Why baptize infants catholic

Thank you! Donate now! And today we celebrate Prayer for this morning. Daily meditation. Prayer for this evening. One begins to wonder about the purpose of baptizing someone who cannot answer for himself or herself, especially since it is readily apparent that babies are incapable of choosing to act sinfully, and so do not need to be cleansed of sin in the same way that adults who have chosen to sin do.

The answer to this question, however, involves more than a simple difference of tradition. First, it is helpful to understand the unique nature of the Catholic understanding of the sacrament of baptism as opposed to the understanding of baptism by other Christian denominations. It also states that baptism is what incorporates mankind into the life of the Church, and so it is through baptism that mankind is able to attain salvation at all.

Following this understanding of baptism, it would make sense that Christian denominations, in general, would not baptize their babies. In their churches, baptism is ultimately just an outward sign of a choice that a person has made, namely that they have made the decision to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior and live according to His laws. It would thus not be fitting to hold a baptism for a baby since they are incapable of making this choice which is the reason for baptism in their understanding.

Turning to the Catholic understanding of baptism, however, we bear witness to several beautiful truths that are fundamental to the Catholic faith. Most paintings of John the Baptist depict him holding a shell in his hand, with water pouring from it, in reference to when he baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. The symbol of a shell is often found on baptismal fonts, and many priests use a receptacle in the shape of a shell to pour the baptismal water onto the heads of infants.

Pope Francis urges all of us to remember the date of our baptism, just as we would any important date—birthdays, anniversaries, etc. We end up considering it merely as an event that took place in the past — and not even by our will, but rather by that of our parents — that has no effect on the present.

Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. Why Do Catholics Baptize Babies? When St. The Scriptures also demonstrate that the early Church baptized babies.

In the Book of Acts, for example, St. Peter preached to the crowd:. This same word, teknon,is used later in Acts to describe the circumcision of eight-day-old infants. The Book of Acts speaks of whole households being baptized, so any infants and children who belonged to these households would have been included.

In none of these accounts is there ever any indication that infants and children are excluded from baptism.

Finally, in any discussion of infant baptism we should remember the correlation between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, babies were circumcised when they were eight days old see Gn ; Lv This was the sign by which they entered into the covenant.