SHOULD BABY BE BAPTISED WHEN A PARENT OBJECTS?
Christians take their babies to the clergy to get them baptised. Water is
sprinkled on them and magic words are said and this is supposed to remove a sin
they never committed but which they are blamed for (original sin). God then
adopts them as his children - he rejected them before. They are made members of
his Church and given the power to believe and love God. The gate of Heaven is
opened for them and they belong to God meaning they must obey him instead of
pleasing themselves.
The problem
Parents have the right to object to their child being made a servant of the
Church and obliged to obey it. But what if one parent wants the child baptised
to accomplish this and the other one does not?
The objecting parent needs to be respected
Babies should not be baptised if one or both parents are opposed to the baptism.
The doctrine of the Church is that baptism is not a right but a gift from
God. Yet some seem to think they have a right to get their babies baptised or
the baby has a right to get baptised! If the baby has a right parents have less
right.
Baptism insults the child and captures the child in the name of religion.
Some say if a father objected to his estranged girlfriend or if a mother
objected to her estranged boyfriend for taking the child of the union for
baptism he or she would come across as a nutcase. This assumes that baptism is
not nutty. It is extremely nutty. Just because in some places nearly all babies
are baptised that doesn’t mean it should be done or is sensible behaviour. It is
not prevalence but rationality that determines what is normal or at least not
“nutty”. Is it not nutty to ignore the wishes of the father that the baby not be
baptised?
Those people assume that baptism is just splashing water. If it is just
splashing water then why should it be the person who wants to have the baby
baptised coming first? Why not toss a coin? Or better still why not listen to
the person who doesn’t put religious claims first? Would you let somebody splash
your child even with a drop of water when the splash is an insult to the child
and signifies a desire to brainwash the child? Would you let your child be
baptised into the Ku Klux Klan even if the child won’t be raised as a KKK? By
baptising the child you are resolving to make it feel superior to children that
are not baptised. End of.
The Church should not be baptising when the participants don't consider the
baptism or the Church initiation important and consider them to be mere things
that people do, eccentric customs. If baptism is important then the father has
the right to make a fuss and ask that the baptism not go ahead.
If the father does not want to be seen as a nut over a mere splashing of the
baby with water and it is that insignificant, then what about the mother being a
nut for making a fuss about getting the child splashed? Why pick on the father
and not her? If a person says that something happens is just natural and
somebody else says it is supernatural it is the first person who should be
regarded as sane. The other is being a nut.
Is she not a nut for acting as if the baptism is not the father's business? And
for what? Religion! There should be no baptism without his consent.
To accuse the father of being a nut for opposing the baptism denies the fact
that his so-called nuttiness does no harm. He has a right to it. Maybe he does
think that baptism is a load of hocus-pocus but just wants to assert his right
to refuse to consent to his baby being baptised. It might be the violation of
his rights that bothers him not the baptism. There is nothing nutty about
asserting such a right. If it is nutty of him to object to his baby being
baptised, then those Catholic parents who object when their baby is taken for
Protestant baptism must be mega-nutty!
Why should one parent have the right to have the child baptised in defiance of
the other parent? Where is compromise and discussion in all this? Again we see a
Church that doesn’t care whose rights it opposes as long as it gets the baby.
The father or mother must be given the legal right to stop infant baptisms if
the parent the child is with seeks to have the child baptised. Would this make
the state interfere in religion? Not if the injunction is not about stopping
baptism as such but about giving parents rights.
If a religion appeared that believed in saving babies for God by tracing a
symbol on their foreheads using sheep urine an injunction would be granted
without quibble if a parent requested that the baptism be averted and prevented
by law. But is the sheep urine as bad as the meaning of baptism - that a child
should be conditioned to accept the laws of the Church and subjected to them?
If Catholicism is man-made, if Jesus was a fraud, then nobody would object to
infant baptism being stopped by a parent who objects to the child being brought
to the baptismal font. Denying the parent that right is imposing the belief,
implicit or explicit, that the Church and baptism are divine on the parent.
Their right to decide for their child is ignored. It is therefore imposing on
the child.
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.