Well, that is an interesting way to put it! I think that is one of the (many) things that has helped us on the journey so far. There’s no superstition about baptizing the children and my understanding (correct me if I’m wrong) is that my very young children would not be held accountable at this point in time for their lack of baptism. Neither of us were baptized or raised Catholic (we were both baptized, and as far as I know those baptisms would be valid in the eyes of the Church), and we had no understanding of the responsibility to baptize until we were led to the Catholic church (since we were in an Evangelical church for several years, where they teach it is wrong to baptize infants.)
You’ll find that Catholics do not find the matter of baptising children superstitious at all. It comes down to a question of whether baptism has any real necessary role in salvation or not. The Church holds that it absolutely does. This point is worth explaining, because there is a lot of misinformation out there about it.
Human beings do not come into the world innocent. We come into the world in original sin, wanting to decide good and bad for ourselves. Even from direct observation, no one can argue that we are born God-centered and only learn to be self-centered as we approach the age of reason. Nope…we think we’re the authorities on good and bad from Day 1, no doubt about it. Original sin is not a bookkeeping concept made up by theologians, then. It is real.
The question has been what happens to infants who die without baptism, since it is not their fault that they have not been received into the Body of Christ. None of us baptised as infants did anything to deserve it, and certainly baptism isn’t some kind of magic spell. Unlike adults who die without the benefit of baptism, infants have not even had the chance to make a choice to sin from the use of their reason.
You may be aware of a speculative idea that those in this state might be in what is called limbo, which was neither hell (where those guilty of unrepented personal sin and rejecting of God are punished) nor heaven (where the blessed, having been freed from the state of sin by having accepted the saving redemption of Jesus Christ, see and enjoy the company of God) but rather a place of natural happiness. This idea was widely held as a solution for what happens to those who die without the benefit of baptism, but was not an official teaching of the Church.
The truth is that this is one of those questions, like whether or not it is possible to repent of the mortal sin of suicide, that don’t have an answer that we can know. We know that there is nothing standing between Heaven and a child who is both baptised and too young to have committed personal sin. We don’t know how God’s mercy and justice apply to those who are in these other special circumstances. We can hope with good reason that when God takes care of their situation in all mercy and justice, they will be taken into Heaven. We can’t presume to know things about the mercy of God that haven’t been directly revealed. We cannot assume that it is impossible for them to suffer for our negligence. We certainly know that they can be denied the normal opportunity for salvation by our negligence.
On this account, the children of Catholic parents are to be baptised as soon after birth as possible, because the grace and necessity of baptism are real. So while the Church teaches that no one who dies is to be thought beyond the mercy of God, not even the worst sinner who publicly and vehemently rejected Christ and persecuted his faithful ones, and that none of us may judge anyone based on our limited knowledge, the Church also teaches that none of us may presume on the mercy of God as a reason to shirk our duties. Baptism does matter, baptism does have an effect on the faithful, even infants, and it is an extremely important duty for Catholic parents to baptise their children as soon as possible and to raise them diligently in the faith.
