Biblical Answers to Catholic Questions: Tradition

Let's talk about baptism.

Perry, what does the Catholic Church teach about infant baptism?

Well, it says infant baptism does away with original sin, and it infuses grace.

That baptism confers the grace of purification from all sins.

And by baptism, all sins are forgiven as well as the need for the punishment for sins.

Baptism causes one to enter into the church as through a door, which those outside are lost.

Baptism is necessary for salvation as it causes regeneration and places the baptized person into the body of Christ.

Faith does not need to be present as the faith an infant lacks is replaced by the faith of the church.

Okay, stop right there.

So the church is the source of salvation.

Well, even at Catholic funerals, the priest states that the dead individual became a Christian at baptism.

Okay.

So Perry, what's the Catholic Church say about those who aren't baptized, they're not baptized?

Without baptism, the church and parents deny the child the grace of being a child of God, if not to confer baptism shortly after birth.

In the Council of Trent, it says that infants, unless regenerated by baptism, are born to eternal misery and perdition.

And forced to respond to the people's outcry, the Council of Lyons in Florence And the Canons and Trent came up with Limbus and Phantom, where unbaptized infants were sent.

What do you think the Bible says about this?

Well, it says a lot.

You can see the pressure put on parents to do so, bringing them into the subjection to the church.

Let me point out that some of the most evil men in world history were baptized.

Hitler, Himmler, Mussolini, Stalin, mafia members, we could go on, serial killers, they certainly weren't Christians.

I was 35 years old, baptized as an infant, and I was not yet a Christian.

Baptism is an outward symbol of the beginning of the Christian life given to those who already show evidence of it.

So what's the Bible teach? The word baptism comes from the Greek word baptizo, meaning to immerse.

Baptism is symbolic because it shows you how you have died with Christ and been raised with him.