WILL UNBAPTISED BABIES BE BARRED FROM HEAVEN?

 

Some say, “Jesus never said that the kingdom of Heaven belonged to the unbaptised children he blessed but to people who were childlike before God. In John 3:5 where he rules out salvation without baptism in water he was thinking of adult baptism if he was thinking of baptism at all and infant baptism was unknown in those days so by implication babies who die are barred from Heaven forever.”  Perhaps that is the right understanding of Christian doctrine.

 

The Catholic book, Why Does God? says that since baptism is called the new birth it is as essential for entry into Heaven as natural birth is for entry into this world and that since a baby is not able to desire baptism it cannot get the soul saving effects of a baptism of desire – like somebody who prepares for baptism but dies suddenly before the ceremony can who God gives some of the effects of baptism without the ceremony in order to make it possible for him to get into Heaven - and strictly the only way a baby can be saved is by literal personal water baptism when alive (page 161).

 

The Church says unbaptised babies go to a place called Limbo meaning border as the result of a process of elimination. It would be cruel to send them to Hell we are told. But you cannot say that because the Catholic God has deprived them of blessings because of Adam and he is fair so if he can do that he can send them to Hell for they deserve it. And the Church says they can’t go to Heaven because they haven’t the maturity to choose Heaven. Incidentally, this is a lie for they also teach that baptised babies get into Heaven and God gave the unbaptised the power to choose. He can find a way for the unbaptised babies who go to Limbo to mature so that they can choose.

 

Pius VI in 1794 officially forbade disbelief in Limbo which he understood as being Hell without the fire (page 86, Reason and Belief)

 

Some say that Limbo is a Paradise but others say it is a place of punishment.

 

Let us test the concept of a paradise Limbo.

 

The babies will be fairly happy there without God the supreme source of happiness because they don’t know what they are missing. They can’t be perfectly happy for the Church says you need full and tangible union with God for that. But shouldn’t God let them grow up in that world like they do here so that they can choose him? The Church says that he doesn’t have to because he doesn’t owe them any favours – they are too young to deserve them (question 711, Radio Replies, Vol 1). This is how she safeguarded the justice of God.

 

But she didn’t succeed. Only cruel clergy could think she did. You can’t deserve the power to choose or disdain the Lord. But a really good God would let you have the chance when he believes in giving us the power of free will. He could give the unbaptised babies the power and the intelligence to use it after death.

 

When God has made us for himself as religion says we cannot be happy if he holds us, especially babies, away from him. To exclude anyone from God is a severe and hurtful punishment and they will despise the blessings they have as poor substitutes. Pining for God is supposed to be an intrinsic part of human personality. Vatican 2 said that all people have the one ultimate goal which is God (see the document Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, 28th October, 1965).

 

If God is loving he lets baptised babies into Heaven. To love is to seek union in fellowship with someone. God does not love the unbaptised babies when he won’t admit them into his presence. A good God can’t have favourites so he can’t be more generous to some people than others. When he forgives forgotten crimes he should forgive the original sin of a child which is more worthy for it is not the child’s fault. The child does not deserve to be in original sin no matter what the Church says.

 

And it is obviously malicious to assert that God ought to punish babies in Limbo for a sin they never committed. Those who say original sin is the absence of God in you so it is not punishment but just a barrier that makes you unable to connect to God are in a sense worse.  God is punishing in that case but refusing to say he does.  And so are we.

 

The notion of Limbo is anathema to anyone with sense. I have heard even Catholics say that it proves how low the Church would stoop to blackmail parents to give her their children. I would say that is more true of the Church in the past but is partly true today.

 

Some Catholics hope that Limbo will be closed down by God some day so that the prisoners can float up to Heaven. Not a very brilliant presumption considering that God could have done this from the start. Limbo presents us with a capricious God. God could just as easily abandon them forever.

 

The Bible does not say that unbaptised babies will be saved or at least at peace. Though it forbids making dogmas that are not implicitly or explicitly spelled out on its pages it follows that we have to say that Limbo exists to be on the safe side. It is implying that Limbo exists. Could it be said that when it says God is love that it implies the opposite? No for it does say we suffer by divine decree for Adam’s sin by being prone to sin and death so God is not so keen on making us holy. God laid punishments on Adam and Eve in Genesis that have been passed on to us implying God has rejected us with them and up until modern times it was babies and children that had the worst deal.

 

Nobody can believe that a mass murderer can go to confession and end up in Heaven from which harmless babies are eternally debarred just because their parents didn’t get the priest to cast a spell on them. It is the height of religious sectarianism. They need to ask themselves some serious questions about what is in them that makes them willing to believe such a thing.

 

Jesus died for all sin including Adam’s, the sin that babies carry that is known as original sin. Because he paid divine justice for the sins we committed it follows that he paid for the original sin that taints babies. Babies then should be conceived without original sin. So God goes out of his way to hurt them when they are born with it for he is the one that can prevent original sin.

 

To be born without the grace of God is to be born degraded.  It is a degradation that begins at conception.  It must be a punishment. The Church says that degradation is worse than pain or suffering for they would only be bad if you had dignity in the first place.  The Church commands you to die rather than give up your love for God which is an affirmation that pain and suffering are not bad necessarily. This tells us that God could certainly sentence the babies to eternal pain and call that good.  God degrades babies.  So if he does that he will hurt them forever if he so decides on the basis that suffering is okay compared to degradation. 

 

Now if Jesus had not atoned on the cross what would become of babies who die? Probably the same as what happens to unbaptised babies now. It would surely be better for God to give Adam and Eve ten billion years of life to have babies that all die so that all are fine in Limbo than to have things the way they are and many people having grown up to go to Hell. Better for all babies to die than for one to be eternally damned.  The fact that we grow up must mean that babies are better off growing up even though some of them go to Hell. That would only be true if all babies dying would sentence them all to eternal damnation. So God lets them grow up so that some of them will escape.

 

If you believe that people are better off dead than suffering intensely when they are not getting better, you will hold that the Bible teaching that babies deserve death because of Adam’s sin is not as bad as the teaching of some Christians that they should go to Hell forever. If you agree with the view that life is so important than even such suffering wouldn’t justify ending the life then it would be blasphemy for you to say then in that case that an all-good God would not send babies to Hell when he kills them. Killing them would be worse if life is so important.

 

The real origin of Limbo was in hearts that were going to make sure nobody would dare defy the Church and not have their child enrolled as a member.

 

It is belittling God to teach that he keeps babies in original sin until the priest empties a jug on them. He does not love them when he is not anxious to make them his children as quickly as possible. Rome says he owes the children nothing so he can arbitrarily heal one of original sin and keep another in it if he wants to. So his forgiveness is just generosity. But it is an insult to be generous to one and not another for no reason. Generosity is a virtue so a truly perfect God cannot be mean like Rome’s God. Rome has hidden her secret doctrine that God hates babies until they are baptised for too long. One could be forgiven for thinking the Church is the one that hates babies.

 

It is not a very nice person who would praise a God who will not regard innocent babies as his friends and children until an eccentric in strange robes splashes them with holy water. The Catholic Church defends her this God claiming that the babies do not deserve salvation. But the babies haven’t done anything. The Church agrees and then informs us that it is because they haven’t that God has the right to look upon them with wrath. But he could look on them with love. When he has a choice he should pick the best. He would pick love if he were love.

 

The Church says that if you would be baptised but can’t be God will understand and you will be made as good as baptised the very moment you die but under very strict conditions.

 

As long as you delay making your child a friend of God you are willing the child’s separation from God and that must be a sin. And it must be child-abuse. Rome says it is worse to abuse the soul than to abuse the body. No wonder some feel that if they have abused a child’s soul they might as well abuse them sexually for they have done worse.

 

One out of three zygotes die unknown to the mother. Limbo is the home of at least this one third of the human race. How unkindly God is!

 

FINALLY

A religion that sullies the wonder of having babies with its doctrine is a scandal.  A religion that sullies the death of an unbaptised baby by suggesting it will spend eternity without God even if this eternity will be happy is an abomination.  A religion that sullies the birth of a child by saying baptism is the safe course and ensures it will go to Heaven if it dies is a disgrace and outrage.  People need to start having the right feelings about these things. Baptism is core to Catholicism as a Church and as a system of belief for it is the sacrament of faith and it is entry into the Church structure.  That is why such an evil practice such as baptism overrules any good the Church does.  If the core is evil the goodness of the system is good in the way cheese in a trap is good to the mouse.  Another evil practice is how many Catholics hurt by the doctrine of baptism blame it on bishops and priests and ignore the information they have which says they are only preaching what Jesus preached on the subject.