D
dchernik
Guest
So, I come across a Wikipedia article on legitimacy, and there is quotation from Pope Francis:
“In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptise the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalise the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptised!”
As soon as I read this, I figure, well obviously, the reason to refuse baptism to illegitimate children is not to punish the children but to discourage illegitimacy. If parents know that the church will not baptize their children unless the parents are married, then this presents a potentially weighty incentive for them, indeed, to marry. The children who are not baptized are thereby sacrificed for the sake of society. To find out whether this policy makes sense, we’d need to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs. I’m not sure how we might go about doing that, but this is the idea. Surely, Francis must grasp the basic trade-off.
Am I right? Or is there some kind of defect in the children conceived out of wedlock themselves that prevents them from receiving baptism or even benefiting from it at all?
Is this matter up to the discretion of an individual priest, such that one parish will refuse baptism, while another will grant it, and it’s a matter of doing some legwork on the part of the single mother? I mean, in reference to “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”?
“In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptise the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalise the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptised!”
As soon as I read this, I figure, well obviously, the reason to refuse baptism to illegitimate children is not to punish the children but to discourage illegitimacy. If parents know that the church will not baptize their children unless the parents are married, then this presents a potentially weighty incentive for them, indeed, to marry. The children who are not baptized are thereby sacrificed for the sake of society. To find out whether this policy makes sense, we’d need to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs. I’m not sure how we might go about doing that, but this is the idea. Surely, Francis must grasp the basic trade-off.
Am I right? Or is there some kind of defect in the children conceived out of wedlock themselves that prevents them from receiving baptism or even benefiting from it at all?
Is this matter up to the discretion of an individual priest, such that one parish will refuse baptism, while another will grant it, and it’s a matter of doing some legwork on the part of the single mother? I mean, in reference to “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”?