About Baptism

Here in my parish, they do this individual meeting with the parents in their own home and then two group preparation courses. So the lady came to my house last week to meet with me. She pretty much took me for the regular run of the mill, in name only, catholic. She started out with a list of reasons why I might want to baptise my child, and taking a look at the first: "It's always been done in our family." I told her I could tell her right away it wasn't the first. So she wanted to know, without looking at the list, what would be my reasons. I said "because it takes original sin away and because it will give him graces." off the top of my head, although there is more to it than that... then she asked me to go through the list and pick those that "meant something for me". Neither original sin nor graces were even mentioned in any of those reasons, and some of them although obviously true for many Quebecers nowadays, just didn't "do anything for me". Funny thing is, one of the reasons was, "Je suis croyant et je veux qu'il le soit aussi." I'm a believer and I want him to be as well. Except that "croyant" was not well written, and I thought it said voyant, which is something totally different. I thought the whole thing said, "I am a seer and I want him to be too. I couldn't believe that they'd actually seriously put such a reason, until my Dad asked me if I was sure it said voyant... hee hee.

Well, pretty much the whole meeting went like this, where it was all about what "spoke" to me most on this and that page. And even when I was dropping hints that I was more than your average non-practicing Catholic, she still didn't get it until she finally asked me if I ever went to mass at all on Sundays. Ahem, yes!

Ohhh, I am so not looking forward to worthless, shallow, baptismal preparation where we shall all sit in a circle and share warm fuzzy feelings about what we think baptism should be all about.