BAPTISM

CANNOT

MAKE A BABY A CATHOLIC

 

 

BAPTISM_ALLEGEDLY MAKES_BABY_MEMBER_OF_CHURCH_

CATHOLIC_MARRIAGE_LAW_PROVES_BAPTISMAL_INITIATION_IS_A_SHAM_

The Catholic Church counts baptised babies as members of the Catholic Church.  We argue that this is only pretend membership.  The baby is not a Catholic.  If anything, babies and young children are the best secularists there is.  They are not interested in doing what a God or religion wants but what they want as human beings. 

 

If you are forced by society to have your baby baptised a Catholic and you don't wish to, you could baptise the child outwardly yourself.  If you withhold intention the baptism is invalid.  Its no more valid than a baptism on a TV soap opera.  Or you could simply use the words, "I baptise you in the name of the great force of all life".  That would be invalid in the eyes of the Church.  Keep a record.  Doing the baptism yourself could really take off!  The child later on can decide if he or she wants a real baptism or not.

If baptism marks your baby as belonging to the Church, that does not necessarily mean he is a member of the Church. Belonging only means that you have a duty to be a member not that you are a member.  But conferring the duty is unfair. Conferring the membership is worse.  And that is what the Catholic Church does with baptism!

BAPTISM ALLEGEDLY MAKES BABY MEMBER OF CHURCH

 

When there is a mixed marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant some ask, "Could the children not be baptised into both Churches?"  The Church replies, "Baptism is the great Sacrament common to almost all Christians.  When a person is baptised he or she enters into a certain unity with all those who are baptised.  Baptism, however, does not simply mean becoming an "unattached" Christian; it marks one's entry into the life, faith and worship of a particular Christian communion which, in turn, takes up the responsibility to initiate the new Christian into its life and traditions.  A joint celebration of Baptism, or even the registration of the Baptism in both Churches, would, therefore, be a source of confusion.  It would, in any event, simply postpone a problem which must be faced when the questions of schooling, First Communion, and so on, arise.  To attempt to have two baptismal ceremonies would be entirely wrong.  It would imply a refusal to recognise that Baptism, in whatever denomination it is properly celebrated, is the sacramental bond of unity among all who receive it.  It would suggest that Baptism in one Church somehow needed to be "completed" in another" (page 16, Preparing for a Mixed Marriage, Irish Episcopal Conference, Veritas, Dublin, 1984).  This shows that baptism seeks to confer an obligation on the child to be an active part of the religious organisation baptising it, to believe what it believes, to give it money for its upkeep, to promote what it promotes and to worship in accordance to how it worships. 

 

You may say a child can be a member of a particular race and so he or she can be a member of a particular religion. But the two are not the same.  You can be a member of any race without being a member of any society.  You can have a white recluse or a black or whatever one.  But you can't become a religionist without joining some society.  You can't exist or be human without being of some race.  But you can exist and be human without being a member of any religion or group.

 

Religion is divisive.  It puts up barriers.  No decent parent would want to make their child a part of all that.  When parents don't believe or are doubtful about the claims of religion, they must ask themselves what they are having the child baptised for.  Even if they don't believe, they are getting the child classed with a religion and that is bad enough.  But it is very bad if you live in an area where Protestants and Catholics for example hate each other and engaged in violence against each other.  If the child is injured, many secularists would say that you must take some responsibility for that.  It certainly was a cause!  It is sickening to think of priests baptising  babies as Catholics in parts of Northern Ireland.

Religionists often say they get their babies baptised but will not force the religion on the child though they will try and influence the child to live up to the baptism and believe what baptism obligates the child to believe.  If they are really concerned about treating the child fairly, if they really believe the child should decide when old enough, then it must be wrong to impose a religion on that child to give that child the bother of perhaps renouncing the religion later on!  They claim that baptism confers an obligation on the child to believe and obey the faith that baptises it.  They are making out that if a child rejects the baptism or church membership that the child is letting them down and breaking loyalty and has no sense of duty to the faith.  They are urging the child to live up to the baptism on pain of sin and everlasting torment in Hell.  In other words, they are acting like spiritual bullies.  They are bigoted.

It is complete arrogance to suppose that if you baptise a child that the child will be a Catholic for all eternity whether he or she grows up to believe in Catholicism or not.  It is a bigoted supposition and can only lead to bigotry.  It implies that being baptised a Catholic is like some kind of default.  It implies that being anything else means nothing and is somehow bad.

 

 

 

CATHOLIC MARRIAGE LAW PROVES BAPTISMAL INITIATION IS A SHAM

 

The law in many countries allows transgender people to legally change the gender stated on their birth certificate to the gender they believe themselves to be.  Clearly there is a right to have your baptism to be declared to be a farce.  One must be allowed to have it declared invalid and not a true baptism.  Transgender people have the right to change birth certificates so we have the right to have baptismal certificates declared useless.  We have a right to declare that we were never validly baptised and were never made true Catholics.

 

You can be validly initiated into a political group against your will - but only in a legal sense.  This initiation is only a social or legal construct.  It is not a true initiation unless your heart is in it.  It is just like we have to legally pretend that a marriage still exists when the husband and wife hate each other.  When they get a divorce we can stop pretending.  We need the pretending to make life smoother.  We can't declare a marriage over or at least temporarily non-existent every time the husband and wife fall out - though it is true!  Our social and legal constructions involve pretending.  It would be mad to say that God needs to pretend that a baby is a Catholic just because we have to pretend that a man and woman are married though they hate each other.  It would be insulting him!

 

You might receive a provisional or assumed initiation at baptism as a baby but it doesn't become real until you grow up and accept it.  And naturally if you can accept it, you can reverse this acceptance as well.  You can undo the initiation.

 

Roman Catholic Canon law enshrines some important principles of justice in relation to marriage.  These principles show that despite itself, Church law can be used to declare infant baptism invalid.  My comments are in italics.

Canon 1095.1 The following are incapable of contracting marriage:

Canon 1095.1.1 those who lack sufficient use of reason;

Canon 1095.1.2 those who suffer from a grave lack of discretionary judgement concerning the essential matrimonial rights and obligations to be mutually given and accepted;

Canon 1095.1.3 those who, because of causes of a psychological nature, are unable to assume the essential obligations of marriage.

 

COMMENT: If a person cannot understand the duties of marriage, then the marriage is invalid.  Why?  Because consent was not given properly.  Baptism then is invalid and does not initiate babies into the faith.  The baby is unable to assume the essential obligations of church membership.  The baby cannot pray for example.

Canon 1096.1 For matrimonial consent to exist, it is necessary that the contracting parties be at least not ignorant of the fact that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman, ordered to the procreation of children through some form of sexual cooperation.

Canon 1097.2 Error about a quality of the person, even though it be the reason for the contract, does not render a marriage invalid unless this quality is directly and principally intended.

 

Canon 1098 A person contracts invalidly who enters marriage inveigled by deceit, perpetrated in order to secure consent, concerning some quality of the other party, which of its very nature can seriously disrupt the partnership of conjugal life.

 

COMMENT: Baptism is marrying God and Jesus Christ.  It is marrying them not just until death like in marriage but marrying them for all time and all eternity.  The Church however seeks to wed people to its perception of God and Jesus regardless of whether this is the real God or Jesus or not.  Under this canon, even adult baptism cannot be valid - so how could infant baptism be valid?  It would be more invalid if that were possible!  Also, we can see that God should wipe all babies of original sin instead of restricting this favour only to babies that are baptised.  Nobody can honestly say they want to be married to a God like that.  Their consent is really pretence.  Christians continually chant how we must love the sinner and hate the sin.  This is really saying you must hate the sinner while not admitting it.  If they separate the sin from the sinner they are pretending that the sinner is not responsible for the sin.  They don't really believe this for they say that when a good person does wrong that they have seen another side to that person!  In other words, they admit that there is no such thing as sin really but only sinful persons.  Sin describes what a person has become, it describes their character. The hypocrisy that is intrinsic to Christianity and the pretending they do that God loves sinners and hates sins shows that any consent to accept that faith is invalid.

Canon 1099 Provided it does not determine the will, error concerning the unity or the indissolubility or the sacramental dignity of marriage does not vitiate matrimonial consent.

COMMENT: This is saying that you can be validly married if you believe in divorce or that marriage is not a sacrament as long as you intend your marriage to be for life.  If you marry intending to divorce after a few years then the marriage is invalid.  If a sin a child never committed, original sin, can keep that child away from God, imagine what a deliberate and serious sin would do?  It practically speaking is a declaration of independence from God and making the baptism useless as long as you persist in sin.  If you consent to be baptised intending to defile that baptism and undo its power later, surely the baptism must be invalid.  If it is valid, then the canon is wrong and marriage is valid if a person intends to stay married only for a while.

 
Canon 1102.1 Marriage cannot be validly contracted subject to a condition concerning the future.

COMMENT:  If you marry saying that you will only stay married if the partner stays healthy and if she or he gets sick you will divorce them then the marriage is invalid.  If you take on membership of the Church, the only way to do this properly is by holding that you want to be a member of the true faith and the best religion.  So your taking it on has to be conditional on whether or not the Church is the true Church.  Baptism, especially when given to a baby who can't know what to expect from the faith, is invalid for it has to be a conditional commitment.  It needs to be about marrying God for all time and all eternity and it is not!  The most important doctrine of the faith is that we are to love sinners as ourselves for the sake of God and to hate sins for God does so.  Nobody really wants to do this for it means you will have to suffer as much as your neighbour when you see him or her hurt and will additionally have to endure the agony of seeing your God so disrespected.  This would make life a misery.  The consent to become part of the faith is invalid.  Nobody genuinely accepts their baptism.  Baptism is useless for in relation to babies, it is an attempt at forced conversion.

Canon 1103 A marriage is invalid which was entered into by reason of force or of grave fear imposed from outside, even if not purposely, from which the person has no escape other than by choosing marriage.

 

COMMENT: Christians fear that bad things will happen their baby if it is not baptised and the unbaptised baby will be cut off from God forever if it dies.  This is the strongest threat possible.  Baptism cannot be valid for its purpose is to redeem the child from the consequences of sin and the sure and certain eternal exclusion from the presence of God.  Thus it is based on fear. 

Canon 1105.4 If the mandator revokes the mandate, or becomes insane, before the proxy contracts in his or her name, the marriage is invalid, even though the proxy or the other contracting party is unaware of the fact.

 

COMMENT: The mandator is the person who can't be at the wedding and who has to be married by proxy.  If he or she becomes insane at the time of the wedding, the wedding is null and void even if the proxy and the bride or groom think there are no problems and the mandator is deemed sane by them.  An insane person has more powers of consent than a baby!  So we are to believe that baby baptism is valid despite the absence of consent.

 

If insanity invalidates a marriage when the vows are taken the marriage does not happen in reality though it may look as if it has.  A baptism ceremony can take place but it is possible that the person may not be really validly baptised.

 

The law of the state says that you need to be able to consume the marriage to contract a valid marriage.  A marriage contract then is valid when the man and woman can consummate but what if the man has an accident on the way home with his bride to the marital bed and his penis is severed?  The state will annul the marriage but if a contract has been made we can see that this is not the annulment it is pretended to be but actually a divorce!  The Church will annul the marriage as well.  So if that is okay then there should be baptismal annulments as well!

Canon 1107 Even if a marriage has been entered into invalidly by reason of an impediment or defect of form, the consent given is presumed to persist until its withdrawal has been established.

 

COMMENT: If you are to assume that a doubtful marriage is real, then you are to assume that a doubtful baptism may be real too.

Canon 1086.1 A marriage is invalid when one of the two persons was baptised in the Catholic Church or received into it and has not by a formal act defected from it, and the other was not baptised.
 

COMMENT: A religion that claims the right to deny that somebody's marriage was real and which denies it just for the sake of it cannot complain if atheists or critics dismiss its baptisms as invalid.  Indeed the Church would have to encourage them to do this - you are to encourage people to obey their own consciences.  You can't claim to love the sinner and hate the sins when you come up with unnecessary sins!

 

If you get confirmation when you are asleep, the rite has to be repeated for you were asleep.  You can't get communion, you can't get confession, you can't get ordained, you can't get any sacrament barring baptism unless you are awake.  With extreme unction, if you pass into a coma before you are anointed, the sacrament will not work if you went into the coma set against the idea of being anointed.  So it depends on what your state of mind was before you passed into the coma.  So consent is still necessary for it.  So you need to give consent to get a sacrament and so its a violation of your rights if you can't give it and are given the sacrament.  If it is a violation to give you a sacrament without your conscious consent at the moment of the rite.  Extreme unction is an exception for it is a sacrament for the sick or dying and so one might not be conscious.  But it still requires your consent though, just that your conscious consent is unnecessary if you can't give it.  Baptism violates the rights of the baby.  It cares not a whit for consent.  It cares even less when it can be given when the baby is asleep.  At least if the child was awake it would be closer to the power to make consent.    

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