This idea owes it's genesis (partly) to another discussion on the thread. It's a short story, almost completely dialogue driven, about the last angel out when they close up Limbo. To those of you who aren't up on your Catholicism, Limbo was the metaphysical place where unbabtised babies went waiting for final judgement when they could go to heaven. It's never mentioned in the bible and its existence was never confirmed by the pope. In 2007 a council at the Vatican decided that the concept of Limbo was faulty and that it didn't exist. The dialogue of the angels in charge of shutting Limbo down will have to touch at some point on where the babies souls have gone? So where have they gone? ....and... GO!
Hi, Didn't Pier's Anthony cover this in one of his books series - the Immortals Incarnate or something. The babies can neither go to heaven nor hell so they end up being raised to work as functionaries in the various beauracracies of the incarnates - Death, Satan etc, and if they do a good job ascend! Cheers, Greg.
The angels may have closed up Limbo, but the babies didn't care. They stayed and reopened it as Club Limbo, and it's a far more happenin' joint than Heaven is. It's the place to be seen, and the angels all want to get in, but they're turned away at the door because they're not card-carrying babies. God's trying to remodel Heaven so it's more attractive, but Club Limbo keeps eating into His market share.
At the risk of sounding utterly boring and uncreative, I'd say they went to heaven. God is just and loving, and thus I believe He'd save any babies - unborn and born - because they were never given the choice to believe. Besides, Jesus cried out famously, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Now, going onto something more creative as opposed to actual beliefs - for the unborn babies, I'd say the soul never got there because the physical body was still being prepared. The souls would be something like an ageless spirit with a bundle of dreams and desires and cares waiting to be housed. For the babies who have been born and then died, I'd say the souls are trapped within their bond to the physical body, because they have not been able to live out and complete their longings and growth - so the cares and desires and dreams remain but it is trapped, like one in a coma who can think and feel and hear but can do nothing. Some grow sick, contaminated by the rotting flesh and their own frustration, and those leak death into the soil - which is why plants and humans and animals die. This would make for an interesting and slightly terrifying premise for a paranormal book actually.
You are talking about babies that die before baptism, right? ...so, if you're going for morbid, why not ask yourself: what happened to souls of aborted fetuses? - do they form their own group, blend with the others, or is their status in eternal debate (which could lead into a nice parallel with contemporary abortion debate - fetuses are neither recognized as legal persons on earth, nor as human souls in afterlife - leading into a ful-scale civil war between fetus-souls and baby-souls that can only be resolved by Divine intervention - or a Constitution amendment!) @Mckk just retroactively read your post - sorry, we were on the same track there! Makes you think about another group which might get upset for closing up Limbo - what about the souls of prematurely born who didn't have access to incubators? They were not yet fully formed, but they only died because of lack of medical equipment! They could've been baptised - but then, did they have a soul to start with? Oh, one can even imagine a neverending argument between aborted fetuses and prematurely born: Ab.Fet: "What do you mean I was not formed, I had a heartbeat!" Prem.Born: "Yeah, well I could almost breath when I got out!" F: "Well I show signs of deliberate muscular tension and brain activity!" P:"Well at least I was WANTED!"
My theology teacher told me that they go straight up to heaven along with aborted fetuses, so I'll believe that. In fact, I believe that they become angels. It makes sense.
Technically Limbo would have been for aborted and premy babies as well. So I imagine it is sometimes a very depressing place.
