“But, Sister, what if … ”

by David Benjamin

“… There’s a limbo moon above/ You will fall in limbo love…”

— Chubby Checker

MADISON, Wis. — According to a shocking news bulletin, there are deacons in Catholic churches from Michigan to Arizona—and God only knows where else—performing counterfeit baptisms. Over the years, this scandal has affected hundreds, perhaps thousands of unwitting laity who aren’t, after all, laity at all, and from whom the mortal stain of original sin has yet to be washed. 

How serious is this? Picture a dead GI, born in ’85 and blown to bits by an IED in Falluja twenty years later. He finds himself unexpectedly standing not before Saint Peter but at the gates of Hell, where Satan strips him naked, confiscates his rosary, rips off his scapular and shoves a fork in his ass, hustling him toward the lake of fire. And the kid says, “Wait! There must be some mistake. I was a good Catholic. I just went to Confession, I did my Penance, I went to Mass and took Holy Communion. I know the Apostles Creed!” To which Satan snickers, “You’re right, dude. There was a mistake, and it was a doozy!”

The Associated Press reports that these slovenly baptists screwed up a crucial word or two amongst the incantations and renunciations packed into the ritual, thus invalidating all those babes’ welcome into the Church, leaving them—without their parents’ knowledge—outside the fold, unredeemed by Jesus, ineligible for the sacraments and beyond the reach of absolution. 

Actually, when I read about this snafu, I wasn’t worried that all these incomplete Catholics had one-way tickets on the express handcar to Perdition. Instead, I drifted back in time to Catechism class. Among the rare topics that could turn this ordeal of call-and-response memorization into sheer whimsy was the mystery of Limbo.

The nuns of St. Mary’s School were spigots of knowledge about the afterlife. Sister Caritas had us up to our eyeballs in visions of Heaven and Hell. We knew Purgatory as a sort of Alcatraz, where venial sinners could bake, freeze and suffer for a century or so, to work off their penance before ferrying to Paradise. 

But Limbo? Sister Caritas offered scant suggestion of what goes on there. I imagined Limbo as this vast white cloud-platform covered with babies in their little onesies, each with a pink blue blanket, waving their pudgy little hands and kicking their feet. They were all a week or two old—forever. No moms or dads, grandmas or grandpas. Just an endless, squirming carpet of forsaken infants.

When I heard about the bungled baptisms, my first thought was Limbo. I figured this is where the Church will have to ship all those luckless shmucks whose christenings got queered by dyslexic deacons. That poor GI (mentioned above) with bad baptismal papers wouldn’t have to go to Hell. (God can’t be that mean, can he?) Instead, he’d land in Limbo. You can picture him sitting—lonely as a cloud—in that sea of babies, wishing he had something to read, or maybe a TV. 

This was the sort of tableau that came to mind, among kids in Catechism class, when a juicy topic like Limbo triggered more questions than Sister Caritas had answers. For instance, “Sister! Can grownups go to Limbo?”

To this, Sister might pause to ponder the possibility, affording the curious popinjay an opening to elaborate, speculate and complicate. “I mean, Sister, what if someone converted from being, like, a Lutheran (hisses and boos from other kids). And he’s on his way to church to be baptized, and pow! He’s hit by a truck. Would he have to go to Hell because he’s still a Lutheran? Or could he get into Limbo?”

“Yeah, Sister!” This from another pupil. “Can you be a Catholic without being Catholic? I mean, if you wanna be a Catholic? If you’re gonna be a Catholic??”

While Sister Caritas tries to work this out, more questions pummel her. 

“Yeah, Sister, what if you go to Mass every Sunday and every Holy Day and you go to Confession and you go to Communion and do the Stations of the Cross and pray on your rosary, but you’re not baptized ‘cause you live in Russia or China or Egypt or someplace like that? Does that mean you go to Hell?”

“Yeah, Sister, or Limbo?”

“Or Purgatory?”

“Yeah, Sister, and what if you’re converted by somebody whose not a priest or nun, and you don’t even know you’re s’posed to be baptized? What then?”

“Yeah, or what if you’re in, like, South America and you had a bad baptism. And you find out and you’re heading for church, for a do-over. But on the way, you’re kidnapped by Communists. They take you to the jungle and put you in a cage and they torture you for years and years and make you say you don’t believe in Jesus and the Virgin Mary anymore. But you do believe, really, in secret. And you say an Act of Contrition every night. But before you can go to Confession or get baptized, the Communists kill you! Are ya gonna go to Hell, Sister?”

“Or Limbo?”

“Or Purgatory?”

Picture, if you will, Sister Caritas’ dilemma. She’s tongue-tied by the lunacy of this question. She gnaws on her lower lip and fumbles with the giant rosary that hangs from her Dominican gunbelt. More questions fill the air.

“Yeah, sister, can a baptism wear off? Do you need, like, a booster shot?”

“Well … no … ”

“Sister, what if the water’s not holy? Like, if the priest forgot to bless it the night before? Jeez, Sister, who blesses the water? Does it come blessed already?”

“Yeah, Sister, do they have holy water, in like, Russia? Or India?”

“Sister, what about Antar’tica?”

Sister tries to fight back. “Stephen, please. There are no people in Antarctica.”

“Oh no, Sister, I saw on TV—”

“But, Sister, what if the priest forgot to wear his glasses and he pours the holy water and he misses? He doesn’t hit the baby’s head, and nobody notices ’cause they’re all praying and stuff? Is the baby baptized? Does he go to Limbo?”

“Or Purgatory?”

“Or Hell?”

“Sister! What if the godparents give the wrong answers?”

“Yeah! Or what if they’re not Catholic? Can Lutherans be godparents?”

Sister Caritas tries to get control. “Bonnie, yes, anyone—”

“But, Sister, what if the godparents are Catholic, but one of ’em has a mortal sin on his soul—like he ate a hamburger on Friday and didn’t go to Confession? Is he still an official godparent? Is the baby still baptized? Or will the baby have to go to Limbo?”

“Or Purgatory?”

“Or Hell?”

As I recall fondly, this sort of catechismal free-for-all turned a room full of normally languid, evasive kids into a circus of wild conjecture. The inquisition resembled a crossover episode of Dragnet and The Twilight Zone, with kids all taking turns as Sgt. Friday and Rod Serling. Each question—while making uncanny sense in the kid mind— explored uncharted depths of doctrinal absurdity.

“But, Sister! What if the priest drops the baby into the water and the baby drowns before they can get him out and finish the baptism? What happens then? Does the priest give up on the Baptism and do, like, the Last Rites?”

“Yeah, Sister, and does the baby go to Limbo?”

“Or Purgatory?”

“Or Hell?”