Is baptism really necessary?

[Sandy_akins]

my niece is being taught in school,that baptism isn’t necessay for salvation.my own personal belief is yes it is,if you truly belive in Christ and are willing to receive the Holy Spirit @ baptism.and to follow his precepts.I quoted to her mother (my sister) the following chapter mark 16 verse 16.he that believes & is baptized will be saved.I have been Catholic for 3 years.I need help in teaching her.Help!!!.thank you.

 

[Monique_Mores]

Hi, I’m new here. I hope I can explain it.
The Catholic Church teaches that if you person wants to be a really catholic it will have to receive the baptism. It means that the soul of the Catholic Church who is the Holy Spirit will be received by the child or person how accept the catholic church’s creed. So that person will have, once with the baptism, the grace that made one grows as a new person, grows as someone with the faculties to do what God wants from and for us. So, if somebody wants to be a real catholic, to do what Jesus asked us to do, one will need the grace and the Holy Spirit how give the grace to be a real “Christian”, someone that follows Jesus not only believing, or praying, but being one with Jesus, who is God himself. So, being without the baptism you are outside the Church, you are still with the original sin.
I hope I have help you.
Monique.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation. There are extraordinary cases where the baptism is not water baptism, but it is baptism nonetheless (a martyr who plans to convert but dies before baptism is said to undergo baptism by blood, a person who never heard the Gospel but nevertheless felt God in his heart and tried to reach Him may have undergone baptism by desire).

I imagine the confusion might be from this:

Yet Christians have also always realized that the necessity of water baptism is a normative rather than an absolute necessity. There are exceptions to water baptism: It is possible to be saved through “baptism of blood,” martyrdom for Christ, or through “baptism of desire”, that is, an explicit or even implicit desire for baptism.

Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Those who die for the faith, those who are catechumens, and all those who, without knowing of the Church but acting under the inspiration of grace, seek God sincerely and strive to fulfill his will, are saved even if they have not been baptized” (CCC 1281; the salvation of unbaptized infants is also possible under this system; cf. CCC 1260–1, 1283).

catholic.com/library/Necessity_of_Baptism.asp