David Quinn
Even the right to baptise your child is now being questioned, writes David Quinn
We are definitely in a radically new cultural moment when even the practice of infant baptism is called into question and by no less a person than our former president, Mary McAleese. If the right of Catholics to baptise their children is questioned, then what is left?
Our former first citizen has previously criticised baptism for creating “mainly infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience”.
In comments to the Irish Times at the weekend she elaborated that if parents have their baby baptised, “that baby becomes a member for life – according to the teaching of the Church – of the Church and it has rights and obligations”.
She said that at some point, as they mature, children need to have an opportunity to accept or repudiate their baptism. She claimed that this would be more in line with rights of freedom of conscience and religion.
But comments like this badly misunderstand baptism. Baptism, as such, cannot be undone. In Catholic theology it brings about a change to your state of being in the same way sacramental marriage does, or the sacrament of Holy Orders. A man might leave priestly ministry, but he will always be a priest. A woman might leave her husband, but in the eyes of the Church she will always be married to him so long as he lives.
Critics
Of course, the fact that baptism cannot be undone only makes things worse in the eyes of its critics, but when one of those critics is a self-professed practicing Catholic, then we’re dealing with a whole different ballgame because infant baptism goes back to the very early days of Christianity and is practiced to this day by almost every Christian Church.
So, when Mary McAleese criticises infant baptism she is taking on something that goes to the very heart of the Christian faith.
Why is infant baptism so old and so venerable a practice? A big reason is that Christians believe baptism cleanses us of Original Sin. This is another notion many people today find offensive. How can a baby be guilty of sin? But Original Sin describes a state, not an act. The state of human nature is that we are all capable of sinning. This is why we need a Saviour, Jesus Christ.
But even if you reject the doctrine of Original Sin, baptism has another purpose, which is to make us members of the Christian community. It is also a naming ceremony and a rite of passage and all cultures have rites of passage that mark the entry of a child into the world, and into their particular community. Is this aspect of baptism to be rejected too?
The McAleese attack on infant baptism is based on a very radical notion of personal autonomy, in this case the autonomy of the child. But it is wildly unrealistic because no-one, and in particular no child, is so autonomous that they are not radically influenced by the time, place and community into which they are born.
We are all born into a particular family. We are born in a particular locality and a particular country. We will be citizens of that country, often by simple right of birth. That country will demand a certain amount of loyalty in return for the benefits of citizenship and will try and make us ‘good citizens’ through a combination of formal education and social norms. Is this also an attack on the child’s autonomy?
We can eventually repudiate the country of our birth and we can reject our family, just as we can repudiate our religion, but there is no such thing as freedom from the community of our birth and upbringing, or its influences. Such a thing is absolutely impossible.
Stopping or discouraging infant baptism would also represent the most enormous, swingeing attack on religious freedom.
In a similar vein, there are growing calls to ban religiously-motivated circumcision. In 2012, a German court tried to do precisely that until the German parliament over-turned the ban after a huge Jewish backlash.
As the former British Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks said at the time: “By ruling that religious Jews performing their most ancient sacred ritual are abusing the rights of the child, a German court has just invented a new form of Blood Libel perfectly designed for the 21st Century.”
On the other hand, we also see that non-religious people still want to have their children baptised – despite the McAleese objections – because there is something deep inside human nature that demands ceremonies to mark the major occasions in our lives.
In the Irish Times last week, journalist Conor Pope in a much-discussed article wrote that he and his wife had their baby baptised despite being non-practicing themselves. The reason they did so is because Catholicism is the religion they are culturally most familiar with, and they wanted a major event to mark the birth of their child.
This, of course, raises once again the extent to which the cultural in ‘cultural Catholicism’ is taking over the Catholic part of that equation. The answer seems to be: very much.
We had another very powerful example of this last Sunday when Fine Gael TD Josepha Madigan led a Communion service in her local parish in Dublin despite being the leader of her party’s ‘Yes’ campaign in the recent abortion referendum. (There was no Mass because the priest was absent.)
This represents a further erosion of the belief that being a member of the Catholic community carries certain obligations. A leading member of a parish can be openly pro-choice, but Madigan’s own party in 2013 expelled some of its members for being pro-life. Being a member of Fine Gael, therefore, carries stronger obligations than being a member of the Catholic Church.
We can thus see the extent to which the surrounding culture is bearing down hard on the Catholic Church and indeed, on all of Christianity. Openly, proudly pro-choice politicians lead Communion services.
People who are openly non-practicing wish to avail of Catholic sacraments they don’t really believe in, a former president of Ireland calls into question the very basis of infant baptism, and Catholic hospitals are told they must perform abortions.
And from most of the leaders of the Church, we have nothing but silence.