Sunday, January 15, 2017

The Catholic Church has always baptized infants...

The bulletin for Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts acknowledges that, "The Bible does not limit baptism to adults.  Several passages point to infant baptism.."  But the same bulletin asserts that, "In the early Church, only adults were baptized."

This is actually not true.

The Catholic Church has always baptized infants because Christ wills it. We know this because He said, "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me." (Matt 19:14).

According to the Apostle Paul, one cannot truly come to Christ except through Baptism. (Rom. 6:3-4).

We read in Sacred Scripture that the Apostles baptized "all the people" (Luke 3:21) and whole households (Acts 16:15, 1 Cor. 1:16). We can deduce that "all the people" and whole "households" included infants.

Christ said that Baptism is a necessary prerequisite for salvation (John 3:5), and He certainly desires the salvation of infants.

The primitive Christian Church, which had fresh firsthand knowledge of Jesus' Will, baptized infants. The ancient catacombs of Rome include inscriptions on the tombs of infants which make mention of their having been baptized. One such inscription reads: "here rest Archillia, a newly-baptized; she was one year and five months old; died February 23rd."

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