Watering Down Baptism?

 While listening to Personally Speaking, a  Catholic interview program hosted by Monseigneur Jim Lisante, the prelate host shared sua sponte that he recently was approached by two lesbians who sought to have their child baptized.  Despite being turned away at two other parishes, the priest proclaimed to the couple:  “There isn’t anything in the bible about being gay so it must be OK” thus he consented to perform the sacrament.

The cleric’s superficial scriptural analysis speciously seems to ignore Jesus’ perspective on marriage in MT 19 as a married man and woman become one flesh. That passage clearly does not include alternative arrangements.   But the conundrum is on the propriety of baptizing a child to parents who manifestly are living contrary to the teachings of the church. 

While I appreciate the pastoral inclinations, the scenario calls into question the rationale for the sacrament of initiation and what is involved in infant baptism. Ideally, baptism claims the person as a child of God with an indelible mark on the soul. But an infant is unable to make baptismal promises, so those proclamations of faith are made by parents and godparents. Thus, pastoral discernment is required of the parents and godparents

Canon 1255 anticipates that the faith promise given infant baptism be supplemented by the parents, godparents and community.  In Acts 2:38 St. Peter exhorts us to “Repent and be baptized” which requires a metanoia (i.e. turning away from sin) in those professing the faith.

Practically speaking, the faith must be nurtured by the practice in the home church as well as with the People of God. The difficulty is when parents are living lives that are manifestly and publicly contrary to the tenants of the faith.

Those inclined to seek the mercy of God would surely say that an innocent child should not be punished for the sins of the parents.  But baptism involve promises made in rearing the child in the faith.   In this scenario, we can assume that they are living as a same sex couple and have pride in their lifestyle.  If one of the couple is biologically the mother, it raises issues about artificial insemination or procreation outside of marriage. This would mean that a child would be expected to be raised in the faith by a couple co-habitating outside of sacramental marriage and with orientations that the church teaches are disordered? 

 Despite Monseigneur Lisante’s claims, the Church in Canon 2357 considers homosexual acts as intrinsically disordered.   It is unclear if the couple was civilly married but the Church does not recognize such unions as being covenantial or sacramental. Perhaps the couple was not church going and those pastors deemed the sacrament of baptism being used as a ritualistic rite of passage rather than a conferral of grace.

Near the beginning of Pope Francis’ papacy, the Holy Father chided young priests to not become “little monsters” doggedly adhering to doctrine but instead to focus on compassion, evangelization and inclusion.  In that spirit, pastors may be reluctant to turn away anyone from the Church, even if adherence to baptismal promises made for them seem tenuous so as to see if takes hold. This calls to mind the conversion story of Fr. Donald Calloway who was baptized at age ten at the behest of Episcopalian kin even though his parents were not practicing their faith.  The only thing that he remembered from his baptismal sacrament of initiation was the donuts they eat afterwards.  Hearing his hair raising testimony, the graces of baptism did not take from merely that liturgical ritual.  Is it merciful to give the impression that one is saved by baptism but has no context to living properly as a Catholic Christian?

Pope Francis’ encyclical, Amoris Laetitia, attempted to reconcile the practice of the Catholic faith with the Modern Family.  Pope Francis declared that marriage was between a man and a woman for life (para. 62), same sex unions can not be equated with marriage (para. 52) and that education is the of a child is the “primary right” of parents (para. 84).  It is hard to believe that the child would be brought up in the ways of the church in the aforementioned scenario, which argues against  a profligate administration of baptism.

Pro arguendo, one could attempt to apply the logic of Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia in this instance.  After all, Pope Francis opined that pastors ought not throw moral stones and be done with irregular situations.  In footnote 351, the Holy Father sought to reconcile those in irregular marriages (Catholics civilly remarried after a divorce without obtaining an annulment) with the Church through a circuitous procedure in lieu of canon law.  

This alternative approach required extensive pastoral counseling for the couple so they could understand the wisdom of the Church and conforming their lives to the teaching.  In conforming irregular marriage to the norms of the church, the couple would need  to be catechized and gain an informed conscience. If children were a consideration and couples could not easily separate, so they would be enjoined from marital relations in order to receive the sacraments. And the couple would be encouraged to join another parish so as to avoid the appearance of scandal.  Of course, that is asking a lot. But the Gospel exhorts us: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” 

So how would this Amoris Laetitia logic be applied to parents of a child seeking baptism who are flagrantly living their lives contrary to Church teachings?  That’s the rub.  Those making the baptismal promises are more than falling short of virtue.  They are publicly living their lives contrary to the teaching of the Faith.  Amoris Laetitia anticipates some metanoia as well as a resolve to sin no more.  Is it reasonable to expect the child to be raised under the Church’s precepts, particularly with the Home Church defies the theology of the body and a sacredness of the covenant of marriage?  

In America, we fret about the lack of Sunday Mass by many baptized Catholics  and of the glaring lack of understanding of fundamental precepts of faith (e.g. the Real Presence in the Eucharist). So many poorly catechized Catholics are poached by Evangelical denominations since they hunger for the divine, but are sacramentalized but not catechized.  So much for the fruits from the Church of Nice. For seekers of Divine Truth, it is disheartening if they discover that were holy fools for playing by the rules because mercy to the unrepentant overrides all.

While it sounds merciful to baptize a child from a proud lesbian couple, sadly it seems that the child would be left as a spiritual orphan through a perfunctory ceremony which waters down the sacrament.

Ruminating on the Book Primal Loss by Leila Miller

Recently, I had some coffee talk with a more liberal Catholic friend who wondered why I am aghast at the sleight of hand in Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016) concerning communion for Catholics in irregular marriages.  My interlocutor argued that I should not care as this change neither effects me nor rocks my faith and it is meant to reach out to an increasingly secularized culture that needs healing. 

The impetus of Amoris Laetitia's pastoral provision can be characterized as offering band aids to the wounded in the field hospital of faith. However, by  circumventing the annulment process with a suggestion of pastoral counseling, it seems intended to attract more wayward Catholics who have “moved on” from a bad marriage  back to the faith with the incentive of receiving the Eucharist.  Such a procedure moots the Magisterium and risks cheapening the faith and endangers souls.

This theological conversation took place as I was reading Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak (2017) edited by Leila Miller. The author graduated summa cum laude from Boston College, is a reverted Catholic mother of eight who became known for her blog “Little Catholic Bubble”.  Leila Miller has now turned to writing apologetics on thorny moral issues.  Primal Loss which aggregates the oral histories of 70 adult children of divorce in reaction to six simple but revealing questions:

1) What effect has your parents’ divorce had on you?
2) What is the difference between how you felt about the divorce as a child and how you feel as an adult?
3) Has your parents’ divorce affected your own marriage or view on marriage?
4) Asking for reactions to the bromides “Children are resilient”, “You’ll be just fine and live a successful life after your parents’ divorce.
5) Asking what would you say to your parents about their divorce and if their reactions are just unconscious revenge.
6) What should society know about how divorce affects children.

Sociologists might dismiss Primal Loss as anecdotal evidence from a self selected contributors which did not stem from a controlled study.  The author’s objective was to given unvarnished opinions from those directly impacted by a divorce and to educate people on the ignored pitfalls of the Divorce Ideology which is championed in current culture and is one of the linchpins of the Sexual Revolution.

Indubitably, divorce is more prevalent today than it was a half century ago before the widespread. implementation of No-Fault Divorce.  But those bent on accommodating the new reality of divorce culture cite the statistic that 50% of marriages in America end in divorce.  But the index of Miller’s interviewees (whom she scrupulously protected their anonymities) belie that false fact.  So many of the contributors to Primal Loss have parents who were married several times after their initial divorce.  This certainly inflates the marriage rate.  Michael Medved points to studies which show that two thirds of marriages last until one person dies.  But the bogus 50% divorce rate statistic is part of the mythology that people in troubled marriages use to justify their self-centered action of divorce.

It was remarkable to read in Primal Loss the unvarnished opinions and reflective reactions that the now adult children of divorce had to their parents breaking up their family.  Several of them chronicled abusive parents or adults mired in addiction (sometimes both parents), where it was understandable that separation was necessary for safety. Many times adultery (or the desire for a newer or more compatible mate) was the driving force for the divorce.    But more often than not, these grown children of divorce recognized that parental selfishness was at play.  Divorcing parents also broke up their families for seemingly trivial reasons under the generous guise of No Fault Divorce without weighing the devastating consequences on their children.

It was unsurprising that divorce pushes custodial parents into poverty and unsupervised parenting which makes kids prone to promiscuity, abortions and addiction to fill the void that they feel. These interviews also highlight how their parents example of divorce negatively impacts their faith.  To justify their life style choices which are contrary to traditional church teaching, previously faithful parents pull back on their religiosity and children follow suit.  The domestic church is decimated. 

There is also the uncomfortable dynamic that with joint custody, kids of divorce have to adapt to two different households and parental styles.  So during adolescence, when kids are struggling to discern their true identities, they must act to please the powers that be in their household du jour (which often may harbor bad feelings towards churchy purveyors of guilt).  Add on the feeling of betrayal and abandonment for an institution which seems to be made of straw caused a fair number of interviewees to abandon their faith, seek more conducive pastures or seek self destructive secular solutions.  As Primal Loss originated from Catholic social media connections, most of the contributors seemed to have reverted back to Catholicism.

A set of lies which the Divorce Ideology trumpets is the knee jerk reaction “Oh, kids are resilient, they’ll get over it.” and the self serving “Kids will be happy if I am in a happier relationship.”.  The tangled webs we weave when first we learn to deceive.  Children crave acceptance so they will fake it until they make it and to great extends mask their woundedness from their family identity being torn away from their through divorce.  Superficially, they’ll embrace the prospect of having two Christmases etc...  But that comes at a cost of not having a stable place of their own.  And the reality that they will have to grow up quickly, often becoming their custodian parent's sounding board about the failed marriage. 

Combine an emotionally fragile adolescent who has been wounded by their parents’ divorce and parents preoccupied with their own love life along with authority issues with step parents, these children of divorce often are laxly parented lest they scion leave (and give their divorced spouse a “victory”).  That interplay creates FINE kids, which one interviewee used as an acronym for “F-‘ed up Insecure Neurotic Emotional”.


Another reaction to their hemaneutic that divorce is OK because it allows the parent to seek a happy relationship was:

Before I say anything to them, can I slap them around a little first, and let them know that that makes me happy so they should be happy too? No. Okay...

A reconstituted family rarely runs as smoothly as portrayed in the TV myths like “The Brady Bunch”.  Most adult children revealed that they long yearned for the possibility that their parents may become reconciled.  Adult children of divorce ruefully recall that their well being was perennially put in a lower position than their parents’ happiness.  And it is usually made clear to divorced children what their place is in a blended family. No wonder the contributor harbored that slap happy reaction.


What really seemed to be lacking in a Divorce Culture is the notion of sacramentality of marriage. If one views marriage as a contract, it is relatively easy to mentally justify walking away from it if you are not happy.  Marriage ought to be  properly understood as a covenant which is a sacrament modeled as the Lord wedded himself to a stiff necked people who He called his own despite their weaknesses and infidelity.  Moreover, if we understand the Trinity as a divine relationship which results in the overflowing of love of the Holy Spirit, we should see the analogy in our own participation in creation through the sacrament of marriage and having children.  Being wedded to someone is never easy and often requires sacrifice.  And it is not just for us mere mortals. After all, the Lord endured having His only begotten Son sacrificed to reconcile with an estranged humanity. 

The Church also needs to improve its catechesis about divorce.  While dining with some on fire social justice warrior faithful, one person gave uninformed assent to provisions of Amoris Laetitia because divorced Catholics have already had it hard enough and ought to receive the Eucharist.  He seemed stunned when I observed that those who remain celibate (honoring their covenental nuptuals) can.  And those in irregular marriages (civilly divorced and remarried) can go through an annulment.  The author tried to solve this by including Catholic teaching on marriage in her last chapter, but the message is better disseminated from the pulpit as well as Catholic media.

Some Catholics consider annulments to be a Catholic divorce, and contend that annulments  are much easier to get today in America.  But the process for a certificate of nullity asks incisive questions of petitioners and their witnesses which require deep introspection.  I appreciated the suggestion by one Primal Loss contributor that couples should be allowed to go through the annulment process BEFORE having a civil divorce proceeding as it might encourage more couples to work through their problems and stay together. 

Circumventing the annulment process to allow for pastoral counseling to educate couples in irregular marriages poses several problems.  Priests already have severe time constraints and the necessity of educating thoroughly secularized consciences may make true faith formation challenging.  The reliance on abiding by individual consciences without the surety of formal pronouncement of nullity from church authorities means that either souls are endangered or the process is a fiction.  Furthermore, to continue to have an annulment process when this pastoral provision is foisted as being magisterial (which is mistaken as paragraph 3 of Amoris Laetitia indicates that it is a persuasive document intended pastorally) makes anyone seeking annulments as a pious patsy.

I appreciated the observation that when an annulment is granted, it may bring closure to the ex-spouses but it does not have the effect on the offspring as it does not change the dire circumstances of blowing up the family and snatching away their identities.  An adult friend of mine declared that he was a bastard because his parents had their marriage annulled.  I tried to tell him church teaching that while the sacramentality of the marriage was void, he was not born out of wedlock.  That nugget of truth did not change his long held self perception.

One contributor to Primal Loss eloquently expressed the resulting marred self perception of being a child of divorce:

Divorce creates its own language for a child. Much of it is unspoken and the child is the only one who achieves fluency.  It might be the voice of doubt in the back of one's mind one day, or the voice of indecision where I should be resolute another day.  This perpetually dysfunctional language replaces the language of family love that otherwise forms a child's internal dialogue. So, in a way, divorce becomes the 'everlasting gift' to the child that a child can't overcome. The dysfunction replaces the permanence and security of an intact family.

Since most of Primal Loss were oral histories grouped together by topics, it was in many ways an easy read. Yet absorbing the tales of pain, reflections on the adverse impact of divorce on kids lives and the intractable issues associated with breaking up families also made it a painful read.  A virtue of Leila Miller’s organization of the book is that aside from grouping narratives together which corresponded to her six questions, there was scant thematic argumentation, so a reader was not led to obvious take away conclusions, other than divorce is bad, it harms children in innumerable ways and ought to be avoided at almost all costs.

The penultimate chapter of Primal Loss contained Stories of Hope. Many of these accounts attest to the power of prayer. But they are not saccharine stories of sanctimoniousness.  These adult children of divorce find themselves at the brink of a marital breakup. But the reoccurring theme is that they do not surrender to selfishness and look beyond themselves, turning to prayer along with considering their childrens’ plight.

Recently, Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, offered high praise of Primal Loss for highlighting a world view which denies the value of self sacrificial love along with the damaging and long lasting consequences of divorce.  This is a recommended read for anyone in a troubled marriage to contemplate before their break up their family.  These testimonials may also give real life examples for adult catechesis. For myself, it illustrated the ill born consequences of the Church circumventing the Magisterium on marriage to be more appealing in a populist driven New Evangelization.

St. Faustina Kowalska on Humility and Confession

Cardinal Gerhard Mueller on Sacramental Marriage