Baptism of infants

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nat_c1990

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Hello, everyone.

My husband and I are in the process of converting to Catholicism. We are currently attending RCIA classes but we haven’t really touched on the subject of baptism yet. I was just wondering, why does the church think it’s so important to baptize babies? I was always told that all babies go to Heaven because they are innocent. I was taught that a person only goes to hell if they willfully choose to deny Jesus. Since babies and young children aren’t capable of understanding such things or making such decisions, wouldn’t they automatically go to Heaven? If that’s the case, why is it necessary to baptize them?
 
nat_c1990 said:
Hello, everyone.

My husband and I are in the process of converting to Catholicism. We are currently attending RCIA classes but we haven’t really touched on the subject of baptism yet. I was just wondering, why does the church think it’s so important to baptize babies? I was always told that all babies go to Heaven because they are innocent. I was taught that a person only goes to hell if they willfully choose to deny Jesus. Since babies and young children aren’t capable of understanding such things or making such decisions, wouldn’t they automatically go to Heaven? If that’s the case, why is it necessary to baptize them?
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In order that their sanctity will achieve even incredible heights. It is true that every baby will go to heaven if they had died baptized or not. We give to them the rights of the Holy Spirit in order for them with the proper teaching, corrections and mentoring to achieve their sanctity to become saints. However this be things can get into the way. Sanctity in children can be a blessing as we see it in St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Dominic Savio and the two Fatima children seers. God has given us saints in our midst with the children that are among us. We (the adults) however with our limited understanding do not at times see this in our children. With the proper channeling of God’s graces every child has this possibility to be led into God’s understand of His will.
 
Would jesus forbid a child to be baptized? Did he not love the little children?

Also baptism makes you a child of God. Read the Acts of the Apostles…they baptized ENTIRE households…would that not include babies and children?

Find and read the Didache…its a compliation of what the early church taught…i think you can read it online.
 
nat_c1990 said:
If that’s the case, why is it necessary to baptize them?
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Because they need it. Here’s what scripture says:

Psalm 51:5
5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

This shows the need for the cleansing of baptism from the moment of conception. So, even before a child has the capacity to commit personal sins, he or she is fallen as a result of Adam’s original sin.
 
Catechism

The Baptism of infants

1250 Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called.50 The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.51

1251 Christian parents will recognize that this practice also accords with their role as nurturers of the life that God has entrusted to them.52

1252 The practice of infant Baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church. There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on, and it is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole “households” received baptism, infants may also have been baptized.53

scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c1a1.htm#IV
 
nat_c1990 said:
Hello, everyone.

My husband and I are in the process of converting to Catholicism. We are currently attending RCIA classes but we haven’t really touched on the subject of baptism yet. I was just wondering, why does the church think it’s so important to baptize babies?** I was always told that all babies go to Heaven because they are innocent.** I was taught that a person only goes to hell if they willfully choose to deny Jesus. Since babies and young children aren’t capable of understanding such things or making such decisions, wouldn’t they automatically go to Heaven? If that’s the case, why is it necessary to baptize them?
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I’m afraid you have been misinformed. Unbaptized infants and children may or may not go to heaven. This has not been revealed. This is the reason the church baptizes infants even in Lent.

It HAS been revealed that baptized infants go directly to heaven.

But through history, the hypothesized that they go to Heaven
(Ambrose believed that baptized infants went to heaven)
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, to Hell
(In countering Pelagius, Augustine was led to state that infants who die without Baptism are consigned to hell)
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, to Limbo
(The idea of Limbo, which the Church has used for many centuries to designate the destiny of infants who die without Baptism, has no clear foundation in revelation)
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or some to Heaven, some to Hell.

We cannot say Hell for sure, since they have never chose to sin.
We cannot say Heaven for sure, for they have never chosen to do any good in this world.
 
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