OT: Pope another thorny issue

Still not getting your feelings on this:

For two thousand years Catholic parents have had to suffer the living purgatory that their dead unbaptised babies will not enter heaven but instead spend eternity in limbo.

I can only imagine how terrible the loss of an infant must be, but to a believer, the knowledge that their innocent dead child will be denied access to paradise must be hell itself.

And yet now, in 2006, the idea of limbo has been abolished with the swish of a papal pen.

So where did the babies go? Did they go to limbo or straight to paradise? In which case the catholic church has been wrong for 2000 years. What else is it wrong about?

Will the babies be able to move on now? How will they get from limbo to paradise?

How does the church bear the knowledge that it has caused immeasurable and needless suffering to millions upon millions of parents?

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Please don't take this as an attack on Catholics per se. They happen to be among my favourite people. I have many Irish friends who are dear to my heart, among the warmest, funniest people you could hope to meet. The protestants on the other hand, while I do know some that I like, are generally a fairly dour bunch with no sense of humour at all.

And I had a corking Irish girlfriend once who went to a strict Catholic school in Stretford. By the time I knew her she was still loosely in touch with three girls from her school, two were prostitutes and the third had had more ends than she could remember.

I think it's these paradoxes that make it such an interesting topic for debate.

Please convert me pope, I'd love to believe all the stuff you do.

A. Dieu.