Papa said no Limbo

When I was younger, I learned two religions because
my father was a Protestant and my mother was a Catholic. I was baptized in the Catholic church because my mom's faith was more dominant that my dad's. When I got older, I attended my both parents' churches and learned both doctrine. The teaching about Limbo or Purgatory was one of the things I doubted in the Catholic church. It is not written in the Bible and even most of their doctrine. According to the priest, it is a place where unbaptized deceased children and Christians who commit light sins are purified.

When I was in high school, I decided to commit my self in the Protestant church and then move to different born-again movements. I was really lucky to be a part of the only true church in out times, The Church of God. February 09, 2001, I became a member of this church, the only church that teaches the divine and pure word of God.

Recently, I read a news from the internet about the Pope's declaration that Limbo was never existed. Well, what do we expect? After collecting lots of money from the family of the dead person who committed the venial sin and expecting that their deceased family would be lifted to heaven, I was just wondering if they would refund them. (ha ha ha)

I posted this news from Reuters and see it for yourself. The unexpected proclamation of Pope Benedict.

Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries
Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:21PM EDT

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went.

In a long-awaited document, the Church's International Theological Commission said limbo reflected an "unduly restrictive view of salvation".

The 41-page document was published on Friday by Origins, the documentary service of the U.S.-based Catholic News Service, which is part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Pope Benedict, himself a top theologian who before his election in 2005 expressed doubts about limbo, authorized the publication of the document, called "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised".

The verdict that limbo could now rest in peace had been expected for years. The document was seen as most likely the final word since limbo was never part of Church doctrine, even though it was taught to Catholics well into the 20th century.

"The conclusion of this study is that there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in revelation," it said.
"There are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible (to baptize them)."

The Church teaches that baptism removes original sin which stains all souls since the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.

The document stressed that its conclusions should not be interpreted as questioning original sin or "used to negate the necessity of baptism or delay the conferral of the sacrament".
Limbo, which comes from the Latin word meaning "border" or "edge", was considered by medieval theologians to be a state or place reserved for the unbaptized dead, including good people who lived before the coming of Christ.

"People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness, whether they are Christian or non-Christian," the document said.

It said the study was made all the more pressing because "the number of nonbaptised infants has grown considerably, and therefore the reflection on the possibility of salvation for these infants has become urgent".

The commission's conclusions had been widely expected.

In writings before his election as Pope in 2005, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made it clear he believed the concept of limbo should be abandoned because it was "only a theological hypothesis" and "never a defined truth of faith".

In the Divine Comedy, Dante placed virtuous pagans and great classical philosophers, including Plato and Socrates, in limbo. The Catholic Church's official catechism, issued in 1992 after decades of work, dropped the mention of limbo.

Bye bye Pluto, Sorry I didn't know...

I was surprised when I read article from my students book stating that 'Pluto was a part of the Solar System'. I had learned that Pluto was a part our Solar System since I was a child. I don't know why I got this information so late. I guess I was just so busy last year. I think not, I even asked some of my friends and they didn't also know about this info. Well, for the benefit of my dear readers, I copied this article from the net and posted here. Farewell to Pluto...

Pluto Is Demoted to ‘Dwarf Planet’
(The New York Times)
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: August 24, 2006

Pluto got its walking papers today.

Throw away the placemats. Grab a magic marker for the classroom charts. Take a pair of scissors to the solar system mobile.

After years of wrangling and a week of bitter debate, astronomers voted on a sweeping reclassification of the solar system. In what many of them described as a triumph of science over sentiment, Pluto was demoted to the status of a “dwarf planet.”
In the new solar system, there are eight planets, at least three dwarf planets and tens of thousands of so-called “smaller solar system bodies,” like comets and asteroids.
For now, the dwarf planets include, besides Pluto, Ceres, the largest asteroid, and an object known as UB 313, nicknamed Xena, that is larger than Pluto and, like it, orbits out beyond Neptune in a zone of icy debris known as the Kuiper Belt. But there are dozens more potential dwarf-planets known in that zone, planetary scientists say, and the number in that category could quickly swell.

In a nod to Pluto’s fans, the astronomers declared that Pluto to be the prototype for a new category of such “trans-Neptunian” objects but failed in a close vote to approve the name Plutonians for them.

“The new definition makes perfect sense in terms of the science we know,” said Alan Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, adding that it doesn’t go too far in cultural terms. “We have a duty to satisfy the whole world.”

The vote completed a stunning turnaround from only a week ago when the assembled astronomers had been presented with a proposal that would included 12 planets, including Pluto, Ceres, Xena and even Pluto’s moon Charon. Dr. Boss said today’s decision spoke to the integrity of the planet-defining process. “The officers were willing to change their resolution and find something that would stand up under the highest scientific scrutiny and be approved,” he said.

Jay Pasachoff, a Williams College astronomer who favored somehow keeping Pluto a planet, said, “The spirit of the meeting was of future discovery and activity in science rather than any respect for the past.”

Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, who as the discoverer of Xena, had the most to lose personally from Pluto’s and Xena’s downgrading, said he was relieved. “Through this whole crazy circus-like procedure, somehow the right answer was stumbled on,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. Science is self-correcting eventually, even when strong emotions are involved.”

It has long been clear that Pluto, discovered in 1930, stood apart from the previously discovered planets. Not only was it much smaller than them, only about 1,600 miles in diameter, smaller than the Moon, but its elongated orbit is tilted with respect to the other planets and it goes inside the orbit of Neptune part of its 248-year journey around the Sun.
Pluto makes a better match with the other ice balls that have since been discovered in the dark realms beyond Neptune, they have argued. In 2000, when the new Rose Center for Earth and Space opened at the American Museum of Natural History, Pluto was denoted in a display as a Kuiper Belt Object and not a planet.

Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union appointed a working group of astronomers to come up with a definition that would resolve this tension. The group, led by Iwan Williams of Queen Mary University in London, deadlocked. This year a new group with broader roots, led by Owen Gingerich of Harvard, took up the problem.
According to the new rules a planet meet three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The latter measure knocks out Pluto and Xena, which orbit among the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt, and Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt.
Dwarf planets only have to be round.

“I think this is something we can all get used to as we find more Pluto-like objects in outer solar system,” Dr. Pasachoff said.

The final voting came from about 400 to 500 of the 2,400 astronomers who were registered at the meeting of the International Astronomical in Prague. Many of the astronomers, Dr. Pasachoff explained, had already left, thinking there would be nothing but dry resolutions to decide in the union’s final assembly.

It was hardly the first time that astronomers have rethought a planet. The asteroid Ceres was hailed as the eight planet when it was first discovered in 1801 by Giovanni Piazzi floating in the space between Mars and Jupiter. It remained a “planet” for about half a century until the discovery of more and more things like it in the same part of space led astronomers to dub them asteroids.

In the aftermath, some astronomers pointed out that the new definition only applies to our own solar system and that there was so far no such thing as an extra-solar planet.
The decision was bound to have both a cultural and economic impact on the industry of astronomical artifacts and toys, publishing and education. The World Book Encyclopedia, for example, had been holding the presses for its new 2007 edition until Pluto’s status could be clarified.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, said children are flexible, when asked about the cultural impact of today’s redefinition. He said that he had not bothered to watch the International Astronomical Union’s vote in the Internet, as many astronomers did. “Counting planets is not an interesting exercise to me,” he said. “I’m happy however they choose to define it. It doesn’t really make any difference to me.”
Dr. Tyson said the continuing preoccupation with what the public and schoolchildren would think about this was a concern and a troubling precedent. “I don’t know any other science that says about its frontier, ‘I wonder what the public thinks,’ ” he said. “The frontier should move in whatever way it needs to move.”