“Acrobatic” Baby Baptisms Are Disturbing to Watch

At the Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi, Georgia, baptizing babies appears to be an Olympic sport:

The event was part of a mass baptism on Thursday:

The mass baptism was an invention of Patriarch Ilya II, considered one of Georgia’s most influential men.

He came up with the idea to stimulate the country’s low birth rate, promising to personally baptise every third child in each family.

Why would any parents seeing their baby flipped around like that ever want to have more children…? I have no idea.

Here’s a question worth discussing, though: If this didn’t happen in a church, and it wasn’t called a “baptism,” and the baby-dunker wasn’t wearing religious garb, would society be okay with his actions? Or would we call it child abuse?