The Recipients of Baptism

Baptism is necessary for each person. All mankind are required to be baptized. Without baptism, there is no salvation. For baptism makes a person a member of Christ, through whom alone salvation can be attained.

To be saved, a man must have at least the baptism of desire. Baptism of blood has all the sacramental power of baptism of water, except for the imprinting of the character, andit remits all sin and the penalties due to sin. Baptism of desireremits sin and the eternal penalty due to it, but does not remit all the temporal penalty due.

Since baptism is necessary for salvation, it should be conferred promptly on infants, both because of the danger of death,and because infants have no ability to elicit a desire for baptism. Adults who wish to be baptized should be put through a time of instruction and probation so that they may receive the sacrament with understanding, reverence, and the firm will to discharge with fidelity the duties of the Christian life. Still, if adults be well instructed and disposed, they should not be made to wait for baptism. Nor should adult baptism be deferred during sickness,especially when there is danger of death.

An adult sinner who has no repentance and no intention of abandoning his sin is not to be baptized. A sinner who isrepentant and well resolved should be baptized.

No kind of penance or work of satisfaction is to be imposed on an adult who is baptized, for baptism takes away all sin and all punishment due to sin. To impose a penance at baptism wouldbe to dishonor the Passion and Death of Christ which make full satisfaction for all the sins of the person baptized.

An adult who is to be baptized must have some sorrow for his sins, but he is not required to confess them, beyond the general confession implied in the words of the ritual, by which herenounces Satan and all his works and pomps.

An adult to be baptized must have the intention ofbeing baptized. Such a person seeks baptism at the hands of the Church; he asks to receive it; hence he expresses his intention of receiving it.

To receive grace, the person to be baptized must have faith. But even in the absence of faith, a person who intends to be baptized and undergoes the rite of baptism, is actually baptized,and is marked with the sacramental character.

Since infants are in original sin, they need baptism. For a person capable of incurring the guilt of sin, even original sin, is capable of receiving grace. Hence, infants are to be baptized. Not only does baptism confer its wondrous and indispensable benefits on the souls of children, but it also sets them in the way of Christian living at the very beginning of their lives, and thus gives greater assurance of their persevering than would be the case if their baptism were deferred.

Children of Jews and other unbelievers are not to be baptized without their parents’ consent. By natural justice,young children are under the rule and control of their parents. Besides, baptism is not conferred, according to the usage of the Church, on those who will have no normal opportunity of living the Christian life in conformity with the obligation imposed in baptism.

A child cannot be baptized while it is yet in its mother’s womb. {-This is no longer true. Modern methods in medicine and surgery make it feasible to convey water tothe child in the womb, so that the baptism is at least probably valid. Such a baptism is licitly conferred, under conditions set by church law, when the child is unlikely to have a normal birth, orto live until birth.-}

Insane and imbecile persons are to be baptized, like infants, in the faith of the Church. A person who, during his normal life, manifests no desire to receive baptism, is not to be baptized if he becomes insane. Yet an insane person may have lucidintervals during which he desires to be baptized; he is not to be refused. If he lapses into madness before the sacrament can be administered, the person baptizing should wait for the next period of sanity; if such an interval is not likely to recur, or if death threatens, the sacrament should be administered at once, despite the madness of the recipient. A person who is sane, but weak-minded, is to be treated as a normal person.