Madam, - I was sorry and saddened to read Anthony Redmond's letter (Nov 2nd) about the suffering experienced by his mother over the loss of her children in infancy coupled with the belief in Limbo.
It is not my intention to add to that suffering in any way but hope that this letter may be of some help; if not to Mr Redmond then perhaps to someone else.
I would like to state with all due care and sensitivity that Limbo does not exist and never did.
It was a theological invention by St Augustine who could not figure out what happened to the souls of unbaptised babies.
This view was never promulgated as official church teaching nor never will be as it is completely baseless.
Regrettably, however, the idea took root in the church and was taught in the catechism.
The church's teaching on baptism is as follows.
A person can be baptised in one of three ways, by water, by blood or by desire.
To give an example. If a person did not believe in God but laid down his life for his comrades, as in war, this would be called baptism by blood based on Christ's words, "Greater love hath no man than he who lays down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
The child who dies before sacramental baptism is baptised by desire, namely the parents' desire to have the child baptised as well as the grandparents' desire.
Some 10 years ago I worked as chaplain at a maternity hospital in Western Australia. It was my sad experience to encounter on a virtual daily basis the devastation experienced by women and their husbands/partners who suffered loss through miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal deaths.
The obstetricians informed me that one in five pregnancies ended in loss, thus affecting a huge section of the population.
I decided to offer Mass in our local parish and called it a "Mass for babies who have died before Baptism" and advertised it in the local press.
Everyone was invited - not just Catholics - to attend.
The response was a congregation four times the normal size for our Saturday vigil Mass.
I emphasised during the homily that these children were with the Lord in heaven.
Many parents came to me afterwards to say they found the Mass very moving.
We even had religious sisters in their 70s lighting candles for siblings who had died in infancy. I did not know whether to be happy or sad about this.
Happy that they had received some kind of healing.
But sad that they should have suffered thus in the first place.
I hope that each person at the Mass would have found some kind of healing for their devastating loss and be reassured that their child was now safe in God's loving presence. - Yours, etc,
Fr STEPHEN FOSTER, O.S.Cam,
Order of Saint Camillus,
St Vincent Street North,
Dublin 7.