While physically washing is good, the Catholic fantasy that the very act of baptism (ex opere operato) an infant, who cannot obey the stated requirements for baptism, (Acts 2:38; 8:36,37) is born again, means they are henceforth treated as Christians and never challenged to to come to the Lord Jesus as contrite, damned + destitute sinners, and trust Him to save them by His blood-expense and righteousness, not at all by their merit or the power of the church and a postmortem purgatorial work.
And thus most Caths have no conscious "day of salvation," and testimony of manifest transformative regeneration, and yet expect to see Heaven (usually via Purgatory) - to their eternal horror. .
For me, it’s a self-evident truth that, if you have to do it all for them in the physical world, then I figure you have to do the same for their spiritual side as well.
This might sound strange, or worse, but I “see” the spiritual/supernatural world that I can’t see as being every bit as real as the physical world my physical world senses do make me aware of.
Though each of us, being born in Their Image, is born with the capacity/ability to sense things on the higher levels, I have yet to figure out how turn that on in me.
So, while I have a sense of it, I still cannot discern it, even though I do fully believe in the existence of spiritual/supernatural world things I cannot sense with what remains of my five senses.
What little I have seen/experienced is more than enough proof for me, as if I needed any more.
However, in seeking to better understand and become more aware of such things, I find the Protestants are generally resistant to spiritual/supernatural world things and concepts.
It seems to be a matter of perspective for most of those I know. If they can’t see it, hear it, touch it, taste it or smell it, it doesn’t exist... unless it’s scary or evil, of course, and then, maybe.
Even the stories in the Bible, like Jonah in the whale, for example, are not fully accepted, but just acknowledged as stories in the Bible.
Otoh, the Catholics and the Orthodox appear to have a much richer understanding of, and participation with, the spiritual/supernatural world of the Holy Family, angels and saints.
I’m not sure why things are this way, but that’s the view from here... so far.
Maybe, maybe not. While an infant’s works, so to speak, might not appear to you to satisfy the requirements of Baptism, I honestly have no idea what an infant understands or is capable of in that time of life and on the level that Baptism speaks to.
I’ve heard and read stories about what we, as infants, experience and understand, even while in the womb, but have no way to verify such things here and now in/at/on the physical level.
None the less, as puzzle pieces, such things fit together perfectly with all the other pieces I’ve found so far.
Fwiw, I’m glad I was baptized. As luck, or more likely, lack of any money whatsoever, would have it, I was born in a Catholic hospital, and my very first act after breathing was to pee all over the nun/nurse who helped deliver me.
(And, oh, how my mom used to love embarrassing me with that story, bless her heart and soul.)
Anywho, thanks to the First Parents, we all are natural born sinners: born in a sinful world to sinner parents.
I also believe that we are born knowing God, with full memory of our first sight being the Eyes of the One who formed us, but that we “forget” soon after birth.
We are to believe like children. How am I doing so far?