Vision," which is one of the reasons Sixtus V denounced abortion as a heinous crime;
7. Because to reject Limbo strengthens the implicit denial of Original Sin, a chief error of our age;
http://www.catholicessentials.net/limbo.htm
I. The Limbo of the Fathers - A place and state of rest wherein the souls of the just who died before Christ's ascension were detained until he opened Heaven to them; referred to as "Abraham's Bosom" (Luke xvi,22) and "Paradise" (Luke xxiii, 43) and notably in Eph. IV, 9 and I Peter iii, 18-20.
II. The Limbo of Children - It is of faith that all, children and adults, who leave this world without the Baptism of water, blood or desire and therefore in original sin are excluded from the Vision of God in Heaven. The great majority of theologians teach that such children and unbaptized adults free from grievous actual sin, enjoy eternally a state of perfect natural happiness, knowing and loving God by use of their natural powers. This place and state is commonly called Limbo. (Definition from A Catholic Dictionary, 1951)
References in Scripture:
"And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell" Luke 16:22
"Now that He ascended, what is it, but because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth" Ephesians 4:9
"Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that He might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison: Which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water." 1 Peter 3:18-20
"And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise" Luke 23:42-43
Church Teaching:
"Moreover as Christ was true and perfect man, He of course was capable of dying. Now man dies when the soul is separated from the body. When, therefore, we say that Jesus died, we mean that His soul was disunited from His body. We do not admit, however, that the Divinity was separated from His body. On the contrary, we firmly believe and profess that when His soul was dissociated from His body, His Divinity continued always united both to His body in the sepulchre and to His soul in limbo. It became the Son of God to die, that, through death, He might destroy him who had the empire of death that is the devil, and might deliver them, who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude." Catechism of Council of Trent, The Creed, Article IV
"Q: What are we taught in the Fifth Article: He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead? A: The Fifth Article of the Creed teaches us that the Soul of Jesus Christ, on being separated from His Body, descended to the Limbo of the holy Fathers, and that on the third day it became united once more to His Body, never to be parted from it again". Catechism of St. Pope Pius X, The Fifth Article of the Creed
"The fourth and final reason is that Christ might free the just who were in hell [or Limbo]. For as Christ wished to suffer death to deliver the living from death, so also He would descend into hell to deliver those who were there". Also, "The reason they were there in hell [i.e., Limbo] is original sin which they had contracted from Adam, and from which as members of the human race they could not be delivered except by Christ. Catechism of St. Thomas Aquinas, The Creed, The Fifth Article, Reasons for Christ's Descent
"The limbo of the Fathers and the limbo of children, without any doubt, differ as to the quality of punishment or reward. For children have no hope of the blessed life, as the Fathers in limbo had, in whom, moreover, shone forth the light of faith and grace. But as regards their situation, there is reason to believe that the place of both is the same; except that the limbo of the Fathers is placed higher than the limbo of children, just as we have stated in reference to limbo and hell." Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas, Whether the limbo of children is the same as the limbo of the Fathers?
"Suarez, for example, ignoring Bellarmine's protest, continued to teach what Catharinus had taught -- that unbaptized children will not only enjoy perfect natural happiness, but that they will rise with immortal bodies at the last day and have the renovated earth for their happy abode (De vit. et penat., ix, sect. vi, n. 4); and, without insisting on such details, the great majority of Catholic theologians have continued to maintain the general doctrine that the children's limbo is a state of perfect natural happiness, just the same as it would have been if God had not established the present supernatural order" 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, Limbo SummaryLink:
Contrary to what some Catholics have come to believe today, the doctrine of Limbo is mentioned in Scripture (albeit by a different name) and as we can see above, has been taught century to century by the Catholic Church. To deny its existence is not Catholic.
Related:
- 24 Reasons Why Not To Reject Limbo
- Limbo
- CDF - Request for Canonization for Abortion Victims is “Doctrinally Problematic.”
- Could Limbo Be 'Abolished'?
- On Benedict’s silence about limbo and on his theological method
- The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized
- Limbo of the Children - New expiration date: 2008
