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From The Sunday Times
October 15, 2006

Letters to the editor: IVF sends original sin back to limbo

IN recent years the horrific concept of limbo was quietly dropped by the clergy but still remained on the statutes of the Catholic church (Gospel of spaghetti monster, Sarah Carey, last week). According to Muslim beliefs, babies who die go straight to heaven, and this provides a more charitable course for distressed parents to the cruel alternative offered by the Catholic church.

Around Ireland local people can point out revered places, usually near a place of ancient pagan worship, where distraught parents buried their prematurely dead babies away from the forbidden consecrated graveyards. It would seem that while African parents seek a better way through the Muslim religion, Irish people returned to the pagan gods of the past for solace. Another solution was that the father would take his deceased baby, in the dead of night, to the forbidden ground of the church graveyard for secret internment.

All such injustices arise over the disagreement between God and Adam, whose infraction caused a heavy hand to be laid on Christians ever since. Hence the stigma of original sin is transmitted via the sex act to all succeeding Christian generations, necessitating baptismal purification after childbirth. It would seem, however, that such sanctions do not apply to childbirth brought about by assisted reproductive technologies, such as IVF, in which sex is dispensed with. Does this mean that such children do not have the burden of original sin?

Charlie Doherty
Dundrum, Dublin 16

ABSOLUTE VALUES: Limbo was a construct by theologians positing a “waiting room”. This is not an absolute truth, as Carey’s rather vituperative article maintains. She confuses theology with philosophy. There are absolute values, but limbo is not one of them. Rather it is an evolutionary stage in trying to understand our relationship with God.

Tom Baxter
Stratford-on-Avon

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