The Catholic notion of "limbo" - that benign place where unbaptized babies and those born before the time of Jesus were once thought to spend eternity - appears headed for the dustbin of theology.

Pope Benedict XVI is expected to announce tomorrow that the Catholic Church is disavowing the 1,500-year-old concept of limbo, and that it trusts that God does not exclude unbaptized babies from heaven.

Benedict - who decades ago voiced doubts about what he called the limbo "hypothesis" - will be following the recommendation of a 30-member Vatican commission of theologians.

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Catholic pro-life groups are condemning what they call a phony voter guide put out by a Catholic organization with ties to abortion advocates. They say the guide from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) incorrectly suggests that support for pro-abortion politicians can be justified.

Joseph Cella, the president of Fidelis, a national Catholic-based advocacy group, told LifeNews.com that CACG is headed by Alexia Kelley, a former advisor to the John Kerry presidential campaign.

Kerry, a pro-abortion Massachusetts senator, lost to pro-life President George W. Bush in the 2004 elections.

"Following the 2004 elections, pro-abortion politicians recognized their vulnerability with Catholic voters and have been searching for ways to shrewdly package a convincing arguments that would appeal to morally conscious voters," Cella says about the mindset behind the voter's guide.

The CACG booklet argues “we often must vote for candidates who hold the ‘wrong’ Catholic positions on some issues in order to maximize the good our vote achieves in other areas.�

But the nation's Catholic bishops disagree, Cella explains, saying they made it clear that candidates who are wrong on abortion but hold Catholic views on other political issues don't deserve the votes of faithful Catholics.

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China's Catholic church announced the opening of the country's largest seminary in Beijing on Thursday.

"Under the joint leadership of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Chinese Catholic Bishops' Conference, the National Seminary of the Catholic Church in China aims to train priests with a sound Catholic theology to commit themselves wholly to the Holy Catholic Church and dedicate themselves to their ministry," said Liu Bainian, vice president of the association.

The government has provided 73.71 million yuan (9.2 million U.S. dollars) to help with the construction of the seminary.

"The seminary is the heart of Chinese Catholic church, the top advisory body in theological affairs of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Chinese Catholic Bishops Conference, and the base for the construction of China's theological thought," said Liu.

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While most reports surrounding Pope Benedict XVI have recently concentrated on the dramas following his now infamous Regensburg speech, revolutionary changes to Rome’s Curia deserve much more attention than they have received.

Pope Benedict xvi faces quite a task to unite the fractious nations of the European Union into a cohesive resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. But he is well on course in his efforts to do so.

His strategy is twofold. First is simply to rally the leaders of these 25 disparate nations to turn their energies from squabbling with each other and direct them to make common cause against the spreading tide of Islam that threatens the very continuity of the EU. Second is to trim the fat of the Vatican bureaucracy to get it into battle format, gearing up for the crusade ahead.

It was thus most significant that, when the United Nations called for the EU to provide troops for an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon, following the Hezbollah/Israeli imbroglio earlier this year, that the papal newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, publicly aired concern at the slowness with which nations responded. The papal organ called for nations to rally with a heightened sense of the urgency of the moment to the UN call.

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The archbishop of Washington spoke to a packed Alumni House Thursday about the Catholic Church and its views on stem-cell research, war and Islam.

The Newman Catholic Student Center invited the Rev. Donald Wuerl, who is a former college religion professor, to speak as part of a coffee house discussion series they host regularly called Theology on Tap.

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In response to the pope's controversial remarks about Islam and as a gesture of solidarity with the Muslim population, members of a national Catholic peace movement plan to fast alongside Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan.

Throughout Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn to sunset as part of self-purification, worship and contemplation. This year, Ramadan starts today or Sunday, depending on the sighting of the crescent moon. (The Fiqh Council of North America, an association of 18 Muslim leaders who interpret a range of Islamic laws on this continent, set Ramadan's start at sunrise today.)

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