Officially, the Church never recognized the notion of Limbo as a separate 'place' from Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, although they never flat-out denied its existence until 2007. Hence Limbo was invented and everyone was happy, except the dead babies who were too busy participating in dead baby jokes to care. Relinquish all power by saying God treats all religions equally (and we can't have that now, can we?).So basically, the Church was faced with two choices: people living in countries with no Catholic priests) would also get to go to heaven, and that would render the Catholic Church obsolete. Allowing unbaptised babies entry to Heaven would mean that anyone with a good reason for not being baptised (e.g. Unbaptised babies could not go to Heaven without the doctrine of original sin being seriously undermined.

If hell is an eternal prison of torture, then Limbo was similar but with natural happiness instead of torture. Problems with Limbo īabies had been saved from hell, but Limbo seemed a little unfair. Bereaved parents perhaps drew some comfort from the knowledge that their babies were happy in Limbo for eternity. Limbo gained wide acceptance, although it was never formally accepted as doctrine. This line of thinking remained popular until medieval scholars revived the heretical idea of Limbo. Augustine, nice guy that he was, believed that babies were indeed going to be tortured for all eternity for the heinous crime of being born. Since we are all born with original sin - baptism being the only way to remove it - babies who die prior to being baptised would seem destined to burn in Hell. The doctrine of original sin left Catholics in an awkward situation.

Limbo hell