Ben Wyatt

Hot off the presses ladies and gents, Pope Benedict has confirmed that heaven and hell are in fact really really real. Apparently, so is forgiveness of sins:

The Pope, who as cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of Catholic doctrine, noted that "forgiveness of sins" for those who repented was a cornerstone of Christian belief.

He recalled that Jesus had forgiven the "woman taken in adultery" and prevented her from being stoned to death, observing: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

God had given men and women free will to choose whether "spontaneously to accept salvation...the Christian faith is not imposed on anyone, it is a gift, an offer to mankind".

The fact that a secular source felt the need to report this sets up a few possibilities:
1. This is news because their position has changed.
2. This is news because their position is so obscure to the average believer that it seems like news.
3. Slow news day.

What was news to me was the following:

In October, the Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a "halfway house" between heaven and hell, was "only a theological hypothesis" and not a "definitive truth of the faith".

Such audacious conclusions were probably reached when, with the aid of a Bible, scholars found multiple references to a real heaven and a real hell, a plethora of references to and examples of forgiveness of sins, and absolutely no references to 'limbo.' Gutenberg strikes again!!