J
jilly4ski
Guest
LOL.And I don’t believe that it is a reasonable request when they ask you to go to the private home of the “host couple.”
What’s next? Asking couples getting married to visit the home of a married couple? Oh, wait, our parish tried that. When they found out that their “teaching couple” was headed for divorce, they decided that maybe that wasn’t such a great idea.
When my first child was baptized the deacon gave a little “sermon” that was supposed to be our preparation. Of course he rambled on about how it was fine that you leave the church, because hey you were baptized, and you can always come say you are sorry on your death bed.
When my second was born, the deacon had (luckily) retired and so they had instituted a baptismal class. We luckily got out of that one since we had just had a child baptized less than 2 years before.
Along comes our third child, we are in a different parish and a different diocese, and a 3 hour, evening class is required for parents and Godparents. Not to mention we were not members of the parish yet, because we had recently moved (and were unsure of the parish boundaries, since the diocese had recently gone through some consolidation and we sort of live the boarders of 3 parishes). Luckily we were going through a priest transition, and got out of the class requirement because of the close proximity of the previous baptisms, the new priest decided to delegate giving these exceptions to the secretary. We had no idea how we would have gotten to this class, between our 2 older children and our work schedules, not to mention our sponsors were/college students and working evening jobs, and they could not attend either. They did hand us an informational pamphlet on baptism and the canonical requirements (which I already knew), but I happily read in some spare time.
Now our 4th is coming (which thank you, I have to make sure I call the parish in early June here, since we will want the baptism in early August (baby is due late July)). If they try and get us to take a class, I think the entire church will hear the sound of my eyes rolling. We still have to find Godparents, (we will probably have to reuse a set), because we are serious in finding those who meet the canonical requirements for baptismal sponsors. (Which includes potentially offending and alienating family members, because they do not meet the requirements).
So sometimes the requirements of these classes or being members of a parish for 6 months, or whatever they are, can be very burdensome.
. My local parish, in order to comply with the SD parish, made me go to 4 weeks of parent prep classes for baptism, since that was all they had. Much of it didn’t apply in the least as it included info & sign-ups for child & family ministries within the parish, Catholic school info, rules about the scheduling of the baptism, etc. I was the only non-pregnant woman in the room!