THE PUSH TO BAPTISE CHILDREN OUT OF THE FEAR OF LIMBO
In the past, because the Church believed Jesus was
referring to baptism when he said nobody enters God's kingdom but by water and
the spirit, it was held that unbaptised babies went to a paradise called Limbo.
Baptised babies go to Heaven. The power of this blackmail has virtually
built the Church into the force it is. Limbo is less certain today in the
Church. Today, the consensus is that it is best for babies to have them
baptised and it should be done at all costs though we can’t be sure why it is.
This is still a terrifying doctrine for anybody who is in danger of miscarrying.
Why don’t Catholics baptise babies in the womb with syringes as a rule?
At the end of the day, though baptised believers in
infant baptism claim that they do not consider themselves any better or worse
than an unbaptised baby they do. If you have God in your heart you are better
than the person who has not. The doctrine of baptism they have is the stuff from
which racism is made.
Religious fanaticism is when a religion fails to live and
believe in such a way that no harm is done if the religion turns out to be
untrue. This is fanaticism. It is no better than the spirit that leads the
Catholic Church to inflict the fear of a priest not coming in time on a dying
person.
Most so-called Christians have no problem contravening
the rules of the Church on marriage so it is hard to see how they put so much
emphasis on getting babies baptised.
The Church teaches that baptism is absolutely necessary
for salvation but that in extreme cases people get the grace of baptism in the
baptism of blood and baptism of desire which are not technically baptisms. They
distinguish between the grace of baptism and the form of the sacrament. In other
words, desire for the sacrament gives you its effects when you are dying
unbaptised.
The scenario when somebody runs to a baby with water to
baptise it but it dies first leaving it too late does not fit the rules for
baptism of desire. The baby didn’t desire the baptism but somebody else did but
baptism of desire requires that the candidate of baptism desire the baptism. The
baby is in original sin and so doesn’t like God and so nobody can assume that
the baby has a desire to be with God. Some liberal clergy think that if a baby
dies before its baptism because it was intended for it to be baptised the baby
will be saved and given the powers of baptism without the water. The baby then
is saved by baptism indirectly. But this can be said of any baby. Imagine a baby
dies without baptism at the North Pole and there are no Christians within ten
thousand miles what then? The Christians would baptise the baby if they could so
the baby then will be treated by God as baptised though it is not for it is
nobody’s fault the baby wasn’t baptised. This kindly and compassionate idea
however is destroyed by the fact that they think Jesus said water baptism is
necessary for salvation. If nobody was baptising anybody. Babies would still be
saved so how could it be true to say that water baptism saves? It denies the
urgency and importance of water baptism.
A big objection to the view that any baby baptised or not
will be saved by the effects that baptism brings if it dies is that it makes the
baby’s death more important than the state of original sin, the state of being
separate from God.
What is worse for the baby in the Christian view? Dying or having original sin? It is having original sin for that is the state of being born estranged from God and not liking him – it might not understand that it doesn’t like God but that makes no difference. If God saves a baby just because it dies then why doesn’t he save it just because he wants it to like him and to forgive its original sin? Furthermore, death, even in babies, is a punishment for original sin according to the apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans in the book God wrote, the Bible. A God then who saves a child because of death and not because the child is in a state of sin without baptism which is a worse state is perfectly capable of rejecting a child that died in original sin. And indeed he should for death is not the worst state and is in fact what the child deserves.
Being created in a state of incompatibility with God or
in enmity with God is worse than choosing to reject God in a sense. There
is something more degrading in being born bad than in becoming bad. So the
doctrine of original sin is a grave insult to the baby.
The Church says that original sin is the state of being hostile to God from the first moment of your existence and this hostility is inherited from Adam who rebelled against God. So then the baby that is baptised doesn’t want to be baptised or healed of this sin for it doesn’t like God. Baptism is clearly opposed to the choice of the baby, the choice it would make if it could, and religious freedom. What about older people who get baptised? God’s grace can work on their minds and hearts to make them want deliverance from their antagonism towards God in baptism. This cannot happen with a baby. It would make more sense if the Church held that babies should not be baptised and that if they die they will grow up and have to make the same choice between Heaven and Hell as the rest of us.
The Church tells people to live in prayerful hope that unbaptised babies may go into Heaven after all. But it is careful to say that this does not suggest the baby will get to Heaven. It is silly to mistake the hope of an unbaptised baby's salvation as amounting to saying there is no Limbo.
A CASE FOR SAYING LIMBO FORBIDS INFANT BAPTISM!
The notion of original sin and needing to get rid of it is what the practice of infant baptism is based on. It is supposedly a remedy.
All agree that the baby will grow up to reject God at least some of the time. So the relationship with God has to be fixed by repentance and forgiveness.
A person who lives up to their conscience well in life but who is not baptised will go to Limbo. That person will still go to Hell if she or he dies unrepentant and unforgiven. But what about the sins? The idea is that without priests to forgive them or clear knowledge of God, God will still be able to get forgiveness to them.
Being unbaptised means sin is not as big of an issue as it is for the baptised.
For the unbaptised, it is more understandable for they are not protected by baptism.
The unbaptised is not trying to reject God who is put into the soul by baptism, by sin. So it will be rare for such a person to commit a mortal sin assuming the Catholic doctrine that some sins are mortal and lead you to Hell is true.
So in a world where most baptised sin seriously and fall away their sin will lead them to Hell more than a corresponding sin by an unbaptised would do, it is better NOT to baptise your baby so that she or he will have happiness in Limbo than to increase the risk of eternal damnation.
Plus if a baby is estranged from God surely it needs to
give consent to going to Heaven, Hell or Paradise in Limbo?