In the fight for the world’s population, the CEOs (heads/pontiffs) of major religions need to listen to the market in order to win the greatest number of customers (practitioners/believers/converts). It appears that the Catholic Church understands the business quite well –

In the 5th century, St. Augustine declared that all unbaptized babies went to hell upon death. By the Middle Ages, the idea was softened to suggest a less severe fate, limbo.

In his Divine Comedy, Dante characterized limbo as the first circle of hell and populated it with the great thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as leading Islamic philosophers.

The document published Friday said the question of limbo had become a “matter of pastoral urgency” because of the growing number of babies who do not receive the baptismal rite. Especially in Africa and other parts of the world where Catholicism is growing but has competition from other faiths such as Islam, high infant mortality rates mean many families live with a church teaching them that their babies could not go to heaven.

Father Thomas Weinandy, executive director for doctrine at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the document “addresses the issue from a whole new perspective — if we are now hoping these children get to heaven, there is no longer any point in worrying about limbo.”

With this step, Catholicism has removed the disadvantage they were facing. I can’t wait to see how the competitors respond as they try to regain an advantage 🙂

_{Hat tip: Boing Boing}