Baptism is seen by many Irish Catholics as an opportunity to throw a party to welcome the new arrival, a senior churchman said yesterday.The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, yesterday called for religious instruction for parents before baptism to establish the meaning of the sacrament and the demands of faith it imposed on them.
Dr Martin said attitudes among Irish Catholics to baptism range from throwing tap water over the head of a newborn to save the child from eternal damnation to throwing a party to celebrate the arrival.
He said there was a great diversity among Irish Catholics as to what the sacrament of baptism meant, and this interpretation differed between generations.
Addressing an inter-church meeting of Christian leaders in Swords, Co Dublin, yesterday, Dr Martin recalled that when he was born his mother was sick and there was "an inordinate delay" of one week before he was baptised.
"Today, there is no such rush, but one still hears anecdotes of grandmothers faced with a delay in baptising their grandchild occasionally doing a quick, private baptism in the kitchen, just in case anything might happen to the newborn in the meantime," he said.
Ceremony
"The sense of original sin and possible exclusion from eternal life is still strongly present in some of the older generation."
But Dr Martin said that for many younger people the ceremony of baptism was the occasion in which the birth of a new child was celebrated socially, with an appropriate religious blessing.
"Even the most secularised of Irish still have a deep-seated liking for blessings," he said.
Dr Martin added that sometimes baptism was seen as an opportunity to reach out to parents who have drifted from active church life by reminding them of their responsibilities for the child's future as a Christian and a good citizen.
"Rather than baptism being an act of the believing Christian community, baptism is seen as an opportunity for the catechesis of those on the margins of such a community," he said.
Dr Martin said he was drawing attention to aspects of current culture in many Christian churches because the more the popular understanding of baptism drifts from its theological roots, then the more baptism would be taken for granted and the search for real understanding would recede.
"In the Catholic tradition sacraments can only be understood and celebrated within a living and believing community," added Dr Martin.
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