Why airports are the Protestant's Purgatory

Picture by these fine people.

April 20, 2007, was a good day to be a dead baby. This was when the Vatican’s International Theological Commission announced that unbaptised, dead babies won’t go to Limbo anymore. They added there were, in fact, “good reasons to hope” such babies would go straight to heaven.

For those unschooled by nuns, the "limbo of infants" dates back to 5AD, when hell had four rings, each a little less scorching than the other. The outer ring was presumably like a warm blanky, for this was where, according to 13^th century theologians, unbaptised, dead babies went to spent eternity: “deprived of the vision of God, but not suffering because they did not know what they were deprived of.”

Fast forward some 700 hundred years to 2004, when 30 learned men, led by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (nowadays Pope Benedict the 16^th) started to “systematically study” the idea of hell having cooler circles with the cosy one reserved for babies - as first described in Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”.

Thus hell lost a circle

They concluded that this was, indeed, a joke, as explained in a 41-page booklet entitled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized".

I kid you not: it took 30 wise men four years to decide this on 41 pages… but I digress. This is after all, a blog about transport in general and airports in specific.

So hell lost a circle in 2007, but heaven kept its island. Again, for those raised outside convents, our comedian Dante described Purgatory as a lofty island at the base of heaven, where we half-saintly-sinners can pay off our sins to finally line up for that harp and wings.

The survival of Purgatory is not the Vatican’s fault. For this, as for sooooo many others things, the Protestants are to blame. Them, and quantum physicists.

Those blerrie quantum physicists

See, Martin Luther King hammered his 95 thesis against the Wittenberg church door on Halloween day in 1517 to create Protestants, who may not believe in Purgatory. Ever. For Martin had studied his Bible, which told only of heaven and hell (and that hating Jews was a good thing).

Since then millions of Protestants, who knew they were neither sinful nor saintly enough to deserve either hell or heaven, have been secretly yearning for a halfway station between the two (and to get sweaty with that darkly handsome Jew).

Then in the late 50s, Heisenberg proved with certainty that everything is made of uncertainty. Quantum physics have since given us microwaves and satellites on this premise, using little wave-particle thingies best described as probabilities.

What’s more, quantum physicists are now saying that if enough people merely pondered any probability long enough, then it could, in all probability, become an empiric reality.

Sort of like, if ye have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to that mountain, “move”, and it would.

Turning both sort of dreams into reality

Which brings me back to all those Protestants quietly wishing for their own Purgatory (and a place full of sexy Jews). It took a long time -- from 1517 until 1940s -- before their private meditations started turning both dreams into reality. Because of quantum physics, however, the Protestants’ probabilities did not happen in a parallel universe. Both realised here, on earth.

Only, we now call the Protestants’ Purgatory “the international airport” -- a place where anyone can spend an uncomfortable time feeling penitent before queuing to get their wings. And we finally got a wonderful place to meet sexy Jews. We call it Israel.

Which just shows: be careful what you wish for. To see in which of Dante’s hellish circle you’d end up, give honest answers on www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to pray before flying!