Life After Limbo

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Yet in the absence of limbo, some theologians have noticed, the rite of baptism may not seem as imperative to many Catholics as it once appeared. Despite its continued centrality as the sacramental entry to the body of Christ, some of its ASAP urgency will presumably fade. Indeed, the expected limbo ruling comes in addition to an older decision that appeared to downgrade baptism's gatekeeping role. The Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 ruled that in the case of some adult seekers of God--even non-Christians--the desire for the divine could take the place of the rite. Or, as the author of the 2002 book God and the World noted, "men who are seeking for God and who are inwardly striving toward that which constitutes baptism will also receive salvation." The writer was, again, Ratzinger.

Together, these developments invite an investigation of baptism's importance beyond simply preventing the worst, and make a statement about the liberality of grace. Both the commission's work, which speaks for unbaptized infants, and the Vatican II language, which speaks for unbaptized adults, remind believers that, as Ratzinger wrote in a paraphrase of his predecessor John Paul II, Christians may hope that "God is powerful enough to draw to himself all those who were unable to receive the sacrament." Limbo was a vestige of an overfastidious exclusivity. Eliminating it affords a better view of God's many mansions, their doors wider than some of his followers have historically admitted.