UNBAPTISED BABIES GO TO HELL?

I was raised a Catholic in the 1960s' - grade school and highschool - nuns - get the picture. One of the items we were taught was that if you are not baptized and you die, you go straight to hell. Even little innocent babies if they die on their way to get baptized - hell! No ands', ifs' or buts' - that was the law. It never made any sense to me even then and I concluded that if God is such a stickler for rules than I don't really want him as my God. Other Catholic schools taught that the babies went to Purgatory instead; a place of limbo, in between heaven and hell but still bad.

My parents threatened to kidnap my kids and get them baptized for this very reason; they fervently believed that my kids were doomed to eternal damnation in hell if they somehow did not take matters into their hands and have them baptized. I told my parents that if baptism meant so much to them then go ahead and baptize them - I had nothing against it.

Last week the Vatican said it is revisiting the whole issue. It appears John Paul II had problems with it and set up a panel to address the issue. The panel was headed by then Cardinal Ratzinger, today's Pope Benedict.

The idea of Purgatory or Limbo was a Middle Ages (read dark ages) invention - 700 years worth of Purgatory.

The Vatican wants to plainly banish the very idea of Purgatory / Limbo. Pope Paul II in his 1992 Catechism said that babies that die without baptism go into God's hands. That is a little bit better.

My problem with all this is how in the hell did they even come up with the idea of Purgatory - did God tell them or did they get drunk one night and dreamed this up like many of the Church rules. I think it had more to do with selling "indulgences" that got your loved ones (babies included) out of Purgatory - a great money making idea that went on for centuries.

What bothers me is that they scared the hell out of people to this very day with their "un-baptized babies go to hell" crap. Catholics really believe what their Church says and I'm saying you cannot believe those morons cause they really don't know what they are talking about - NO ONE DOES when it comes to God.

I can rant all I want to but loyal Catholics will accept everything the Church throws at them just like meek little sheep - doesn't anybody have a brain or at least some independent thought?

Janusz