Are two godmothers and one godfather allowed?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Annemariels
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Annemariels

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My brother-in-law had two godfathers and three godmothers for his daughter. I know someone now who wants to have one godfather and two godmothers. Is this allowed?
 
No, they are not allowed. One Godparent is all that is needed. If a couple wants two Godparents for their child, it must be one man and one woman. It’s spelled out in canon law.
Can. 873 There is to be only one male sponsor or one female sponsor or one of each.
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That’s what I thought.

Why in the world did the priest allow so many people to be the godparents? :confused:
 
Annemariels said:
That’s what I thought.

Why in the world did the priest allow so many people to be the godparents? :confused:
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Chances are he didn’t. One each would be the official sponsors and the rest would be well-meaning people who can be called Godparents by the child and the family. It’s kind of like bridesmaids, only the maid of honor is the official witness to a wedding but the rest are there too.

It gets complicated when non-Catholics are involved too. For example, if you want to choose your Catholic brother and his non-Catholic wife as godparents, only the brother would be recognized as a sponsor by the Church. You might chose another Catholic female to “balance out” the Baptismal certificate. At the Baptism, it would **look like **there were three godparenents but there would really be only two and an additional Christian witness.
 
Thank you for clarifying that so well.

It’s funny, as I was logging on, I was going to ask what the rules were for non-Catholics being godparents because one of the godmothers was Baptist. She seemed to be thee godmother, taking charge of holding the baby ect. and the other two were Catholic but were in the background looking awkward.

I love your maid-of-honor analogy - thank you!
 
If you have a non Catholic at the baptism they can be considered a “Christian Witness” but as Corki said, only the true Godparents will be listed as recognized by the church. The Christian Witness goes in the book but with a “cw” next to their name. That is how my priest recently explained it to me.

And the bridesmaid/maid of honor example is a great one.
 
Corki said:
It’s kind of like bridesmaids, only the maid of honor is the official witness to a wedding but the rest are there too.
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Let me agree with the previous posters, this is a great analogy! 👍
 
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