non catholic god parents for catholic christening?

[SalBySea]

okay before i get flamed here, I do want a catholic christening for my ds for the right reasons, not for the pretty pictures and party etc. I went to a catholic school and catholicism had much more of an impact on me then dh's COE upbringing had on him so there was never any doubt that we would be raising our dcs as catholic

its just that we genuinely cant think of any catholic candidates for the job which is putting us off arranging it. The people who come to mind are all COE, so they do believe in god at least.

All of our relatives are either COE or athiests. The only catholic friends I have that I would be close enough to to ask are at home (another country)

before we go to discuss this with our PP I just wanted to ask if anyone has had (or tried to have) non catholic god parents for their dcs

[nickytwotimes]

You have to have one who is a catholic in our diocese.
Perhaps the priest might be able to suggest someone who would be suitable?
You can have more than 2 Godparents btw - ds has 4, two from church and two relatives.

[HaventSleptForAYear]

I don't know but I am (was!) catholic and am god-mother for a Coe baptised child.

[HeadFairy]

We were told we had to have one Godparent who was Catholic, however they didn't check (not sure how they would) so I guess it's just up to you morally whether you feel you can go ahead with your CofE choices.

I did have my sister as our one Catholic Godparent (the Godfather is CofE but pretty lapsed, and the other Godmother is my best friend who is totally agnostic - I did ask her if she'd feel comfortable taking part in a religious ceremony and she was happy)

It is really difficult though if you don't have any other Catholic friends. I have no idea what we'll do for the next baby as I'm not sure I can ask my sister again, and I have no other Catholic friends (unless you count old school friends I haven't seen for years and who I only keep in touch with via FB - not sure I want to trust the spiritual upbringing of my child to someone I barely see)

[silverbirch]

My dd has 4 godparents - the catholic ones (because there had to be at least one catholic godparent) who are my sister and brother,
and the people I regard as her 'true' godparents who are CofE. Officially they were 'Christian Witnesses' not godparents but they are listed on her bapt. cert as godparents and their roll was to all intents and purposes the same.

[oodlesofpoodles]

I have one Catholic friend who is godmothers to all my dcs. They have a CofE each (christian witness) and an unofficial non christian each. Our families or both atheist so it has made it hard. Your priest will be able to match you up with a person in your parish to have as the Catholic one, then you could use CofE as the others. I can totally emphasise with you. Other people seem to be able to arrange lovely family baptisms but no-one in our family really wanted to come.

[mapleleaf]

Might depend on how liberal your parish priest is ? Our dds had to have both godparents be Catholic, and preferably confirmed and practising !! Not too much to ask for

[BetsyBoop]

here's the relevant bit of Canon Law if the priest is doing it by the book

[jcscot]

FWIW, our priest was pretty strict and we had two practising catholic godparents for each of our children.

[TheFallenMadonna]

We have one Catholic and one Anglican for each child. And no, nobody checked. But lying about it - yikes!

[Hulababy]

We only had to have one catholic godparent; rest just had to be baptised - our other three were CofE.

[SalBySea]

thanks all, good to know that we can probably have the people we have in mind, our parish priest isnt too strict, we married there and he had no problems with my DH being COE (so was the best man and all the readers)

not sure I like the idea of being assigned a random person! will have to dig a 3rd out of the woodwork somehow - might be a bit awkward to ask as all the catholics I know here are just acquaintances, but I'd rather that then taking pot luck from our parish

I wont be lying though

x

[oopsacoconut]

We had to have one Catholic Godparent for DD unfortunately he couldn't get to the UK for the Baptism so we had someone stand in as proxy but her is her Catholic Godparent even though he couldn't physically be there. OUr PP was fine with that.

[Wigglesworth]

We are getting our DS christened catholic in a couple of weeks and we have to have at least one "practising" catholic as a godparent.