Monday, October 16, 2006

Pragmatic Pope Phishes phor Promulation

The title link goes to a london times article about the pope, Benedict 16, making some changes to the unofficial Roman Catholic doctrines. Specifically, the Catholic church no longer puts unbaptised babies (i.e. stillborn) into the "limbo" zone; now these children will go on to heaven. You can read the article for details on the shift. There are some specific ramifications here that should be thought through. and, I don't care if you think you are protestant and so the pope doesn't matter - tell that to the 1 billion catholics on earth - and to your ancestors pre-1500 who would pretty much call you a heretic for not venerating the pope.

Notes of Interest:

  • The pope may be bowing at the altar of pragmatism. In thrid-world, muslim countries, Islam says that babies go straight to heaven, so, they seem like the more loving religion. If your baby died (with high infant-mortality rates in the third world, this has either affected you or a close family memeber or friend) wouldn't you want a religion with a god that had mercy on your child? So, the pope may be changing doctrine to create a more attractive Christianity. Personally, I hope that he's right - because that would make me more attracted to God.
  • The Catholic church seems to spend too much time talking about who's where after they die. This move by B-16 makes it seem like the children are being freed today! This is a perverted form of dispensationalism, if that is the impression. Instead of the pope granting anything, they should be putting out statements that say they were wrong for the last however many years - and now they think they got it right.
  • Lastly, I think it is good to make our religion more attractive, but I don't think doctrine is always the best way to do that. Perhaps, the pope could increase humanitarian aid to muslim countries. Then there would be no doubt on what the message of the gospel is.

I love the pope. Jesus loves the pope. You should too.

4 comments:

Aaron said...

i was reading on your blog and i had more of a quesiton on our position on limbo? i have never really thought about it really like that so i was wondering what the denomination thought? and what kind of evidence do we have about it really?

and about the babies, why do we get to say what happens to them and guess? does it say anything in the bible about that at all?

ok well just whenever you have time. thanks
cant wait for the convention

peaceout
aaron

James said...

one great thing about the catholics is that they have a lot of history, so they have a lot of cock-a-mamy theologies that they run around with, making for a much better party.

It's really just a positional shift that is happening because B-16 didn't agree with the previous doctrine. SO, B-16 would say the babies were always going to heaven, not limbo.

We don't have any statement about limbo or anything like that. We, instead, choose unity in our diversity. This means we hold to the certain truths and allow discussion and diversity of opinion on non-core issues.

Aaron said...

ok so another question that is kinda on the same playin field as this one.

what happens to a person after they die, where does there soul go? does it wait untill God returns again, or does it go straight to heaven? what does the Bible say? I know it talks in a lot of passages that people were in heaven and in hell right?

I was just looking on another website about limbo and they said that we go to some sort of waitin place, called Hades and that if you believed in God then its an ok place, but if you didnt it was a place of torment.

it feels like i should know this already and stuff but i dont, so hopefully you can help me out.

thanks again James

Anonymous said...

Don't worry
If I remember correctly the Bible doesn't just come out and state it, Paul calls it sleep and somepeople theorize(I think) that it'll be like a sleep until woken up by the rapture, some believe you're up in Heaven without a body until the rapture. Then there's the Catholic view, where isn't it purgatory(or limbo or whatever) or something like that where you have to wait to get to Heaven? Isn't it also a Catholic belief that saints go straight to Heaven, and that people are only declared saints after a certain amount of miracles and after they're dead?

None of these I'm 100% sure on I could have easily gotten some facts mixed up.