Anointing of the sick for a person not Baptized

[davleemye]

Thank You!
This is what I was told by others. The Protestant faith does not require baptism to achieve heaven. It’s a gift from accepting Jesus as savior. My training was only from radio program and reading scripture. I attended an adoration chapel for one year. That was my church. Attended catholic mass twice and one catholic funeral.

A neighbor mentored me one year, so I read the catechism and am interested being baptized. My family is against this.

I had my first night from stroke in precarious position. I was transferred. My first thought was that I wanted everything to be right with a God. But there was some security that faith by salvation would keep me safe.

 

[1ke]

The Protestant faith does not require baptism to achieve heaven

Well, it’s not really up to the “Protestant faith” (which has a wide variety of teaching on baptism) it is up to Jesus. And this is what Jesus said about it:

John 3:6, “Jesus answered, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”

And St Peter confirms this understanding:

1 Peter 3:18-22, “ For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the spirit. In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water. This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.

Ultimately God can operate outside his sacraments, but his sacraments are the ordinary means of sanctifying grace.

A neighbor mentored me one year, so I read the catechism and am interested being baptized.

Then I suggest you contact your local Catholic pastor and discuss it with him.

My family is against this.

I’m sorry to hear that. Would they be amenable to baptism in a Protestant Church?

I had my first night from stroke in precarious position. I was transferred. My first thought was that I wanted everything to be right with a God. But there was some security that faith by salvation would keep me safe.

If you desire baptism but are unable to be baptized through no fault of your own, God does know your heart on the matter.

Please contact your local Catholic pastor or Protestant clergy regarding baptism.

 

[davleemye]

Your answer helps a lot.
I am a secret Catholic. I pray the Rosary, novenas, and enjoy the statue of mary in a neighbors front yard. This most likely will cause my family to shun me. I am a caregiver. I had a wonderful mentor in a neighbor. My family objected and the catholic adoration group I associated with ordered the mentoring dissolved. It is very difficult to attend Sunday mass when I need to take my family elsewhere.

I wish I had the opportunities that others turn down. I am thankful for the blessing of living.

God Bless

 

[davleemye]

I simply never got baptized. Was not needed even for marriage. What I saw was just doing so to demonstrate you are a Christian.
If a Baptist cam baptize me immediately, why can’t a priest do so when a person is having a brain bleed stroke at the hospital.

 

[davleemye]

Thank You ray:t4:

 

[1ke]

If a Baptist cam baptize me immediately, why can’t a priest do so when a person is having a brain bleed stroke at the hospital.

A priest could do so in danger of death, if the person had manifested the desire for baptism into the Catholic Church at some point previously or had the mental faculties to ask for it.

I already mentioned that above.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

My current parishes have somewhere between 5000 and 10,000 people in them. From a practical standpoint, even though both parishes have about 3 priests each, it is unlikely the priest would be able to visit everyone in the parish who is in the hospital or the nursing home during any given week. It may be more possible in smaller parishes.

I see what you are saying. This was 35 years ago and parishes weren’t nearly that big. Priests were not stretched nearly so thin back then. More vocations and more response to vocations, please, everyone.

Our pastor resonated better with older people, because he was very outspoken about the crisis of faith and morality, and he managed to alienate younger people who — let’s just tell it like it is — did not agree with the Church’s teachings on certain matters and/or did not want to live by them. He was, as he put it, “politically incorrect” to the end, and made no apologies for it, though he did mellow a bit before he died, wearing civilian clothes in retirement rather than his customary cassock and saturno that made him look like Pope Pius XII.

Miss him bad. Requiescat in pace.

 

[davleemye]

I like old school too. I was concerned that anointing of the sick could not be given to a unbaptized non catholic believer who is very sick and desires this blessing.

Similarity, scripturally baptism should not require a one year class in RCIA when it is taught that unbaptized can not go to heaven. The modern change in my bible church is that baptism is tied in to church membership.

I’d like to go down to the river and receive baptism like it has been done for centuries.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I like old school too. I was concerned that anointing of the sick could not be given to a unbaptized non catholic believer who is very sick and desires this blessing.

Similarity, scripturally baptism should not require a one year class in RCIA when it is taught that unbaptized can not go to heaven. The modern change in my bible church is that baptism is tied in to church membership.

I’d like to go down to the river and receive baptism like it has been done for centuries.

Thank you for the good comments. Sadly, an unbaptized person cannot receive anointing of the sick, in that it is a sacrament, and baptism is the “gateway” to all the other six sacraments. That is not to say, though, that the priest could not visit the sick person, pray with them, counsel them, help them elicit contrition for their sins, and pray for their healing. That is non-sacramental and is an option for everyone. The priest could also baptize them right there on the spot, if death were imminent, and then administer the sacrament of anointing.

I have a preference for a shorter catechumenate than one or two years, most of all because baptism is necessary for salvation. (I know there are different schools of thought, but to a greater or lesser extent, they are all merely speculative, whereas the fact of Trinitarian water baptism is not speculative.) It would depend on how much the catechumen already knows, and how spiritually formed they are. I pretty much “knew it all” (the basics anyway) before I even began classes, and IIRC it took about four months. One change I would like to see, and that could result in a shorter catechumenate, would be to elicit a solemn promise from the catechumen that they accept the various creeds (Nicene et al), and that they will accept and embrace all of the Church’s teachings, as they continue to learn them — no exceptions, no protestations of “I never knew that, if I had, I wouldn’t have agreed to be baptized”. None of us know everything that the Church teaches, but when we discover something that is new to us, it is our task to embrace it joyfully, and subordinate our own judgment, belief, and “conscience” to whatever the Church teaches.

Baptism in a natural, flowing river is a beautiful way to receive the sacrament. My grandfather (not Catholic) was carried to the creek on a stretcher in the last days of his life and was baptized in the flowing waters. He perceived the necessity of water baptism, and asked to be taken down to the creek so that he could receive the sacrament before he died.

 

[davleemye]

Your grandfathers baptism is what I would love to have for me.

I am caregiver to a immediate family member Who is bipolar. I simply can’t take a long term RCIA class. I have to go when I can be free.

Why not counseling from the priest as a small group like Sunday school is done. Why won’t churches train their members to maybe sit with people who come inside and support them. Simply ask; would you like some company? There are millions of lonely people out there to enter church if people simply were kind and caring.

My neighbor who is a friend of both me and my wife mentored me over years. A little at a time. I learned the rosary. When she invited me to her chapel , she was stopped from sitting near me by her spiritual advisor. Why? Because she is a woman and I am a man. You know, people will talk… When I told the priest, they shunned me there and my neighbor was hurt.

I will be a very extremely moral, observant reverently to all the church teachings and would be very kind and respectful of all things.

If baptism is the gateway, then may they please let me come into the faith! So I can be forgiven, take communion believing of the true presence as few today do.

I do feel that when we go home and life here is over, we will alone be accountable for our intentions and actions.

Thanks for reaching out to me.

Hebrews 13:2 2Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

 

[InThePew]

I am caregiver to a immediate family member Who is bipolar. I simply can’t take a long term RCIA class. I have to go when I can be free.

Why not counseling from the priest as a small group like Sunday school is done.

That’s entirely possible. RCIA is the norm but that process doesn’t have to be followed in every case - inevitably there are always some people who lend themselves to exceptions. I would recommend that you discuss this with the priest at your local church and see where things go from there.

 

[davleemye]

After New Years I think I will go for baptism. I have this attachment to one church I haven’t had much luck with and I don’t understand that. But I’m a person who was never late for work in 36 years, so I tend to travel difficult roads faithfully and loyal to my choices. I’m very outgoing, so maybe I’m needed there. I have a strong prayer ethic so I’ll do that too. I accepted a Jesus as savior at age 17 from a program on short wave radio.
You’ve been great encouragement. Happy New Year!

God Bless,

David

 

[TheLittleLady]

Used to be that simply noting in your chart would mean you are visited by a Priest or EMHC. The hospital would contact the appropriate parish (the one assigned to cover the hospital) and give them a list every day of the Catholics in the hospital.

Now, because of HIPPA, hospitals cannot send out those lists. IF you are in a Catholic hospital that has a priest on staff as chaplain, you will get a visit if your records say you are Catholic (and sometimes that does not get noted in the record, I always ask the nurse to double check).

If you are in any other sort of hospital, you (or your family member/friends) need to let your parish know you are admitted, room number, etc. We remind people of this in our bulletin.

 

[F_Marturana]

It can, yes. But a priest has discretion in danger of death.

Yes. My son was baptized at 1 day old because he was very ill. Our scenario was different because we were already a Catholic family.

I can’t imagine requesting baptism at a serious medical event and being told no. RCIA can happen later in the event of a recovery.

 

[1ke]

I can’t imagine requesting baptism at a serious medical event and being told no. RCIA can happen later in the event of a recovery.

Exactly. We had a wife call us because her husband was terminally ill and wanted to be baptized. Father met with him once to talk with him, then he and my husband returned a few days later and the man was baptized, confirmed, communed and my husband stood as witness/sponsor.

The man died a few weeks later.

 

[davleemye]

That explains everything to me. Thanks. I told them I was not catholic but wanted a catholic priest because I was told that the first night that my brain bleed might lead to paralysis or death possibly. I wanted a priest to baptize me. I’ve desired this for some time, but takes a long time. Baptism has been a stumbling block to me becoming catholic because it is hard to go to church myself and sit there unable to participate in the communion etc. so the local bible church suffices. I dislike sitting there alone.