Catholic and Enjoying It!
So Luke is naturally reading my latest piece on baptism to her in order to give her solid catechesis in preparation for the event.
Speaking of which, a reader writes:
I was raised as a Baptist, so I guess you would consider me a fundamentalist evangelical. I have been in the church and devoted to it’s teachings and am now 46 yrs. of age. I did however go through a period of “following my own (at times sinful) path” in my late twenties and to make a long story short I am now remarried to a Catholic man. We have a son who was baptized as an infant into the Catholic church at my husband’s desire. I went along but it meant nothing to me as I did not believe in it. My husband was on the Catholic road and I was renewing my walk with God on the Baptist road.
My husband strongly desired my son attend a Catholic school when he begins Kindergarten next year. I agreed but began studying the Catholic faith so that I could “refute” what he learned with the real truth of my Baptist upbringing. God has now begun to work in my heart and I feel I am questioning much of what I believed for so long and am being drawn to the Catholic faith (which is really miraculous considering I even spent a year at Bob Jones University) and seeing it in a whole new light. I ordered your CD on the Eucharist, Mary, and Sacred Tradition. I have read multiple books and watched many DVD’s by other protestants who embraced the Catholic faith. I am working through many questions but am really having trouble with infant baptism.
I understand that this practice may have begun with Cornelius and the apostles baptizing households(?)However, I can’t seem to get past my belief that a personal dedication to Jesus should come first. Scripture tells us to repent and be baptized, in that order. Also, how exactly does a child “receive” Jesus or come to a time when he makes that decision for himself that he truly wants to follow Jesus if the parents have already done it for him in baptism?? I guess I am wondering when does there become a personal acceptance of Jesus as Lord of their lives since they had no part as an infant in the decision of their baptism?
Please help! I loved your CD’s and saw you on the Journey Home………….God bless you for helping us struggling Protestants!
The Church’s theology of baptism, like pretty much all it’s theology, springs from the practice of Jesus and the apostles that was handed down. So Scripture has always been read in light of the practice. In the case of baptism, it is true that the apostles hand down texts of Scripture which say “believe and be baptised” (because the author presume the texts will be heard by adults and so they presume adult responsibility for responding to their preaching). But just as much, they also hand down the practice of baptising infants below the age of reason, with the presumption that children will be raised by their parents to follow the Way. The assumption, in short, is that the same thing which occurred with the paralytic at Capernaum will happen with children. The paralytic, you will recall, is not recorded as the one with faith. It was when Jesus saw the faith of his friends that he healed the man. This is a profoundly Catholic idea: the notion that “each is responsible for all” and that our faith really can supply what is lacking in another, that we hold one another up with our prayers.
All this goes back to the grace of God, of course, and that’s really what the sacrament of baptism is about. We are bound to do as much as we can in obedience to God. For an adult of normal intelligence, that means making an act of faith in Christ. An infant below the age of reason cannot do this, so his parents seek the grace of baptism for him and it is their act of faith that supplies his lack.
The basic mistake of Baptist theology regarding baptism is that it conceives of the sacrament as something other than a sacrament. It becomes something we do for God (flying our flag or declaring our allegiance to him) rather than something he does for us. The problem with this notion is that it paradoxically makes baptism a form of salvation by works, in this case intellectual works. Y’see, we’re all afflicted with original sin. If you have to be smart enough to understand justification by faith or ask Jesus into your heart as you personal Lord and Savior, then infants and children below the age of reason, as well as mentally disable adults can’t be saved.
The practice of the Church from the apostles on down was to baptize babies right away. It was a deeply Jewish thing to do, since baptism (which Paul regards as the “circumcision of the heart”) was the rite of initiation into the covenant, and Jews had been initiating their infant sons into the covenant on the eighth day since forever. Also, it’s highly practical given a world which, until very recently, had a staggering infant mortality rate. But most of all, it basically recognized that it was never too early for the grace of God to be at work in the heart. Certainly, that does not imply that the child does not need to make an adult act of faith in Jesus Christ (that is, in the West, basically what the sacrament of Confirmation aims to strengthen and bless). Rather, it’s a recognition that we really are justified by grace apart from works, including works of being able to speak.
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