Reflections on Baptism

Anyone who reads this blog should understand something - I am not yet Catholic, but I am committed to being Catholic. I am a candidate in RCIA right now, on track to become Catholic in about a month's time. You'll note I'm not a catechumen. This has to do with the fact that I've been baptized before, and the Church recognizes prior baptism, as long as it generally follows the form and the intentions of the Church. There's more specific language in the Code of Canon Law, but that's the gist of it.

And boy oh boy, have I been baptized before.

I was born in a Catholic hospital out west in the '60s. What little my mom could remember of it is that the nurses, who I later found out were also religious in the Sisters of Mercy order, baptized all the newborns as a matter of common practice. She was a little out of it at the time, so my mom's memory was understandably a little hazy. So I was baptized Catholic, maybe. Probably.

Which was okay with my mom, I suppose, but she was not raised Catholic. So when she got a little more settled in a new town, she started going to a church of the denomination she had been raised in - Lutheran. At about the age of three, I was baptized Lutheran.

But my dad - well, he was raised a Methodist, and he really wanted to join the nearby Methodist church down the road. I was pretty young so I don't know all the details, but I have no doubt that I was baptized in the Methodist church when I was about six or so.

So, that's when things got a little interesting.

At some point, there was a dalliance between the minister and the church organist (or was it the secretary? Not important to the story, I suppose), and the sudden removal of the former minister and the equally sudden appearance of a new minister split the congregation into two camps of loyalty. There were those who felt the former minister got the short end of the forgiveness stick and wanted him back, and those who felt that the presence of a new minister would be necessary if there was to be any forgiveness at all.

Being about eight years old at the time, I didn't understand all the politics. All I knew was, not long after all this happened, we stopped going there.

But there was this Southern Baptist church in town that broadcast its services on a local TV station every Sunday morning at eleven a.m. If I mentioned the pastor's name, some of you might know exactly where and when I'm talking about. So we started attending this church when I was about nine, I think largely because my dad was impressed by its being on TV, and I was baptized there shortly thereafter.

Now, I've been to churches of more denominations than that, and I'll talk later about some of them, too. But those are the ones in which I was baptized.

All these Protestant churches. Doctrines and teachings that are sometimes like a broken-mirror reflection of the original Church - pieces missing, parts distorted. And yet one is able to recognize that the intent of all of them was the same: the handing down of God's grace, the forgiveness of past sins, and the welcoming to a new relationship with Christ.