[Catholic Caucus] Chicago archdiocese demands bishop’s approval for ‘emergency’ baptisms

LifeSite News ^ | March 27, 2020 | Dorothy Cumming McLean

[Svartalfiar]

The Catholic Church has really made baptism a pain in the ass. In fact, some of my siblings/friends have said they just aren’t gonna do it with their next kids due to the stupidity.

When we went to get our kid baptized last year, they required BOTH parents to go to some class (which was literally just watching a couple hours of videos, there was no actual ‘class’, coulda been done online from home easily). And, both godparents are required to go as well, and get a note saying they did so. We had to get all sorts of other documentation from both godparents, including original baptismal certificates, a letter of recommendation form their pastor (and HAD to be one from where they lived, for my little bro who’s in college, we were told he could NOT use a letter from the family’s priest in town), and some other paperwork that I don’t even remember.

Both Churches near us required us to pick a certain time, within limited hours and only from a couple days of the week (they don’t do any on Sunday in between Masses anymore). One of them only does baptisms 2-3 days out of the month. And no, neither has a shortage of priests. Hell, the one closest to us doesn’t even use the priest unless you’re a primarily Spanish-speaking family! Any American baptism is usually the deacon, unless you request the priest, AND he’s available/agrees to do it.

They also refuse to do baptisms in the cool little chapel (small old church); instead you HAVE to do them in the almost-gymnasium kinda-temporary main church area.

And, they ‘require’ you to make a donation for this. Sure, it’s understood that you give the priest some cash as thank you, and give some to the Church in general. But they were saying the suggested donation was something like $100-200, not even a “however much you can afford”, or anything. (My parents said we were all a suggested donation of $20-50, for the priest. Maybe invite him to dinner or something.)

My uncle is pretty high up with FSSP, and talking to him he said they don’t require nearly that much crap (my words :p). So we definitely plan to have our next kids baptized at Mater Dei, though that’s a good 45min drive out.
Or, if we’re lucky, Michael will be in town and we can just do it in the kiddie pool out back!