More on Limbo

a) The International Theological Commission has no magisterial status so it doesn’t matter what it says. (Its creation along with the new style Pontifical Biblical Commission was accordingly a bad idea).

b) It appears to be the unanimous opinion of the fathers and doctors of the Church that Limbo is the best possible state an un-baptised infant might reach after death. The unanimous opinion of the Fathers is binding in faith and morals.

c) Cajetan thought that the children of Catholic parents who died before baptism might be cleansed of original sin by a vicarious baptism of desire.

d) Aborted children might receive baptism of blood by analogy with the Holy Innocents if the anti-Christian aims of the legislators and activists who sought the legalisation of this crime constitute a strong enough parallel to Herod’s command to massacre the innocents of Bethlehem.

e) The last two points (c) and (d) are pretty uncertain.

f) To go beyond this and say that all infants dying before baptism are cleansed of original sin (at the moment of death?) is to abandon the doctrine of original sin to intents and purposes.