Gilman About Town

I’ll See You in Heaven

By Duncan Gilman, 4-24-07

I’d like to inform you of my change of address. Well, a future change of address.  I’ll definitely be moving, but I don’t know when, and I don’t know where. 

As someone who was not baptized but still chose to live an honest and upstanding life, I was ready for my place in limbo when I died. I had my neighborhood picked out (Pearly Gates Adjacent), I found a decent drycleaner (you can never be too careful with robes), and I put an early down payment on my special order Prius, which won’t be ready until then anyway. I thought I was prepared. Apparently, the Vatican had other ideas.

Last week, a special conference held by the Roman Catholic Church’s International Theological Commission resulted in a 41-page report deeming limbo unnecessary. The middle ground between heaven and hell, paved by St. Thomas Aquinas and commercially developed by Dante, provided a place for unbaptized babies. Back in the fifth century, St. Augustine deduced that if sin produced babies, and baptism erased sin, then unbaptized babies must therefore end up in hell. Harsh. 

Over the next several hundred years, some Catholics began to question the severity of this reasoning, and thus limbo was born and became a hangout for clean, but unbaptized souls to enjoy eternal happiness minus communion with God. This is where I assumed I’d wind up, forever basking in the company of people like Moses, King Saul, and Mort Sahl. Actually, Mort Sahl is still alive, but you get the idea. 

You would think that such a forward thinking decision like the elimination of limbo would clear things up and provide much needed answers to ancient questions.  In fact, things are more vague than ever. Limbo was never really a part of official Catholic doctrine to begin with; it was just a widely accepted belief to ease our minds. Limbo was the 800-year-old religious equivalent to recycling bins: We hope what we put in there will go someplace good, but how can we know for sure? Now we don’t even know if those recycling bins themselves exist. 

I used to have my afterlife all planned out. Now that limbo is no longer an option, my fate is, well, in limbo. Of course my change of address form reflects my hopeful destination. Anyone know where I can find a notary open at this hour? 

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