GODPARENTS CAN'T CHOOSE THE CHURCH FOR THE BABY

The Church says that the intention to be baptised validly is essential. Without it, the baptism is just an empty rite with no power. But what about babies that are baptised? The Church says they show a desire and intention to be baptised through their parents and godparents who desire and intend it for them. This is obvious nonsense.

As baptism is seen as setting up the Church and bringing a new member in and about giving you obligations to God and meeting obligations to him to let him put his spirit in you it is not about the individual. It is about the Catholic worldwide community and your local Catholic community because the child is baptised by and for and because of the faith of the parents. It is not about child’s faith if the child could hypothetically have one. As the parents might fail in faith, that is why you have to have godparents to take their place.

Most parents and godparents do not understand Catholicism well enough to be said to be making an informed decision to raise the child in that faith. Thus their consent at baptism is invalid. There is no such thing as a right to have your child baptised. But those who have the child baptised a Catholic have less right to get it done than somebody getting the child baptised a Protestant who will not impute the Catholic meaning to baptism. Catholicism is more complex and bizarre than Protestantism. God parents generally are asked to take vows of membership for a baby when they themselves don't know about religion to make a valid choice for themselves never mind for the baby.

A baby cannot belong to any religion no matter how many godparents she or he has that make the profession of faith in the Church or vows of commitment to the Church for her or him. To say otherwise is absurd. The religious leaders make these laws that they can because their chief goal in life is not to help others find the spirituality that is right for them but for others to agree with their beliefs. Parents have a duty to help their child find what works for her or him not to limit a child to some religion.

Because baby baptism involves the parents and godparents vowing to ensure that the baby will grow up a believing and committed Catholic, Canon Law demands that the parents and godparents be proper Catholics. Protestants are not allowed to be godparents. The parents and godparents themselves have to have been baptised. Many born-again Christians have never been baptised. There are many who consider themselves Christians as they wait for baptism. Despite the convictions and feelings they have, Catholicism considers these Protestants as being non-Christian. For the Catholic, only a validly baptised person can be a Christian. The Church does not believe that all baptisms are valid. So anybody whose baptism is suspect is ineligible to be a godparent. The Catholic Church is evidently trying to show the child an example of sectarianism and to show the child that it claims as a religion, the right to offend and insult people who believe differently from it.

Baptism takes away our innate hostility to God according to the teaching of the Church. If enrolling your baby in the gym cannot make it a true member of the gym but only a nominal or pretend one, surely trying to enrol him or her in the Church is far sillier if it is true that our nature is to live without God? It is really down to a refusal to accept anybody as a person, they have to be accepted as a Catholic.

If baptism were not an attempt to force religious membership on a child, the godparents would not be commissioned by the Church and the parents to choose membership for the child by proxy. What could happen is that the child would be baptised but the membership would be conditional on the child's response when he or she gets old enough. The rite will only work if the child accepts it later. For example, God should treat the child as baptised and a member of the Church if the child dies and so let the child into Heaven. Then he should take the baptism as valid. If the child does not die and he or she repudiates the baptism then his or her baptism will account for nothing and need to be repeated. If he or she accepts then the baptism is validated. The Church holds that if you accept the sacrament of confirmation you only receive the dormant sacrament but you really receive the sacrament if you are antagonistic to God. You get the graces only when you repent and turn to him. It is only then that the sacrament really takes effect. So it is only a rite until the person is suited. It should be the same with baptism and it is not. However baptising the child is still an act of religious intolerance. It implies that being a human person born into a good family who will raise the child well is not enough. It is insulting.

Do not become a godparent.

The parents and God parents consent for the baby to be a member of a controversial, superstitious and harmful religion. That is unfair. What is even more unfair is how Roman Catholic Canon Law sometimes permits baptism of babies even against the will of the parents. "An infant of Catholic parents or even of non-Catholic parents is baptized licitly in danger of death even against the will of the parents" (CIC 868 §2).