11 July 2007

Limbo, Baptism, Catholicism and Cake





Mini Peaves will no longer be in limbo if the world were to end as of Sunday at about 11:21 AM. Before I get to how awesome she was, let me tell you guys a little about limbo, baptism and Catholicism. I was gonna put a link on here about limbo, but I will just cut and paste the small section written about it on Wiki.

The Limbo of Infants refers to a hypothetical permanent status of the unbaptized who die in infancy, too young to have committed personal sins, but not having been freed from original sin. Since baptism is understood to be necessary for the salvation of those to whom it can be administered, theologians debated, at least from the time of Augustine of Hippo, the fate of unbaptized innocents, and the theory of the Limbo of Infants is one of the hypotheses that have been formulated as a proposed solution. Some who hold this theory regard the Limbo of Infants as a state of maximum natural happiness, others as one of "mildest punishment" consisting at least of privation of the beatific vision and of any hope of obtaining it. This theory, in any of its forms, has never been dogmatically defined by the Church, and recent Catholic theological speculation stresses more the hope that these infants may attain heaven instead of the supposed state of Limbo, while the directly opposed theological opinion also exists, namely that there is no afterlife state intermediate between salvation and damnation, and that all the unbaptized are damned.

The Catholic Church "took this back" just recently... and stated that unbaptized babies or infants actually do go to heaven now. I didn't believe in it to begin with. I wasn't staying up at night thinking Mini Peaves was going to be in limbo if a metoer hit earth and our souls were going to our prospective unearthly stations. You could say I didn't believe it.



Then why do it? my cynical, atheistic and non-Catholic friends ask me. Well, number one... Baptism into the Catholic Church is important to me because no matter how heathenistic I am, I still have faith and would love to give the chance for MP to develop a faith of her own. Second of all, we are raising her Catholic because I think the reverence of a Catholic towards the church teaches lessons in itself. If a child or person has a respect for something and starts out respecting something, it will be easier for her to fit in and accomplish more, especially because I am expecting her personality to be no less fiery than a dragon's mouth as she gets older.

As I go off tangent here for a minute... the Old Man and I are still reeling about how great MP was during the whole thing this past Sunday. At the baptsim itself, we put her in her Baptismal gown (which was hand made in the Philippines for her- from Auntie Nora!) and she was sweating like a wet loaf in our arms. Then, in front of the whole mass, we had to take off her dress with just her nappy on. Monsignor Sheehan picked her up and dipped her entire body in the water (but not her head) three times. Be it, the water was luke-warm, but she didn't cry! My little girl didn't cry! In fact, she didn't cry the entire time!! Even at the reception, with a hundred people there, she didn't cry!
We went home after that long and tiring day to open presents and Mp looked at me when we got in the door, bottom lip extended and cried in her Papa's arms for a good two minutes. She had held it in the whole time, and was a trooper.

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