And just how honest is your response to my comment that baptism is done without the conscious understanding and agreement of the baby? That you full well know and understand that the subject is the violation of free will.
Catholicism is based on nothing but an endless string of such insulting and juvenile evasions. Yeah, as if the Word of God depends upon such trickery. You don't even see that your very attitude denies the truth of your words.
You compare confirmation and ordination with a baby's baptism? Do you even realize that works both ways - that you're agreeing that even confirmation and ordination, at some level, are imposed upon their recipients, and denies them free will?
"Soul marks" doesn't sound like a brand? Yet isn't that exactly what they are? Don't they mark someones as property of the church? Do they alone guarantee salvation? Nope. Then what are these "marks" upon one's soul?
Brands. Property claims. And you put it perfectly - even if such s person leaves the church, the mark never leaves them and they can always return. How? Because they always belong. Why? Because they have the brand. And in the case of babies, they had no say whatever in the matter.
That's the truth of that teaching. Why pretend it's not?
No, that’s the nadir of stupidity. This is not a branding as you uncharitably describe it like a piece of property. Baptism is a sacrament that washes away “original sin” it does not guarantee a permanent state of grace. One simply does not have to go through this ritual if one leaves the faith and then decides to return. This is the teaching of the early Church fathers. This is not the branding you have in either Buddhism or pantheistic religions where creatures are born as men or serpents or fish or fowl according to their prior births.