Mary Kenny
There are several Christian sects which do not subscribe to infant baptism, such as the Baptists, Anabaptists, Pentecostalists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Plymouth Brethern.
For people like the Anabaptists, baptism is valid only when the candidates confess their faith in Christ and request to be baptised. The Mormons also practice adult baptism.
What characterises most of these denominations, too, is that they are often markedly strict in their lifestyles. The Amish people in North America – who rebuff modern technology and still use horse and carriages for transport – practice a form of Anabaptism. Because the infant is not baptised, it has to be shielded from the evils of the world.
Autobiography
Sir Edmund Gosse’s classical autobiography, Father and Son, published in 1907, is often held up as an example of growing up within this Puritan tradition. Because the boy could not be baptised until he chose to, as an adult, his father did everything he could to keep his only child away from “the world, the flesh and the devil”. Gosse was virtually imprisoned. After he offended against his father’s rules by eating a mince pie which had been given to him by a servant, he had to confess his sin and repent that he had partaken of “the food of the idolator” – Puritans associated mince pies with Roman Catholics.
It’s interesting that Mary McAleese has chosen to align her views with these sects in their baptism policies, and against the practice of the Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox Churches in baptising newborns. Mrs McAleese, in an address at Oxford – ‘Baptismal obligations? Revisiting the christening contract’ – claims that infant baptism is a breach of human rights. The infant has not exercised his or her choice to be baptised: Catholics should wait until the person is mature enough to make a “personal voluntary commitment” to the Church.
Since I am not a doctor of canon law, I wouldn’t undertake to debate Mrs McAleese on the finer points of Church law: but in terms of ordinary logic, I find the argument lacking in common sense. An infant is not in a position to make choices about anything. We make their choices for them, because, in the normal course of life, we are their protectors, and we aspire to act in their best interest. We give children food that is “good for them” that they might not choose themselves (broccoli?) and provide them with medical vaccinations, even though they might cry at the sight of a needle. So, if parents and guardians make each everyday choice in a child’s best interest, why shouldn’t christening and baptism be part of such norms?
I have heard it said the trouble with lawyers is that they see everything in a legalistic sense – everything is about “contract law” – rather than seen within a context of personal, social and religious values. This may be applicable to Mary McAleese’s analysis. Or she may have come to feel that the Anabaptists, the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are preferable company to the traditions of the Catholic Church.
***
Sr Mary Joseph of the Trinity sure is one nun I’d like to have met. She was born Ann Russell, in 1928, in San Francisco – a kinswoman of the wealthy Rockefeller family. She led a busy social life as a young girl – smoked, drank, gossiped and had her hair done regularly by Elizabeth Arden. Aged 20, she married a Mr Richard Miller – also wealthy – and they had ten children. When she was widowed, aged 61, she decided to become a nun with the Sisters of Mount Carmel in Chicago, a cloistered order of discalced Carmelites. She threw a fabulous party before taking the veil.
Before she entered, an old admirer went on bended knee and proposed marriage. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she told him.
She didn’t find the disciplines of cloister easy going, but she stuck with it until her death at the age of 92.
It wasn’t unusual, in the Middle Ages, for widows to retire to a nunnery once their family responsibilities were discharged. The thought of a peaceful convent – preferably in Tuscany – as life grows more worrisome and wearying often seems very attractive.
Boris paid some attention in religion class!
TV interviewer Robert Preston asked Boris Johnson if he was now a practising Catholic, after his marriage at Westminster Cathedral. Bojo replied: “I don’t discuss these deep issues – certainly not with you.” Peston then asks why not – Labour leader Keir Starmer recently said he didn’t believe in God – did Boris believe in God? Johnson replied by quoting Psalm 14, verse 1: “The foolish man has said in his heart ‘There is no God.’” Indicating he thought such men were fools.
A priest friend remarks: “It shows that Boris paid some attention during religion class at school!”