Fine, but Catholics baptize infants, who have no clue as to what is going on during the ceremony.
Isn’t it better to for the parents to “dedicate” their baby, as the Protestants do, and then let the child/adult be baptized when he/she wants to accept Christ’s mandate for baptism, and make a public declaration of accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
Sorry, but millions of Protestants baptize (not dedicate) their infants. In fact, Wikipedia says: Most Christians practice infant baptism...the Anglican Communion, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, some Church of the Nazarene, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Canada, the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the Continental Reformed.
(And the Lutherans were the original Protestants under Luther)
Besides, are you going to make up a retro active baby circumcision "dedication" to explain why Jews circumcized babies @ 8 days? (In reality, circumcision, explains Paul to the Colossians, was a pre-cursor to baptism...and it was done to mark them as belonging to the covenant people of God)
...and then let the child/adult be baptized when he/she wants to accept Christ’s mandate for baptism, and make a public declaration of accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
The major problem here is that many NT passages don't explain baptism as an act of man; but rather as an act of God through man. The power, even something like the book of Acts (Acts 2) discussing the remission of sin. But sorry, no man has that power (to bring sin into remission). That's like saying we have the solo power to bring cancer into remission.