sitting in limbo, limbo, limbo

(a jimmycliff song by the way)

i was raised catholic and i NEVER understood the concept of limbo. why would an INNOCENT baby have to be 'sent' to limbo if she or he wasn't baptized? it certainly wasn't THEIR fault. i never bought it, even then. now it seems i don't really HAVE to buy it, but it's too late. i left all of that behind me long ago.

Limbo to Close: Mass Evictions Expected
by NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN
[posted online on December 13, 2005]
After 700 years of occupancy, a landlord is entitled to ask the tenants to move. Apparently something like that is happening at the Vatican, where, the Guardian reports, the decision has been made to evict the occupants and close limbo.
You might think anything that's been around for seven centuries would have an established and uncontested place in organized religion, but the newspaper writes, a tad elliptically, that "John Paul II was deeply troubled by limbo and had it dropped from the church's 1992 catechism." Why limbo, a quiet place where nothing was going on as far as we know, a place without misbehaving members of the clergy, should trouble the Pope is not explained. Didn't the Pope have enough to worry him without taking on the consequences of a limbo ouster?
Whether he did or didn't, his successor, Benedict XVI, is also an anti-limboterian, as are some thirty Roman Catholic theologians from around the world who have been meeting in secret and have, if the report is correct, decided to put the kibosh on the place. Limbo, you might say, is on its way to limbo.
Limbo, it must be explained to any unchurched pagans who may be casting an eye on this piece, is where innocent babies who have not been baptized and are, therefore, ineligible for residence in heaven, were thought to reside in a semi-blissful eternity. There was no other place to put the poor blameless things, hence limbo was built and seemed to be going along well enough, paying its taxes and keeping its streets clean before this thunderbolt of an announcement.
All of a sudden the firmament is to be inundated by millions--nay, perhaps billions--of unbaptized babies bumping into angels, clogging up celestial trumpets and interfering with the plucking of harps. The music of the spheres is about to take an awesome drop in quality.............