Catholic and Enjoying It!
The opposite practice of the Catholic and the Baptist churches, in their treatment of the new-born infant, may be well compared to the conduct of the true and the false mother who both claimed the child at the tribunal of Solomon. The king exclaimed: “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” The pretended mother consented, saying: Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. “But the woman whose child was alive, said to the king (for her bowels were moved upon her child): I beseech thee, my lord, give her the child alive, and do not kill it.” While the Baptist church is willing that the child should die a spiritual death, the true mother, the Catholic Church, cries out: Keep the child, provided its spiritual life is saved, even at your hands. Let it be clothed with the robe of innocence even by a stranger. Let it be nursed at the breasts even of a step-mother. Better it should live without me than perish before my face. I will still be its mother, though it know me not.
Ah! my Baptist friend, you think that Baptism is not necessary for your child’s salvation. The old Church teaches the contrary. You admit that you may be wrong, and it is a question of life and death. Take the safe side. Give you child the benefit of the doubt. Let it be baptized.
Arguments against infant baptism have always struck me as odd, particularly for Protestants. If the rationale for the Protestant revolt was that Catholics believed in salvation by works, what is the sense of saying that babies have to perform the intellectual work of being able to articulate an adult understanding of Christian theology in order to qualify to receive grace? If you believe that babies are afflicted with original sin, then why not give them the grace they need?
Of course, later species of Protestantism would remedy the problem by the simple expedient of denying original sin too. Oddly, however, they would still find something offensive in the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. I have no idea why this would be, since if you deny original sin, you are maintaining a faith in the Immaculate Conception of Everybody. But such is Mariaphobic Response Syndrome that Mary is often singled out for special opprobrium. We all get to be sinless except her. We all get to have crowns in heaven, except for the Queen of Heaven.
Very odd.
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