Trying to understand why Church allows baptism for children raised by gay couples

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To baptize a child makes him a member of the Church, which brings with it all the responsibilities of being a Catholic. If the parents will not raise him in the Faith, he is being denied the ability to fulfill these responsibilities required by his baptism. It would be like making him a Marine while denying him any basic training, yet expecting a good result.
 
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Are you talking to the OP or is that supposed to be general statement?
 
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If OP means original post then yes it was response to that. As I scrolled through many of the responses were mocking and/or judgmental. As someone who works in the field of recovery, it is my 9-5 but also the work of all Christians to be a light and an example of love that leads individuals to Christ. If it is Light or darkness, Life or death, we are always called to choose Life. We are always called to Love. He came to heal the sick and the broken. His target audience. As someone constantly in need of His mercy I don’t assume to cut anyone off from what is not ours to take. We are the true faith. We are the Church of Christ and the greatest commandment He have was to Love. God is Love. Love always comes first.
 
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My kids were taught in their Catholic school that love means “willing the good of the other”. It’s not just a warm fuzzy feeling and letting people do whatever they want…
 
VanitasVanitatum said:
How so?..
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Seriously? At first I thought you simply were being over protective of the Church, now I see that it must be something else. Time for some personal study perhaps.

1213 Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit (vitae spiritualis ianua) ,4 and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word."5

** 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.

**[1257] The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation.
 
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esieffe said:
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.
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That sounds more like a privilege than an actual help that is necessary to the child.
 
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VanitasVanitatum said:
That sounds more like a privilege than an actual help that is necessary to the child.
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Nothing personal, but your last two comments, including this one shows that you need to study doctrine. That’s ok, we all have to start from somewhere. I’m out.
 
It is not useless.Baptism in itself is a grace. Heard many conversion stories of people who were baptized in the catholic church as infants, not brought up in the catholic faith, living a sinful life for many years but always being drawn back to the catholic church in one way or the other until they finally convert. Some of these converts discovered only after their conversions that they were baptized as children in the catholic church.
So baptizing a child is never useless.
 
Leferdion said:
So baptizing a child is never useless.
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As the Catechism teaches : " Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . .We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God’s Lordship. "

For me those are “WOW !!!” words .

I wish I had been taught them years ago .
 
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The fascinating assumption many people in this conversation seem to have is that disagreeing with the Church on one moral claim implies that two people have no intention to raise a child in the faith.

I don’t think you would say the same in other cases. If a woman asked for her child to be baptized, and intended to bring the child to catechism classes, but admitted that she didn’t believe in transubstantiation, would you say baptism should be denied? If a man believed that it was morally permissible to kill innocent people in order to accomplish political goals, should we deny baptism to his child too?

There seems to be some fear that children raised by gay couples are incapable of thinking for themselves, and seeing the wrongness of homosexual acts. That fear is completely unfounded. Indeed, the fear might indicate that the person who HAS the fear doesn’t understand why homosexual activity is wrong.
 
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JimG said:
Is it fair to a child to incorporate him into a Church which he will not know or uderstand because his parents are opposed to it?
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Do you propose that disagreeing with one claim that the Church makes – or even a set of claims – implies that one is opposed to the faith as a whole? Does it seem likely to you that two people completely opposed to Catholicism would request that a child they are raising be baptized?
 
prayerrider said:
The issue is that the two so-called parents are utterly unfit to raise the child in the Catholic faith. They could hold PhDs in theology–doesnt matter. They are putting their own lust before Christ.
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Just to be clear here, no one in our day and age marries because of lust. It’s not lust that is the issue; it is divergent beliefs about the nature of marriage.

If we want to talk about lust, the Church has long – and rightly – baptized the children of parents who were immersed in lustful behavior, whether adultery, promiscuity, pornography, or whatever.
 
It can’t be used as an argument either way.
 
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Prodigal_Son said:
If a woman asked for her child to be baptized, and intended to bring the child to catechism classes, but admitted that she didn’t believe in transubstantiation, would you say baptism should be denied? If a man believed that it was morally permissible to kill innocent people in order to accomplish political goals, should we deny baptism to his child too?
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If they are vocal about those beliefs, yes.
 
Prodigal_Son said:
Do you propose that disagreeing with one claim that the Church makes – or even a set of claims – implies that one is opposed to the faith as a whole? Does it seem likely to you that two people completely opposed to Catholicism would request that a child they are raising be baptized?
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I can imagine the family is expecting it or bapism may allow the child get into a better school.
 
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