A former Irish president has claimed that baptising infants is a breach of their human rights.
Mary McAleese, who is Roman Catholic, will challenge the Church’s position on infant baptism in a new book, The Baptism Bluff: Human Rights and the Canon Law of Baptism.
McAleese will argue that the church has followed a “lazy” doctrine of obligation of baptism, which reinforces clergy authority, rather than a “dynamic” approach of free participation.
She maintains the book will not dispute the “divine sacramental” elements of baptism, but will question the “man-made imposition of canon law rules which assert serious limits on human rights”.
The book’s synopsis states that baptism “requires all Catholics to overlook the fact that babies cannot give informed consent to promises at baptism and no one can consent on their behalf to robbing them forever of such a vital realm of choice.
“No one is born a Catholic. One becomes a Catholic by baptism. Most Catholics are baptised as babies. Man-made church canon law deems them to have made baptismal promises which bind them to forever membership and which oblige them to be obedient to church teaching in their public civic and private religious lives.
“The sacrament of confirmation, also usually undertaken as minors, requires them to ‘renew their baptismal promises’, a glaring and largely unchallenged part of the baptism bluff,” it adds.
McAleese, who was formerly a barrister, has a doctorate in Catholic canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. She said concern about sexual abuse scandals within the Church prompted her studies, as canon law had not supported victims.
Senator Rónán Mullen, who previously worked for the Archdiocese of Dublin, questioned McAleese’s approach: “I think Christian baptism is about something more important than Mary McAleese’s concept of human rights, autonomy and choice. These are important ideas for politics but pretty meaningless when it comes to sharing the gift of faith with an infant,” as per the Irish Independent.
The book is due to be published on 13 November.