But limbo, that netherworld of unbaptized babies, worthy pagans and even a few Muslims, is very much on the way out--another lesson that while belief in God does not change, the things people believe about Him most certainly do.
This month, 30 theologians from around the world met at the Vatican to discuss, among other dilemmas, the problem of what happens to babies who die without baptism.
The conferees do not like the word for it, but what they were really doing, as theological advisers to Pope Benedict XVI, was finally disposing of limbo a concept that was never official church doctrine but has been an enduring medieval theory of a blissful state among the departed, somehow different from both heaven and hell.
Unlike purgatory, a sort of waiting room to heaven for those with some venal faults, the theory of limbo consigned children outside heaven on account of original sin alone.
The theory has long been out of favor anyway, as theologically questionable and unnecessarily harsh.
It is hard to imagine depriving innocents of heaven. These days it prompts more snickers than anything, as evidenced by the titter of press coverage here along the lines of "Limbo Consigned to Hell."
But it remains an interesting relic, relevant to what the Roman Catholic church has been and what it wants to be. The concept of limbo bumps up against one of the most contentious issues for the church: abortion.
If fetuses are human beings, what happens to their souls if they are aborted? It raises questions of how broadly the church and its new pope view the notion of salvation.
And it has some real-life consequences. The church is growing most in poor places like Africa and Asia where infant mortality remains high. While the concerns of the experts reconsidering limbo are more theological, it does not hurt the church's future if an African mother who has lost a baby can receive more hopeful news from her priest in 2006 than, say, an Italian mother did 100 years ago.
"You look at the proper theology, but if there is more consolation, all the better," said Luis Ladaria, the Spanish Jesuit who is secretary general of the International Theological Commission, the body working on limbo.
Unlike many issues the recent emotional debate over homosexuality in the priesthood, for example there seems to be unanimity that limbo should exit from the church's stage, even if, at the moment, it is unclear what exact doctrine will replace it.
"Limbo has never been a definitive truth of the faith," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, elected Benedict this year, said in an interview in 1984, during his long term as Pope John Paul II's doctrinal watchdog.
"Personally, I would let it drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis." As pope, Benedict has said nothing on the subject, though many experts, but not all, it should be noted, say that the controversy over limbo began with one of Benedict's spiritual heroes: St. Augustine.
The theology is complicated, but the bottom line is that Augustine, believing in man's original sin, persuaded a church council in 418 to reject any notion of an "intermediary place" between heaven and hell. He held that baptism was necessary for salvation and that unbaptized babies would actually go to hell, though in his later writings he conceded that it would entail the mildest of conditions.
It was "a pretty grim doctrine," said Gerald O'Collins, an Australian Jesuit and co-author of "A Concise Dictionary of Theology" (Paulist Press: 2000). "You're either in hell or you're not."
In the Middle Ages, theologians, notably St. Thomas Aquinas, postulated a slightly cheerier idea: limbo, from the Latin "limbus," meaning a hem or a boundary. Here innocents would live forever in what Thomas called "natural happiness," if not in heaven.
This was the Limbo of the Babies.
There was also a temporary Limbo of the Fathers, where Dante located, among others, Virgil, his guide through hell, Moses, Socrates, Plato, even the gentlemanly Muslim warrior Saladin. Though limbo had no firm scriptural basis, and was thus never official church doctrine, it remained a major part of church tradition as well as a defining image of Catholicism either as a neat theological compromise or as a bit mean, depending on who was asked.
It remained strong in 1905, when Pope Pius X stated plainly: "Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either."
But ideas began to change with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, in which the church held that everyone, baptized Christians or not, could be eligible for salvation through the mystery of Jesus's redemptive power. Pope John Paul II continued the decline of limbo, omitting the term from the most recent catechism and last year, not long before his death, asking the theological commission to officially consider the question of unbaptized babies.
John Paul, who brought the issue of abortion to the fore of the church's concerns, appeared interested for a special reason: the fate of aborted fetuses.
It is often said that church moves in centuries, not days or even years. So Ladaria looked up to heaven when asked when the final report on limbo might be finished.
Probably no less than a year, he said, when the commission meets here again.
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