So do catholics now think that all of those unbaptised babies floating around in limbo have been relocated into heaven? or do they think that this infallible doctrine of limbo was in fact wrong all along and the German Shepherd Ratzinger has corrected it? Those kooky katholics!

Well these are the same people who think a cracker and grape juice turns into the literal flesh and blood of a dead jew. Then they eat and drink it.

“So do catholics now think that all of those unbaptised babies floating around in limbo have been relocated into heaven?”

I heard you can fit ten million fairies on the tip of a needle so there has got to be plenty of room for floating baby souls in heaven – doesn’t there?

The thing that I appreciate about Catholics is that mnay of them just go through the motions. It’s somewhat similar to the situation with jews. Many jews are atheists just a many Catholics are as well. Instead of answering the belief question when asked they effectively take the fifth by stating that they are a catholic.

Now evangelicals? A whole nutter story. Inbred Phreeks, the lot.

The thing that I appreciate about Catholics is that many of them just go through the motions. It’s somewhat similar to the situation with jews. Many jews are atheists just a many Catholics are as well. Instead of answering the belief question when asked they effectively take the fifth by stating that they are a catholic.

I totally agree. I’d also add that there’s a sort of fatalism to Catholics who go through the motions so as not to upset the apple cart. They wither under the stern looks of condemnation from dear old Grandma who says her rosary every day and goes to church everyday since losing her husband to cancer thirty years ago. And of course there’s the subtle control of the neighborhood priest who has baptized three generations of their family who have all lived in the same triple-decker at one point or another. It’s mostly guilt and social/family pressures that keep so many Catholics from abandoning the trappings of their religion, when in fact they don’t really believe in it anymore.

However, it also seems like a large number of out ‘n’ proud atheists are former Catholics (like myself). Or at least a larger number than you’d expect as a proportion of the religious population as a whole. Does anyone else see this sort of thing too, or am I just seeing things through the glasses of a former Catholic? There also seem to be a lot of Jewish atheists as well, but I think Jews become atheists as a result of an open an liberal attitude toward religion in mainstream Judaism, whereas Catholics become atheists as a reaction against a rather strict and old-fashioned (and non-sensical) dogma.

But then how to explain the growth of evangelical fervor? Sigh… I don’t know.

Such past speculation specifically about limbo, however, would not warrant the charism of infallibility.

The pope just saying something in any circumstance – including this one – doesn’t make it infallible. From what I understand, a committee of the Vatican, at the pope’s behest, would be releasing the document on limbo (which hasn’t been released yet, though anticipated for about a year). For a teaching to be infallible, certain conditions are necessary: the pope has to be addressing all the faithful, it has to be a real theological quetion he is addressing at the time, he has expressly state the use of the chrism of infallibility, and the question he is addressing has to fall into the realm of having to do with faith or morals. The present to-do about limbo wouldn’t take on this status of infallibility, either.

Belief is shrinking world wide. There is a lot of reason to be optimistic about the immediated future.

“Call me an “out n proud” Catholic…there many more of us than you think and given our current secular culture, our numbers are growing.”

ICHY, That’s some delusion you are sporting there.

“and given our current secular culture, our numbers are growing.”

Putting aside the bad grammar (Dis is da komentz secshun of’a blogg) that phrase just makes no sense. What is ICHY trying to say and why can’t ICHY say it?