in danger, infant licitly baptized against the will of parents

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joanofarc2008 said:
Hey I think some are missing the point. Children are entrusted to the Lord if not baptized - they do not automatically go to Hell, to Limbo, or anywhere. I honestly think that if there is a doubt as to a parent’s faith that one should respect the parents and not be disrespectful. However, I also believe if a Catholic child is in danger of death and a priest cannot be reached then yes, they should be baptized immediately.
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The teaching of the Church is that we don’t know what happens to those children who die without baptism. We trust in God’s mercy, but we just don’t know - it has not been revealed. Babies who die after being Baptized, however, are assured Heaven.
1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,"64 allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.
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[CCC, bolding mine]
 
It would be religiously and historically offensive, says the poster above, a Jewish lady.

I can understand where she is coming from, as it bugs me
that Mormons baptize DEAD Catholics by proxy in their temples with Mormon baptisms.
But you know what? It really DOESN’T BUG ME, because
  1. I’m not scared of Mormon baptisms. If it turns out (which it won’t) that we
    catholics ARE wrong, then the Mormons will have done us a favor.
  2. Even if Mormons had taken our children from us in previous centuries (which they couldn’t have, cuz they’ve only been around since about 1830), I wouldn’t care about the baptisms today because I’d still regard them as invalid and harmless at worst.
  3. I, unlike some other groups, and not filled with pride so that I would get angry
    over something that is meant as a saving act that brings graces from God upon a
    person.
I would baptize a dying child in a heartbeat and feel no twinge of remorse about it.
First of all, acts done out of concern for another person’s soul, whether that person is
Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Pagan, what have you, are acts
of love, are “mitzvahs” (even if invalid in the end, when God reveals all things) and are
thus NEVER OFFENSIVE to God.

I would never tell a Jewish person, if I found out the child’s parents names, that I had baptized their baby, nor tell them that they have any obligation to raise the baby Catholic. You don’t get in people’s faces like that.
But I would, rightly, feel no guilt at all about having baptized the baby.
If we Catholics turn out to be 100% wrong, no harm was done to anyone (except to a person’s pride perhaps, but such pride is always a sin, says all scriptures, and both the Tanakh and the New Testament, condemn such pride, and all pride, explicitly.)
At worst, even if we Catholics have God all wrong, and Jesus never existed, and the whole thing is a pious sham, the worst that happened was an innocent baby got a few drops of water on his or her head.

I’m not going, however, to argue in defense of Catholic zealots who used to steal Jewish babies from their parents. There is no valid defense of that. NOBODY has any right to do that.
But a baptism? Harmless at worst, a blessing at best.
I pray for EVERYBODY’s salvation, not just my own, and prayer too is a blessing.
If some are offended that they are prayed-for by a catholic, that is just too darned bad.
I am not out to win friends and influence people (to like me) when I pray for them.
It is done as a spiritual work of mercy and kindness, a mitzvah.
But I don’t get in people’s faces and say, hey you un-saved Muslim, or hey you un-saved Jew, or hey you un-saved protestant (or WHATEVER), “I” am praying for you whether you like it or not, cuz that’s rude.
**((**B]And to clarify, not only is it rude, but our Catholic Church teaches that we CANNOT KNOW who is un-saved or saved (in the State of Grace). God is bound TO, not bound BY, His sacraments, and we cannot rightfully assume that any nonCatholic is in a state of damnation ((unless they are doing heinous things, in which case it would be foolish to assume that they are in a State of Saving Grace at that moment!!!))
As Jesus taught us, when you do a good deed,
DO NOT LET YOUR LEFT HAND KNOW WHAT YOUR RIGHT HAND IS DOING.
I.e., do not do it out of pride, or out of a desire to be thanked, or a desire to get your name on a plaque in a public place, or any other prideful reason whatsoever. When we do a good deed, don’t brag about it to the person we’re doing it for, whether they are Catholic or Jewish or whatever. When someone does a good deed for you, then BRAGS TO YOU about having done it, doesn’t it at the very least make you feel kind of funny, kind of humiliated? Not the deed, but the bragging about it. It puts ME on the spot.
NOW, if I TELL YOU that I am asking for your prayers, and you tell me that you are going to pray for me, that’s not bragging on your part, that is giving me the comfort of knowing that you are caring enough to honor my request.
But when people help me, and then brag about doing it, to me and others, it makes me feel, not humble, but humiliated. There is a WORLD of difference between feeliing humble and feeling humiliated.
So, do nothing out of pride. If you baptize a dying person, don’t bother to ask what their religion was. And don’t humiliate their family by bragging to them about it. Let it be between you and the LORD Almighty. Good deeds, mitzvahs, are not properly done for personal glory, but for the OTHER person’s good, without embarassing or humiliating them in the process.
 
Kaninchen said:
There’s a history to all this that makes Jewish parents shudder - at one time, when somebody did this to a Jewish child (even in the street, yes, seriously), the child would be taken from the parents because a (now, supposedly) ‘Christian’ baby/child could not be raised by Jews.

So, while the action may well be done with the best intentions by the baptizer, to us their intention is meaningless, while the action is religiously and historically offensive.
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Do you have some historical reference that Jewish children were essentially siezed in the street, baptized and kidnapped?
 
Jaypeeto4 said:
I would never tell a Jewish person, if I found out the child’s parents names, that I had baptized their baby, nor tell them that they have any obligation to raise the baby Catholic. You don’t get in people’s faces like that.
But I would, rightly, feel no guilt at all about having baptized the baby.
If we Catholics turn out to be 100% wrong, no harm was done to anyone (except to a person’s pride perhaps, but such pride is always a sin, says all scriptures, and both the Tanakh and the New Testament, condemn such pride, and all pride, explicitly.)
At worst, even if we Catholics have God all wrong, and Jesus never existed, and the whole thing is a pious sham, the worst that happened was an innocent baby got a few drops of water on his or her head.

I’m not going, however, to argue in defense of Catholic zealots who used to steal Jewish babies from their parents. There is no valid defense of that. NOBODY has any right to do that.
But a baptism? Harmless at worst, a blessing at best.
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The case of Edgar Mortara stands, unfortunately, as an illustration of the harm of baptizing a (purportedly) gravely ill child without the parents’ consent.
 
Kaninchen said:
It doesn’t happen because you no longer have the power to impose your will.
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i.e., because the state within which that one thing happened one time (150 years ago), an absolute papal monarchy wherein the laws were known to all, has since been destroyed. Care to try again?

I cannot imagine what extremes of paranoia and spite would drive one to react with rage against an act of love directed toward one’s own child, however misguided one may think such an act is.
 
**The case of Edgar Mortara stands, unfortunately, as an illustration of the harm of baptizing a (purportedly) gravely ill child without the parents’ consent. **

Howdy!!
Could you enlighten us a bit???
I am not familiar with an Edgar Mortara?? What happened in his case???
thanks
 
Jaypeeto4 said:
**The case of Edgar Mortara stands, unfortunately, as an illustration of the harm of baptizing a (purportedly) gravely ill child without the parents’ consent. **

Howdy!!
Could you enlighten us a bit???
I am not familiar with an Edgar Mortara?? What happened in his case???
thanks
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Hi Jaypeeto4—

Here is the Wiki article on Edgardo Mortara:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgardo_Mortara

He was baptised by a Catholic house servant in the Papal States as a six year old boy, then taken away from his parents because a child baptised as a Catholic could not be raised by non-Catholic parents.

I am not being anti-Catholic here–I’m appreciative of Catholicism. But, put oneself in his family’s shoes.
 
sw85 said:
i.e., because the state within which that one thing happened one time (150 years ago), an absolute papal monarchy wherein the laws were known to all, has since been destroyed. Care to try again?

I cannot imagine what extremes of paranoia and spite would drive one to react with rage against an act of love directed toward one’s own child, however misguided one may think such an act is.
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If your child were taken away from you and raised in another faith completely against your consent, you wouldn’t mind?
 
grandfather said:
catholic-forum.com/saints/pope025501.htm

Interesting bit of history.
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Here is the personal statement of Mortara about his life.
You have to paste it in to open it. I don’t know how to post a link.

A Jewish poster indicated that Jewish babies were baptized and siezed in the streets, perhaps as a common occurence. I know of no such history. The unique case of Mortara is quite interesting though, esapecially from his own perspective and how he reveals the attacks on the Church by the secularists of the day. Nothing has changed.
 
In the case of children who are NOT in immediate danger of death, baptism against the parents’ wishes is discouraged in the strongest possible terms. Even children in their late teens are very frequently told to wait until they reach their majority, and to be obedient to their parents in matters of religion in the mean time.

This is partly in recognition of the principle that parents are in spiritual authority over the child. Not well-meaning strangers, not anyone to whom the parents refuse to give spiritual authority (of course practicing Catholic parents do willingly recognize the spiritual authority of their priests).

It is also in recognition that baptism in and of itself does not aid that much in regards salvation where there is no intent, when and if the child grows, to instruct it in the Catholic faith. For this reason baptism has sometimes been refused even to nominally Catholic parents if they are not practicing.

To my mind a baptism done against the wishes of the parents is like giving a licence to drive to someone who has no knowledge of either the road rules or how to drive and refuses to properly learn either. Potentially in an emergency situation it might prove useful, but the risks are enormous.

My own view is that, just as parents who are believers take the responsibility of their child’s soul onto themselves, and so answer for that child before God at it’s baptism, so parents who refuse baptism will be held to account for that failure by God, not the child and not any well wishing bystanders.
 
grandfather said:
Here is the personal statement of Mortara about his life.
You have to paste it in to open it. I don’t know how to post a link.

A Jewish poster indicated that Jewish babies were baptized and siezed in the streets, perhaps as a common occurence. I know of no such history. The unique case of Mortara is quite interesting though, esapecially from his own perspective and how he reveals the attacks on the Church by the secularists of the day. Nothing has changed.
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Hi grandfather—

The link works fine in both posts for me.

Hmm…To be frank, reading Mortara’s words is even more disturbing to me.
 
Kaninchen said:
So, the lesson to the rest of us is to keep our children well away from Catholics?
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Yes that is correct. If you look at history there were the problems that you envision when the Jews decided not to follow the law and hire Catholics to work for them on the Sabbath.
 
Cardinalidae said:
How can it be canon law and unethical?
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It says it is licit even if against the parents will, not that it’s compulsory to Baptize against the parents will.

Decisions related to children are for their parents in my opinion.
 
grandfather said:
Here is the personal statement of Mortara about his life.
You have to paste it in to open it. I don’t know how to post a link.

A Jewish poster indicated that Jewish babies were baptized and siezed in the streets, perhaps as a common occurence. I know of no such history. The unique case of Mortara is quite interesting though, esapecially from his own perspective and how he reveals the attacks on the Church by the secularists of the day. Nothing has changed.
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The uniqueness of Mortara lies in the kidnapper rather than the kidnapped.
 
sw85 said:
i.e., because the state within which that one thing happened one time (150 years ago), an absolute papal monarchy wherein the laws were known to all, has since been destroyed. Care to try again?
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“That one thing”? What happened to the centuries of antisemitic persecution and prevailing religious pressure from Christians?
sw85 said:
I cannot imagine what extremes of paranoia and spite would drive one to react with rage against an act of love directed toward one’s own child, however misguided one may think such an act is.
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But you would (I assume) have an idea of the reaction, especially in the case of a dying child.
 
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