Roman Catholicism

Thank you absent. Yes, it might have been my sense of the terrible injustice which the nun said was being done to my beloved aunt (burning in agony in purgatory, after a lifetime of nursing service) that first made a crack in my belief.

It is a disgusting idea and kept me awake and, then when I did get to sleep, gave me nightmares as a child. In my case, it was a gentle, beautiful older cousin's death that triggered my thoughts.

Limbo is another interesting one. Stillborn babies are supposed to go there I think. A kind of non-punitive version of purgatory. Strange the contortions theologians can get themselves into.
My DH was an undiagnosed twin, small hospital, southern ireland, run by nuns. The other baby was stillborn, as undiagnosed twins often were, whipped away and buried in an adult's coffin, location unknown.
"Just be glad you have one healthy boy mrs S" was all that was said.
MIL still remembers I am sure. She has a name for him. I watched Whale Rider with her once, in which the opening scene is the stillbirth of a son, and she was a bit weepy.

Limbo has been abolished now - apparently babies who die without being baptised are allowed a passage straight into heaven.

One wonders what happens to the babies consigned to limbo by an infallible pope's ruling before another infallible pope abolished it. Serious contortions indeed.

They just hung around 'outside of heaven' until the second coming and day of judgement. As they were not capable of having committed sin themselves, the church judged their souls to be blackened by 'original sin' - the sins of the fathers shall be visited on their children. What a delightful moral code!

I don't think there is much point in my continuing to waste my time here, but just a point of information.

And, I'm certainly not here to address ad infinitum anyone's problems about Catholism! even if I could. However:

The then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in the 1990s 'limbo was a mediaeval hypothesis, it was never a truth of faith.'

Mediaeval theologians sought to make sense of the world as they knew it then. In the same way scientists sought to make sense of the world as they found it. Remember the phlogiston theory or Einstein's static universe? Now, along with many other theories, proved to be incorrect.

It's very easy to set up a straw man and demolish it. But having a pop at what some poor nun said in 1948 or whenever, might be fun, but perpetuating a false view of catholic doctrine is unhelpful.

And that really is my last word on the subject!

I didn't find her remarks fun - I was heart-broken and terrified. I look forward to the day when the church admits that its attitude to women, homosexuality and sex are also founded in medieval misunderstandings of science.

whoa there far too deep for me!!

All I can say is that i gain comfort from the Catholic mass and our priest is a kind caring man and any help in this life is worth it!!

Allthe intricacies about purgatory and limbo do not really bother me, from what I remember in dim and distant past Limbo was where you went if dying with a sin? or was that purgatory gosh all too much for me!!!??

guess with a father Irish Catholic very strict is is inbred in me went to catholic schools also but my children tho baptised and brought up as catholics son was confirmed daughter always been alternative, and that is their choice!!

Brought up as a Scottish Presbyterian in Ayrshire, which is about as close as you get, geographically and culturally, to Northern Ireland, I was vehemently though unthinkingly anti-Catholic. Our minister preached against the Catholic Church, our History teacher had Orange views and he used to send the Rugby players out to harass the kids from the RC school at lunchtime. Hockey matches against the RC secondary school were pretty vicious. If I had come home with a Catholic boyfriend, my mother would have had a fit. A 'mixed marriage' at that time had nothing to do with race, everything to do with religion. When a Catholic family moved into our middle class road, curtains twitched, never mind that the father had a PhD and worked for the same company as my dad and many of our friends and neighbours. Thankfully I left home for University and met lots of RCs who, to my surprise, were just like me!

Celeb - Limbo was the place for unbaptised babies to go until the day of judgement. Purgatory was the place for everybody else, except Mary, who got a 'get out of jail' card and was assumed into heaven. If you want to know catholic theology, ask a recovered catholic! - or Google!
Nobody wants to take away your comfort, this is just an academic debate between people who enjoy this kind of thing!
It is not academic, of course, if you are homosexual, or a woman needing a divorce, contraception or abortion.

Greatnan thanks for that perspective. Never having been subjected to that level of what appears to be very scary hellfire and damnation rhetoric, I probably cannot start to comprehend the lasting effects it would have on ones psyche!
From what I think you are saying the power and control the RCC had over the lives of so many enabled the organisation to maintain its control and doctrinaire ways?

As a Methodist I was always presented (In the 1950s) with an image of a loving caring, forgiving and very accessible God to whom who you could talk directly.

I think the lack of a hierarchical structure is what pulled in the early adherents of the Methodist church in droves. It seems to have appealed particularly to the industrial and labouring classes at a time when the C of E was obsessed with the class system.

“The rich man in his castle. The poor man his gate. He makes them high and lowly and orders their estate.”

However I still like to hear Verdi’s spectacularly terrifying Dies Irae!

You are not alone, Nellie - some Gregorian plain song gives me goose bumps!
And,no, I don't think that means I am secretly still a catholic!
If I believed in the Christian god, I think I would be attracted to Quakerism.

I really do understand the magnetic attraction of religious belief and the way it fulfils the need for support and reassurance within the human condition. My much-loved mother-in-law died this morning and standing in her care home room seeing her dear little body it was hard to to come to terms with the knowledge that this is it. It is, indeed, what I believe, but how comforting it would have been to see her as reunited with my much-love father-in-law and envisage them still dancing together in heaven.

Yeah – okay, a Disney heaven not a Catholic one.

Oh absent I am so sorry to hear that. Your affection for her comes over loud and clear. And I know just what you mean - wouldn't it be nice.

absent and a warm (hug)

That is sad for you, absent. I am sure your affection was very comforting to her.
I think it is likely that many people cling on to their religious belief because they cannot face the thought of just going out like a battery that has stopped charging.

absent, and hugs. You still have your love for her and your memories.

How do you know they aren't, absent. It's a lovely idea and I'm very sorry for your sad loss

So am I - I found your post very touching, absent.

Because she is an atheist? Not everybody turned to god in the trenches!

Sympathies absent - it is hard to lose someone and to know that there is no more. There will be good memories I am sure.

Thank you for your kind thoughts. I have no worries about the state of not being when my time comes; it's the thoughts one has about the people one loves when their time has come. The loss is, of course, still raw, and it's almost instinctive to make up stories in one's head.

(((Hugs))) and absenta