Baby Baptism
continued
AngelMom,
Baptism of babies was started by the Catholic Church in the Dark Ages as a
respond to the abandonment of babies going on. Here's what happened:
They didn't have any form of birth control back then, and many were having
babies that they were convinced they couldn't raise. There were no abortion
clinics, so they did the 'next best thing': they abandoned the new borns in
ditches, etc. They rationalized this to themselves by saying that the baby in
going to heaven, and we are sparing it an awful life on earth.
Not only was this a horrible thing to do to the children, but the dead babies
brought many diseases as they rotted.
The church wanted to change that, and came up with a plan that remembered that
these people were caring, but not thoughtful.
So, in a brilliant ploy, the Catholic church pushed a program that played upon
the concept of Original Sin (By the way, was Adam's sin any worse than any of
mine?). It was a two-part plan:
1. Tell people that babies are condemned to hell, which will make people not
want to abandon them, as their rationalization was now challenged.
2. To stop the baby from going to hell, it had to be 'purified' through baptism
when a priest came and visited. (Most churches did not have full-time priests,
they traveled over a region and were in any one area about once or twice a
month.)
Here's why it worked back then:
A child would be born, and they would notify the priest (no email, no reliable
mail system, so they found a traveler, or waited for the scheduled visit) so the
baptism could happen and then (in secret) they would try to dump the baby.
But, the priest took to long to get there, and by the time he did, they had
already bonded with the baby and could no longer bring themselves to dumping him
or her.
They kept their babies, and we got out of the dark ages into the middle ages.
No, this is not the only reason, but it was a start and a part of the solution.
The reason my wife and I had a "parent-child" dedication for both our children
was to stand before God, in the same way we did when we married each other, and
commit to Him, in the presence of fellow believers, that we would raise them to
love and glorify Him, and that we needed His help to do so.
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