Actually its more along the lines of “simulation of a sacrament” than sacrilege.
True. That’s a good distinction. However, simulation is also disregard of the defnition, hence failure to respect the inherent terms of the sacrament. Thus, with all such disrespecting couples --gay partners, cohabitating partners, partners without convalidated marriages-- I would hope that “classes” or “meetings” or whatever, whether privately or in group, would remind all the parents of (a) the teachings that the Church expects this child to be brought up in –
at home and in CCD/Catholic school – with regard to marriage and sexuality, and (b) to ask them to consider that fact carefully when baptizing their child “with the well-founded hope that such child be raised Catholic,” including the Church’s assumption that the parents will not be instructing contrary to Church teaching, as this could compromise family harmony or raise religious doubt in the child.
For starters, canonically one cannot require “counseling.” Secondly, the Church isn’t validing the immoral relationship but is doing its best to save the soul of the child.
But souls are often saved in the body of the Catholic family. The Church recognizes that the family is a unit, that the instruction of the child relative to the direction of that child’s soul–greatly resides in the family. It wants all members to be speaking with the same voice, not as far as ‘blamelessness,’ but as far as knowledge and truth. Otherwise, the child’s soul is indeed in peril. For the Church, as for God, each individual is, yes, a separate soul, responsible for only his or her own salvation, but the practicality of that spiritual formation is not disjointed from the family. While Baptism confers an indelible mark, the formation doesn’t just happen “by itself,” on auto-pilot. It’s not like magic, whereby the baptized soul is, by baptism, protected from intimate influences that are contrary to that desirable spiritual formation.
Please let me digress a little here. Obviously my parents were in a mixed marriage. In those days it was more contoversial, and less common, than now. My father used to tell me often later, that it offended him, a military man and a man who was accustomed to keeping promises based on a man’s honor, that the Church made him actually sign a document promising to raise me (and my 3 siblings) Catholic, as a condition of marriage. (“Of
course I would have, if that were required,” he said.) And he took it so seriously that he attended every Sunday Mass with us for our entire lives as children, and naturally Christmas Masses as well. (Holy Days of Obligation were usually work days for him.) Ironically, my mother, born and raised Irish Catholic, had issues with the Church. Significant ones. As we grew older, she became increasingly disaffected from the Church, critical of the hierarchy and its policies, so my mother stopped attending Mass with us while my father continued to. (Role reversal, to say the least.) But my mother never represented to me that Catholic Church teachings were other than what they were, and her discord with the church was not problematic to me in terms of my own faith. I knew that that was a personal conflict for her, and further, my own father was doing nothing to oppose, vocally, church teachings. And neither was opposing church teachings by their lifestyle. Otherwise, I’m sure I would have wondered why they were bothering to raise me Catholic, if their very lifestyle had showed a disrespect for Catholic doctrine. It would have directly undermined my faith, to see such a disconnect. Specifically, my parents’ marriage was obviously valid and sacramental. I took the sacraments seriously because the Church had made sure that the sacramentality of my parents’ marriage was valid and because (ironically) my father was taking the sacraments seriously.
The canons only require that the parents will raise the child in the Catholic faith. It says nothing of requiring the parents to be perfect standing…
Nor have I said or implied anything about “perfect standing.” I’m not sure why you keep bringing this up. But it seems to me that intention to raise a child Catholic does imply correction of a lifestyle which simulates a sacrament and thus disrespects or even mocks the sacrament – sacraments being one of the pillars of Catholic theology and Catholic life, including family life. And the Church declares that the family is the key ingredient in the spiritual formation of that very child who is being baptized. And if my parents do not take the sacrament of marriage seriously, why should I take the sacrament of my baptism seriously, or my First Eucharist, or my First Penance, or my Confirmation?
Parental lifestyle. Not reversing a birth circumstance which is an irreversible fact (out of wedlock, IVF, surrogacy, etc.)
I appreciate your patient efforts to address the questions and explain your answers. I do see a disconnect, frankly, between the literal canons and Catholic spirituality. I really do. And that disconnect troubles me. It’s almost as if there’s something cynical going on here, whereby the church looks the other way at the reality of the family unit and maybe hopes that, although the child may have scant opportunity to live a faith within a truly practicing Catholic family, the child will eventually later, as an adult, really learn what the practice of his or her faith means. Gee, that’s a big hope. And I agree with thistle that there seems to be more than a little naivete going on, somewhere anyway.
I will also ask my own local pastor what the practice is in his parish.
I appreciate it that there’s no control over that. My issue is not “control.” The issue is witness and the observable, apparent ingredients for family cohesiveness and spiritual consistency, which the Church states is important.
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