Baptism and Original Sin

Recently my wife and I took a Baptism class through our local church and unfortunately we left wondering just how much we could trust the deacon who lead it. He helps with most of the Masses and activities in the parish and listening to his homilies he's always seemed like he knows his stuff, but as he lead the class he laid out a very different view of Baptism and Original Sin then what I was familiar with. He said that Vatican II changed the way we understand Original Sin and that we needed to get the idea of our child's sole being stained with it, as portrayed in the old Baltimore Catechism, out of our head. To quote the handout material he gave us....

Modern theology defines original sin as follows;
"Original sin is the condition of being born into a sin filled world."
A. It is not a stain on the innocent child's soul.
B. The following can counteract the negative things in our world.
FAMILY
LOVE
CHURCH/FAITH

He expounded on this saying that Baptism is mostly about starting a faith journey and said that there was a big long document on Baptism that came out of Vatican II and goes into detail on this. To a degree this makes sense to me, but if this is the new official definition of original sin then what does it really mean when we say that Mary was conceived Immaculately (without Original Sin)? She most definitely was born into "a sin filled world." Also if original sin is diminished this way it also seems to diminish the whole sacrament of Baptism and ultimately the concept of our redemptions.

What really made me question the authenticity of what this deacon was saying though was that when one woman at the class asked the deacon what would happen to a baby who died without being Baptized, he told her that the churches "official stance" is that the child is completely innocent and would go straight to heaven. It may seem like nitpicking but salvation is a pretty important matter and what he said seemed to fly directly in the face of what I've read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church so I looked it up and it pretty clearly states in so many words that we have every reason to hope in God's Mercy for such a child but we can't know for sure.

This all lead me to our main concern which was how soon we need to have our child Baptized. We did ask the deacon and he said there is no rush or recommended time table. In fact they only do Baptisms twice a month at our church due to the size of the parish. This sounded like good news to us as we've asked my brother to be the Godfather but he is going to be studying in Europe this August through December so will most likely be gone for the first few months of our baby's life. We would love for him to be able to participate in the Baptism and think it would mean a lot to him so it would be great to have the baby Baptized in December when he gets back. At the same time we want to make sure we are putting our baby's salvation ahead of what would be nice for us.

With all this confusion I turned to my Great Aunt who is Notre Dame Sister and has been involved in Catholic education for many years. She was the perfect person to talk to as she teaches a similar class at her parish every month and has dealt with all of these issues. She told me that she always explains Original Sin this way; She takes off her glasses and tells people that she has poor vision and that this poor vision is something she inherited from her parents. She didn’t do anything wrong to merit her poor eyesight but it’s just something she was born with. Now she says thanks to modern wonders she can use eyeglasses and which help her see clearly. She still has the same genes but thanks to the glasses she doesn’t have to suffer the effects of bad eyesight that were passed down to her.

This analogy made a lot of sense to me as it’s easy to see relate her inherited poor vision to the original sin and her glasses to Baptism. My aunt went on to tell me that our deacon was partially correct in that we are born into a sinful world and baptism helps us counter that, but she said a better definition for Original Sin is that it is simply our inherited tendency towards sin. While we are all born good and innocent we do inherit this tendency from our first parents’ sin. In a way we our soul is stained though not in an evil way. Through Baptism we receive grace to counter this tendency towards sin and become a child of God.

Now as far as when we should Baptize our child, my great aunt explained to me that while the Catholic Church can’t declare for a fact what happens to a child that dies prior to being Baptized, the Church does teach that there are three ways we can be Baptized. The most common is by water but lesser known ways include Baptism by blood (as when someone is martyred) and Baptism by desire (which is when a person wishes to be Baptized but dies prior before they can be). It would only make sense that this Baptism by desire would apply if a child passes away who’s parents desired Baptism for that child. With that in mind she didn’t see any reason why waiting for my brother to be there would be a problem as long as our baby is healthy.

All this has really made me look long and hard at something I’ve taken for granted most of my life. I’ve always seen Baptism as something that was important but never really stopped to ponder what it really theologically speaking was about. It makes so much more sense now and I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about my Faith. Hopefully as our child grows up my understanding about my Faith can also continue to grow.