So long Limbo

Got tickets for the holiday season in Limbo? Better make other plans. It looks like the Vatican has been looking through it’s – um, whatever it looks through when it looks at things in the invisible other world located somewhere where nobody can see it where you go when you die. They have looked through this precise instrument and seem to have decided there was no limbo in the first place. There is no information as to how long they have had this no-tech equipment, but I suspect it was developed to counter the heretical findings made by Galileo with his telescope; findings now as firmly disproved as the theories of Darwin.

The ramifications of this discovery have yet to be explored. As we know, a fertilized human egg receives a soul as it is penetrated by the nucleus of a human sperm cell, except in the case of identical twins where God waits until cell division reaches a certain stage before inserting the microscopic and invisible item which contains an immortal human with all its human characteristics. But I digress. As you can imagine, the soul is at this point quite guilty although innocent, having never actually lived and of course can’t hope for heaven without the auspices of a priest and some mysteriously different water should it somehow fail to be born. That your fetus won’t get the best accommodations in the afterlife without baptism, has long been an argument against abortion.

Until now, Roman Catholics had the solace of knowing that God isn’t quite the bastard he’s made out to be by Protestants and has provided a special place in hell with a better climate and more pleasant facilities in which to spend an infinite amount of time. Who after all, except perhaps a Puritan, might imagine a god who burns babies or casts them into some pit with the likes of Mark Foley?

But now, it seems that Limbo may never have been; that it was (gasp) made up to solve a contradiction concerning burning babies and a beneficent and almighty deity. Unlike Heaven and Hell, Pope Benedict XVI regards Limbo as a myth and a Vatican commission of theologians that has been staring into their myth detector is expected to render a finding at any time now. First Pluto and now Limbo.

All cynicism aside, perhaps this rejection of a widespread belief that never was really dogma marks a kinder, gentler theology if not an improved deity. If God can have so much love for his children that he might let some into heaven without the approval of the clergy, perhaps some day some church authority will allow God to let anyone he chooses into the club without their prior approval.