Catholic Paper Goods

This image brings me such consolation. My friend @catholicpapergoods used photos of Sloane and my other children to create my two babies — saints in heaven.

But wait. What’s the Church say about this? The week after we lost Sloane was full of online discussions and questions lobbed at my philosopher husband.

It seems when I need hope and truth the most, the Church is silent. It’s complicated. From what I understand, my baby girl could be in heaven, purgatory, limbo, or the top level of hell feeling all possible earthly happiness. (These are the crowd-surfed answers.)

In seriousness, it’s a heavy concern for the dozens of baby loss mothers who’ve reached out to shower love on me. So, for now, here’s what my husband and I decided:

***Limbo is not an official doctrine of the Church. It is only an attempt to answer the problem of babies dying before baptism. It isn’t binding.

***Not giving a person any choice at all — basically creating a person only to have her immediately die and never have the chance to be received at as high a level as everybody else — doesn’t square with our understanding of God’s justice. 

***A child who dies before ever creating her character or living long enough to perform a series of actions that become who she is, and the choices she makes, cannot really be given the choice between heaven and hell upon death, because God would be maturing her soul and putting all of that information into her, so essentially it would be God’s choice, because God would be forming her, as opposed to her own actions, and making the choice for her.

***The Church has recognized God’s freedom to (*do anything He wants!!) pardon the sins of those lacking baptism. This does not diminish the necessity of baptism for those aware of it and capable of receiving.

***If souls in purgatory can hear us and pray for us, it seems likely an innocent baby could as well, wherever she is.

***It seems safe to both hope she is in heaven and pray to her while also praying *for* her.

This beautiful piece of art represents my HOPES. And, if you’d like one, reach out to Shari @catholicpapergoods. She’s lovely and is open for commissions on pieces like this one.