Oops, Looks Like Limbo Was a Boo-Boo!
Big news just in. Well OK, so it was news a week ago but I just found out about it.
The Roman Catholic church's International Theological Commission has just released a 41-page document titled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized". Authorized by His Holiness Poop Benny the Whatever, the document tosses out on the trash heap the centuries-old teaching that the souls of unbaptized babies are sent to Limbo, forever denied entrance into heaven because of the stain of original sin. For those of you who might not know, the original sin referred to is Adam and Eve's naughty little nibbles on the forbidden apple.
The idea that heaven might be denied to children just because they died without having had supposedly holy water dribbled over their foreheads while some cleric mumbled the ritualistic formula that would allow them to knock on heaven's door is idiocy. Period. Nowhere in any of the quotes attributed to Jesus is there any such a nasty threat. He was the loving and forgiving man who stopped the mob from stoning to death a woman who had committed adultery and thereby sentenced herself to that very punishment, as prescribed by the law of the day. Jesus knew that law and he still overturned it with an act of mercy. If he could extend such gentleness to an adult fully cognizant of her supposed wrongdoing, how could anyone imagine he would ever do otherwise to an infant totally innocent of any and all wrongdoing?
I wonder about those who would accept such teaching. I suspect telling yourself that a god so vengeful as to turn his back on innocents is a god worth believing in is a sign of a mental elevator that doesn't quite go all the way up to the top floor. I mean, shouldn't the big guy be able to get over it by now? So Adam tasted the forbidden fruit; really, what's the big deal? If you accept the existence of the deity as the omniscient being taught to us in Sunday school, then you can't too readily argue with the fact that god set Adam up, and Eve right along with him. He knew way back when exactly what the two humans were going to do and he still plunked them down in the middle of the situation with no warning that they were being set up. Big surprise they goofed, eh? He did purposely create them imperfect beings. Why did he get his nose so out of joint when they acted as they were created to act?
A god who sets up his own creations to fail is a god you could believe would condemn innocent babies to eternity in limbo.
Just maybe, however, there never has been a limbo. Maybe it was just another one of the many constructs put in place by the male hierarchy of the church, like the garden of Eden story and others, in order to better control the general populace and make sure they kept paying the fees charged for the intermediary services provided by the clergy who claimed they could buffer the people against this vengeful deity.
Here's a big surprise. The document, as well as stating that the church has gotten at least one of its teachings all ass-end backward, has also emphasized that its content should not in any way be taken as a questioning of original sin. Whatever you do, folks, don't go having any independent brain activity going on about this one. They want you to remember you are not smart enough to figure out your own relation with god. You must have a clergy planted firmly between you and your creator. You must be willing to accept whatever they say you should believe and act accordingly in a manner prescribed by them. The gentle Jesus of the bible is just a mirage. You can not think to approach him or hope to understand him without the likes of Benny and his confreres. If at any point in time, they come out with the occasional admission that they screwed up, just quietly accept that and forbear any attempt to extrapolate from that one area where they fucked up to any other. They know better than you and they are always right.
Remember, infallibility! You know, just like Pope Gregory IX and his declaration that cats were "diabolical creatures" and agents of the devil. He authorized a total persecution of the animal. By the 15th century, the faithful had taken the European cat almost to the point of extinction. The irony of it was that the more than two thirds of Europe's population who died from the bubonic plague could really have used a few of those cats to keep down the rat population which had mushroomed when one of their main natural predators was killed in order to save good christian souls. Does anyone know who told the faithful that the church had messed up big-time on that one? They probably issued some little tract titled "The Hope of Cats to Survive Christians and the Christians to Survive Themselves" and quietly distributed it to the local clergy to read from the pulpit the following Sunday.
It took the Black Death to bring about that previous one-eighty. What could have caused this one? The document says "People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants who have no personal sins..." You know how to translate that, don't you? Translate it into money. There must be increasing numbers of people who have defected from the fold, articulating their questioning of that teaching before they left, taking their tithe money with them. Nothing like the dollar bill to get the Vatican's attention.
I suppose, rather than ranting on about the Vatican and their stupidity, I could take this latest announcement as a good sign. Maybe some day in the far-distant future; just maybe they will get around to admitting that they, like so many others (read, fundamentalists of any creed) have been wrong all along, much to the detriment of humankind. Maybe they will even apologize.
What do you think - too much to hope for?
The Roman Catholic church's International Theological Commission has just released a 41-page document titled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized". Authorized by His Holiness Poop Benny the Whatever, the document tosses out on the trash heap the centuries-old teaching that the souls of unbaptized babies are sent to Limbo, forever denied entrance into heaven because of the stain of original sin. For those of you who might not know, the original sin referred to is Adam and Eve's naughty little nibbles on the forbidden apple.
The idea that heaven might be denied to children just because they died without having had supposedly holy water dribbled over their foreheads while some cleric mumbled the ritualistic formula that would allow them to knock on heaven's door is idiocy. Period. Nowhere in any of the quotes attributed to Jesus is there any such a nasty threat. He was the loving and forgiving man who stopped the mob from stoning to death a woman who had committed adultery and thereby sentenced herself to that very punishment, as prescribed by the law of the day. Jesus knew that law and he still overturned it with an act of mercy. If he could extend such gentleness to an adult fully cognizant of her supposed wrongdoing, how could anyone imagine he would ever do otherwise to an infant totally innocent of any and all wrongdoing?
I wonder about those who would accept such teaching. I suspect telling yourself that a god so vengeful as to turn his back on innocents is a god worth believing in is a sign of a mental elevator that doesn't quite go all the way up to the top floor. I mean, shouldn't the big guy be able to get over it by now? So Adam tasted the forbidden fruit; really, what's the big deal? If you accept the existence of the deity as the omniscient being taught to us in Sunday school, then you can't too readily argue with the fact that god set Adam up, and Eve right along with him. He knew way back when exactly what the two humans were going to do and he still plunked them down in the middle of the situation with no warning that they were being set up. Big surprise they goofed, eh? He did purposely create them imperfect beings. Why did he get his nose so out of joint when they acted as they were created to act?
A god who sets up his own creations to fail is a god you could believe would condemn innocent babies to eternity in limbo.
Just maybe, however, there never has been a limbo. Maybe it was just another one of the many constructs put in place by the male hierarchy of the church, like the garden of Eden story and others, in order to better control the general populace and make sure they kept paying the fees charged for the intermediary services provided by the clergy who claimed they could buffer the people against this vengeful deity.
Here's a big surprise. The document, as well as stating that the church has gotten at least one of its teachings all ass-end backward, has also emphasized that its content should not in any way be taken as a questioning of original sin. Whatever you do, folks, don't go having any independent brain activity going on about this one. They want you to remember you are not smart enough to figure out your own relation with god. You must have a clergy planted firmly between you and your creator. You must be willing to accept whatever they say you should believe and act accordingly in a manner prescribed by them. The gentle Jesus of the bible is just a mirage. You can not think to approach him or hope to understand him without the likes of Benny and his confreres. If at any point in time, they come out with the occasional admission that they screwed up, just quietly accept that and forbear any attempt to extrapolate from that one area where they fucked up to any other. They know better than you and they are always right.
Remember, infallibility! You know, just like Pope Gregory IX and his declaration that cats were "diabolical creatures" and agents of the devil. He authorized a total persecution of the animal. By the 15th century, the faithful had taken the European cat almost to the point of extinction. The irony of it was that the more than two thirds of Europe's population who died from the bubonic plague could really have used a few of those cats to keep down the rat population which had mushroomed when one of their main natural predators was killed in order to save good christian souls. Does anyone know who told the faithful that the church had messed up big-time on that one? They probably issued some little tract titled "The Hope of Cats to Survive Christians and the Christians to Survive Themselves" and quietly distributed it to the local clergy to read from the pulpit the following Sunday.
It took the Black Death to bring about that previous one-eighty. What could have caused this one? The document says "People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants who have no personal sins..." You know how to translate that, don't you? Translate it into money. There must be increasing numbers of people who have defected from the fold, articulating their questioning of that teaching before they left, taking their tithe money with them. Nothing like the dollar bill to get the Vatican's attention.
I suppose, rather than ranting on about the Vatican and their stupidity, I could take this latest announcement as a good sign. Maybe some day in the far-distant future; just maybe they will get around to admitting that they, like so many others (read, fundamentalists of any creed) have been wrong all along, much to the detriment of humankind. Maybe they will even apologize.
What do you think - too much to hope for?
3 Comments:
I love it! (Your post that is.)
You're right ... organized religion doesn't require any independent thought -- just sheep. And the mental elevator image ... ;-) ... that speaks to the future. There is no hope in the near term. Maybe a few thousand years from now.
I agree with what you are writing about babies being innocent. I don't see how it possible for them not to be when they are just infants.
LOL on this bit: "If at any point in time, they come out with the occasional admission that they screwed up, just quietly accept that and forbear any attempt to extrapolate from that one area where they fucked up to any other. They know better than you and they are always right." I think that the only "problem" the church faces (up in the levels of rarified atmosphere) is that they don't seem to catch on to reality very well. They tend to think that they still have control over EVERYONE'S minds, where in fact, enough people are smart enough now to make the decision to stay away from the church, and now, while they try to huff and puff non-stop about all the reasons (condemnation for not being members of the church, or "you know what, we were wrong, the little babies ARE allowed in, after all") that they should have more members of the church.
Who told them that story in the first place? What apparition of God told them about this place, and that's where all the babies will go?
And an even bigger question; who, I wonder, do they claim told them here, in this day and age, that this former apparition was wrong, or got lost in translation, and God has had a change of heart? Hmmm ...
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