Dear Father,
My Mother has lived in or near Chariton all of her life. She keeps asking me if I would ask you a question about our cemetery for her. She remembers as a Catholic youth in Chariton that babies who were not baptized and passed away were not allowed to be buried in the formal part of our cemetery, but were placed in the southwest corner of the cemetery and that as Catholics we believed that those babies did not go to heaven. Have you heard of this?
Thank you,
Sheri
Sheri,
The traditional understanding of the Church is that baptism is necessary for salvation and salvation is what leads to entrance into heaven. Inevitably, the question came about in regard to what happens to those babies who die without baptism. Unbaptized infants pose a different problem than unbaptized adults. Unbaptized adults would presumably have had the opportunity to accept baptism, at least where Christianity was present, and are also responsible for their own sins. Unbaptized children on the other hand, though stained with original sin from the fall of mankind, did nothing wrong. While they were not baptized and therefore could not go to heaven they had also done no wrong on their own and so it would seem unjust that they would be condemned to hell. In response to this issue theologians came up with the concept of limbo as a place where these infants would go. The concept of limbo was never an official teaching of the Church but was, nevertheless, widely accepted. Limbo is not to be confused with purgatory, which the Church does teach as rooted in scripture, as a place where those persons who are not condemned to hell go to be purified of their sins before entering into heaven.
As regards the arrangement in the cemetery, my understanding is that the Catholic tradition was to have consecrated ground in which baptized persons could be buried. Unbaptized adults or those Catholics who died in a state of public mortal sin could not be buried in consecrated ground. Because unbaptized infants were in a special category they were most likely allowed to be buried in a Catholic cemetery but still set apart much as they were in the afterlife.
The Church's understanding as regards to unbaptized persons has moderated somewhat. The Church still believes that baptism is the normal way to salvation. If one knows the truth about Jesus Christ and has the opportunity they are bound, therefore, to accept it by their baptism. However, the Church also recognizes that special situations exist such as those who have never heard of Christ yet strive to live a good life and those who desire baptism but are unable to receive it for some reason. We call this baptism by desire. In the case of unbaptized infants the Church says that while we can't truly know their fate we trust in the mercy of a loving God to look after those little ones who through no fault of their own died before they had a chance to be baptized. Therefore, it would not now be appropriate to bury them in a special part of the cemetery. The Church, though never officially endorsing limbo as a teaching of the faith, has recently come out and denied it existence.
Fr. Pisut
