LABELLING LITTLE BABIES AND CHILDREN WITH RELIGIOUS LABELS AND BAGGAGE

The Church forces a Catholic label on poor little vulnerable children.  When you label a baby you can label anyone. A label has baggage so it is not a small or neutral thing.
 
You hear of Jewish children, Muslim children, Protestant children and Catholic children but you never hear of Republican children or Democrat children. Why should a child who accepts people without labels be made to take a label just because their parents wear it and conditioned into the them and us mentality? At least political labels have some justification for politics tries to be scientific and give the people what they want, inform the people, test the political theory and generally avoid stubborn adherence to dogma. Religion demands adherence to dogma and can’t offer any decent evidence for its claims so the religious label is just taking away childlike innocence to put bigotry in its place.
 
The labelling of a person, especially a child, as a Christian just because they were baptised is a true scandal. It just shows a vicious refusal to regard a person as free to leave the Church and not be considered a Christian in the eyes of God. It leads to the Roman Catholic Church considering a baptised person to be a Catholic even if they were baptised in a Protestant Church. So the Protestant is a Catholic who has strayed. Many Jews believe that once a man is circumcised he is a Jew forever. But what happens if he is baptised a Catholic? Does he belong to the Jewish faith and the Christian faith forever? How could he when one faith holds that Christ hasn’t come yet and the other holds that he has? What if occultists start believing that anybody they touch belongs to the true religion forever? Catholics do not speak of the Church in Hell. For them the Church is only on earth, Purgatory and in Heaven. So if a baptised person goes to Hell that person is still no longer a member of the Church. From that it seems that the mark left on the soul by baptism that can never be effaced is not a literal mark. It is just God keeping record, “This person was baptised once and cannot be baptised again.” The person can renounce the baptism and lose all its effects and be exactly the same as an unbaptised person. The only difference is that if he converts he doesn’t need to be rebaptised again. It is just that he can join the Church easier than the other.
 
The proverb, “Once a Catholic always a Catholic”, implies that no religion has the power to own its members forever but the Catholic Church. It is offensive and inexcusable. It refuses to respect the fact that if you don’t believe in a religion you are not a genuine member of it.   It refuses to respect that it is belief and faith that should determine if you are a Catholic or whatever.  It is against commonsense to say that a religion cannot have people who are only pretend members.

ITS REALLY ABOUT CULTURAL CATHOLICISM NOT REAL CATHOLICISM
 
The notion that you cannot cease to be Catholic is really about upholding cultural Catholicism which is about customs and fitting in rather than Catholic faith. Cultural religion is abhorrent bigotry. Jesus condemned it as having a form of religion but denying the power thereof. Typically it is fuelled by self-styled Catholics who do not want to fit in with Protestants for example. They want identifiers for the sake of propagating an us and not them mentality.
 
It is an insult to Catholics who become atheists or Mormons or Muslims or whatever to say that a person never stops being Catholic no matter what they do or believe. It implies that the label is special and that morals and faith don't matter in comparison. It is saying, "My label matters and that of other religions does not. I have the right to say that a Methodist who was baptised Catholic is still Catholic and should not be claiming to be a Methodist. If I was a Jew before I was Catholic, I deny that anybody has the right to say I am still a Jew for it is not true. My religion has a right to be considered superior."
 
It may be replied, "Let the Catholic - an example - think that a baptised person cannot stop being a member of the Catholic religion. And let the Jew - another example - think that you cannot stop being a member of the Jewish religion. If you were Catholic but now consider yourself a Muslim or whatever why should you care when you don't believe in Catholicism any more?"
 
It is to be expected that a religion as hypocritical as Catholicism would use hypocritical ways to get people who are not really Catholic to identify as such.
 
Jesus to his credit condemned the kind of religion formed by people whose hearts are far from the God they say they adore and that they practice a form of godliness and religion that is devoid of power from God.

WHY NOT "ONCE A [ANY RELIGION] ALWAYS [THAT RELIGION]?"
 
It is stupid to say people are Catholics when they don't believe in Catholicism and don't want to be affiliated with the religion or pigeon-holed with it. If you are once a Catholic always a Catholic then why not once a Jew/Mormon/Muslim then not always a Jew/Mormon/Muslim? If you convert from Catholicism to Judaism and then Mormonism and finally Islam then are you still a member of all four religions? The suggestion that you are would be absurd. 
 
If a child is circumcised into Judaism and baptised at the same time then what religion does it belong to? It can’t belong to both. What if a new faith starts a coffee shop and has the doctrine that any child who eats its special ice lollies is automatically a member of the faith? Where is it all going to end? Clearly the Roman Catholic Church has no right to claim that a child is a member of the Roman Catholic Church by baptism. Therefore parents do not have the right to raise their children as Catholics. If they have the right to bring a child into their faith, they have to instil faith in the child by influencing the child to accept baptism. They certainly have no right to have the child baptised without her or his consent. That is imposing membership on the child.
 
Islam sees religion as service to God. Babies are thought to be sinless and so they are servants of Allah. It follows then that babies including baptised ones are really Muslims. It is only when they become older that they become something else.
 
Mormonism holds that the Church is the family of God. As all babies are born on good terms with God, they are really Mormons until they become something else. They are children of God until they wreck the relationship.
 
As babies care more about the soother and the cot and the baby food than God we should assume they are really humanists! If they are not then they are still more humanist than anything else.
 
If Islam or Mormonism or humanism is true, it follows that Catholic children are only called Catholic children. It is in name only.  A man-made label means nothing.  Only the truth can label - man cannot.  When man labels it should be about the truth and not what he thinks.

SO?

We as a matter of principle and because of our intuition we cannot bear being criticised when we are challenged or despised or condemned for something we cannot change about ourselves such as our eye colour. Religion likes to portray members as permanent members as a control tactic. The reward for the religion is when the member cannot tolerate any criticism of the religion. That is what the religion is trying to achieve by infecting the whole culture. The more addicts to the label the more power for the religion.

The only way to break the spell is to pull the label off and rip it up - publically.