Infant Baptism as Child Abuse? part 1

A prominent Catholic recently argued in the Irish Times for a new category of victim: those subjected to infant baptism, especially as practiced by the Catholic Church. Former president of Ireland and canon lawyer Mary McAleese declared it to be “a long-standing, systemic and overlooked severe restriction on children’s rights with regard to religion.” . . .This is an eloquent testimony to the moral disorientation that marks our present age.

The Grammar of Consent*

Applying a little water obviously does not hurt the baby and so is not what constitutes the alleged abuse.  The heart of her argument is that baptism turns children into Catholics without their consent.  Therefore, this violates the child’s religious rights.

This is an extreme and “risible” (laughable) example of a phenomenon I have long been writing about:  the way postmodernists have replaced the intellect with the will.  (See my Postmodern Times and its sequel Post-Christian.)  Instead of using the intellect to come to conclusions about what is objectively true, postmodernists–denying as much as they can the possibility of objective truth–fixate on what they choose.

They do this especially for moral issues.  Determining whether something is good or bad, for them, does not depend on reasoning about moral absolutes.  Rather, it depends on what a person consciously chooses.  Thus, those who believe in abortion call themselves pro-choice.  Whatever the woman chooses is right for her.  This does not mean that anything goes.  Anything that would deny her choice–laws, religion, pro-life clinic counselors–are evil.  Sexual morality hinges on the question of consent.  If there is free consent from both parties, pretty much any thing goes. But where consent is lacking, sex is wrong.

McAleese extends this principle to matters of religion and she extends its application to children.  Children must consent to any affiliation with a religion.  If they are not allowed to make a choice, as in baptizing them as infants, they are being seriously mistreated.

So if infant baptism is wrong, so must be evangelicals’ desire to raise their children as Christians.  Or to raise them as members of a culture–as Irish, in this case, or as Americans–unless and until the children can consent.  Raising them to instill moral behavior–to share, to be nice to others–would be an impermissible imposition of  the parents’ value system.  The children must choose their own values, and those who choose to be little rebels have a great future as subverters of the status quo.

Actually, much of the vocation of parenthood involves forming a child’s will, so that it learns to choose what is objectively good.  I saw an example of that two weeks ago in church.  Sitting in front of us was a mom with a two-year-old little girl.  The toddler found a pencil in the holder for the cards used to register attendance.  This pencil had been uncharacteristically ground to a sharp point.  The little girl started to stick it in her ear.  But before it went in, her mom alertly and calmly took it away from her.  Whereupon the little girl indignantly started crying.  I could tell exactly what she was thinking from the expression on her face, if she only had the words:  “I want to stick that pencil in my ear, but you won’t let me!  That is SO unfair!”  I thought, that’s how we are when God says “no” to us.  But parents also need to override their children’s choices sometimes for their own safety and benefit.  To be sure, the child’s will and consent are important, and the goal is to teach children, when they reach maturity and are on their own, to make wise choices–that is, choose in accord with the truth of physical and moral reality–and not to stick pencils in their ears.

The practice of not raising children in any particular religion, so that they can “choose” one when they are older, is actually fairly common.  Not only ex-presidents of Ireland but many parents talk that way.  But refusing to raise a child within a specific religious tradition does impose on that child religious beliefs.  Namely, that religion is not important.  Children see that it’s not important enough to their parents to bother teaching it to them.  And since they are not exposed to the religion in their formative years, they get used to not having it.  That is what harms a child.

*With apologies to another “prominent Catholic,” St. John Henry Newman, author of The  Grammar of Assent.  He was writing about what it means to “assent” to religious teachings. That is the work of the intellect, but, as he shows, more than the intellect.  We would say the “whole person.” But today the issue is not “assent” but “consent.”