The release last month of a lengthy and highly detailed document on Limbo ("The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized," Origins, April 26, pp. 725-746), issued by the Vatican's International Theological Commission (ITC) with the approval of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Pope Benedict XVI, caused at least a temporary stir in the print media and elicited a few angry e-mails from those reacting to comments, including one of my own, made subsequently to the press.

I have been predicting for a number of years that, once Catholics on the traditionalist end of the religious spectrum discovered that Limbo was no longer on the Church's radar screen, they would either experience feelings of profound uneasiness, if not even panic, or simply deny that the Church had, in effect, changed its teaching on the matter.

Limbo, as the ITC document reminds us, was a creation of theologians during the Middle Ages in a delayed reaction to the longstanding and highly influential teaching of St. Augustine, formulated in the 4th century.

Augustine had argued that baptism was an absolutely necessary condition for salvation. Each individual upon death was consigned either to heaven or to hell. There was no in-between. Infants who died without baptism, and therefore with Original Sin still on their soul, were condemned to hell.

In acknowledgment of the fact that these infants had committed no personal sins, Augustine conceded that their punishment in hell would be of the mildest sort, but punishment there would be.

Later theologians tried to mitigate Augustine's harsh teaching by distinguishing between punishment and the loss of the beatific vision (seeing God face-to-face). This led eventually to the belief that infants who die without baptism enjoy eternal natural happiness, on the "border" of hell (which is what the word limbo means), but not actually in it.

The ITC document acknowledges that this more benign belief in Limbo held sway in the Catholic Church until the middle of the 20th century. But with changes in the world and its many cultures, as well as changes in the pastoral situation of the Church itself, it became clear to modern theologians, parish priests, and counselors that Limbo did not offer a satisfactory, much less a comforting, solution to the fate of infants who die without baptism. Indeed, the faithful themselves, especially bereaved parents, no longer accepted it as such.

The document emphasizes again and again that there are two theological principles that are in tension in this matter: God's desire that everyone be saved (otherwise known as God's universal salvific will) and the traditional teaching that baptism is necessary for salvation and the removal of Original Sin.

The document acknowledges that there are exceptions to the necessity of sacramental baptisms but without explaining how those exceptions actually work. They are baptism of blood (martyrdom) and baptism of desire (in the case of someone beyond the age of reason who at least implicitly desires to do the will of God, but without knowing God's will regarding Jesus Christ).

In neither instance is a real baptism involved. Theologians call them "analogous" baptisms. In other words, they are "like" baptism, but not really so.

The ITC document also points out that there are two other theological values in conflict: our solidarity with Christ and our solidarity with Adam. The ITC argues that we have put too much emphasis on the latter and too little on the former. If we were to reverse those priorities, we would then have "reason to hope" in the salvation of infants who die without baptism, just as The Catechism of the Catholic Church has said.

But nowhere in its carefully written document does the ITC offer a possible explanation of how this could happen, apart from some special act of divine mercy, which is no explanation at all.

In the end, the elimination of Limbo raises questions not only about the necessity of baptism, but more fundamentally about the nature of Original Sin.

What if we are all born permeated with the presence of God, which is grace, and which is ours to lose only later in life by sin? Why is such "good news" so disturbing for some? Why does it make them angry toward anyone who even suggests the possibility? Why is our solidarity with Adam in sin a more important value for such Christians than our solidarity with Christ in redemption?

As the ITC notes, the Greek Fathers had no idea of inherited sin or guilt, so central to the West's concept of Original Sin. Yet the Greeks were no less Catholic than we.

Something surely to think about

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.