To get the children christened if DH doesn’t believe.

[Bonniebonchoco]

AIBU to get the children christened if DH and his family don’t believe. DH believes religion causes war and suffering and is not supportive of same sex relationships and is basically a tool to suppress uprising in poverty stricken counties where citizens fear the church.

I was brought up RC and would attend Church around 10 times a year with family . I went a RC school . I am very open minded and feel religion ( in all its forms ) was something which I enjoyed learning about and have taken some comfort in.
I am really open minded and never felt that religion caused me to judge others or myself . I only attend church a few times a year - Christmas and Easter .

I would like my twins ( aged 18 months ) to be christened . After much discussion, DH will compromise and allow them to be christened COE but not RC.

I do not want a big fuss made and a party. I want a low key christening during service and that’s it. I have spoken to the COE and the Reverend is happy to christen the children .However - I just can’t help feel this doesn’t make sense if DH isn’t fully on board . DH is very supportive and usually very laid back however he and his family do not like religion. I respect DH and don’t want to bulldoze him.

I am tired as I have had two babies and i just don’t know if I should press on with the christening plan and cause ‘stress’ from the opposing views . Or if this is my wish for my children then I just make it simple, organize it and do it and anyone who doesn’t want to attend doesn’t need to come .

I want the children to have the option of attending the local faith school where I attended but the head teacher has explained I will need the children christened for them to stand a chance of getting in.
DH said he will look at all schools and of this is the best suited for us the children can attended.

AIBU to push ahead ? I don’t want to cause friction but I don’t want to just people please.

I don’t know why but I just feel of anything happened to the children I would be devastated they weren’t Christened.

Do you believe in original sin then OP? That your children won’t go to heaven if they’re not baptised? I’m not knocking it, just trying to unpick your reasoning.

Is the faith school Catholic? The CofE schools I know of round here don’t care about baptism, but are more focused on regular church attendance. The secondary we’ve applied to DD required 26 attendances a year for the top band.

I really don’t understand your bloke’s logic here. He doesn’t want them christened which I entirely understand but will go along with a ritual he doesn’t believe in under the auspices of one faith he doesn’t believe in but not another faith he doesn’t believe in. What difference does it make to him whether the baptism is CoE or Catholic?

I think its bizarre to do it if you do it before the child understands

I think its bizarre to do it - just because

I also think its inappropriate to do it if one parent objects.

I believe. I have always believed. I was confirmed at 16 and remember asking thousands of questions at class . Contraception.
War. Same sex relationships . I wanted to explore so much .

I have never been too vocal about my faith but I pray and I do love to go to church- however it has been alot less lately ! But I believe and would be sad to think my children weren’t even christened. But they would be COE and I a RC . So it’s not the same as me .

I meet with the COE Rev and he told me to ring him with the date I wanted to go ahed ! I was shocked as I expected he would want DH and I to go to church for a good few months and attend classes first.

My Son is christened he also went do RC school,s he decided when he was about 12 that he's an Atheist
The school doesn't seem to have done a good job of Indoctrination...

@AmeliaEarhart
Do you believe in original sin then OP? That your children won’t go to heaven if they’re not baptised? I’m not knocking it, just trying to unpick your reasoning.

I don’t want to turn this into a discussion which people will ridicule me but - I hate to say this - I think I do.
Dh thinks I am crazy and keeps saying -
you can’t believe in heaven and hell .

But I’ve always believed being christened means you can go to heaven which is where I hope I will be .

Original sin was done away with in the Catholic church ages ago!

I’m a non believer, DH raised Catholic (severely lapsed 🤣) and we reached the same COE compromise you have OP, however DC was never christened because my stance was while I didn’t mind, I definitely was not going to organise it! Lo and behold it’s still on the to do list, 8 years later (much to MILs horror!)

Your husband has said yes so I would do it.

Personally I’m an atheist but can’t see why he’d want them christened CoE over Catholic like you. Will you feel disappointed if your kids don’t go through the later stages like confirmation ?

Let your children decide when they’re older.

I don’t really agree with christenings when the child is not old enough to know what is going on. You have no idea what religion the child will choose when older, they may not be religious at all when older.

Im christened, schooled and raised in the catholic religion. My family are very strong Catholics. I am on the fence with the whole thing, stopped going to church regularly years ago. My husband is a now athiest but was christened in church of Ireland. I opted to not have my kids christened as I felt a complete hypocrite that I don't actively follow the religion, disagree in quite a few views and my husband isn't religious also. I expose them to religious options through my family, school etc although school isn't a religious based school. I also don't believe in original sin, I believe that if people that murder can basically get into heaven them god will accept an innocent child. But I'm also from northern Ireland so the whole religion aspect requires heavy thought as my husband and I are from opposing religions.
But I feel strongly that unless you are baptising them as catholic as that's the religion you plan to follow then what's the point. If you're doing it to get into school then just say so. Let them decide as they get older

Why CofE ?I'm not trying to start an argument just interested
I'm a very lapsed Catholic too and more agnostic now , although I did have my kids christened .

I think that there are people who do christenings for social rather than religious purposes (school, pressure from family…) so I don’t think that it’s a bad thing to do it without your husband being part of the process. I assume that you plan to take the child to church when you attend which is in the spirit of things.

You should have agreed this a very long time ago

Wow.

It's amazing to me that people still hold onto this idea of such a heartless and capricious God.

Why on earth would a loving and all-powerful God choose to deny access to "heaven" to an innocent child, simply because their parents had failed to splash a bit of holy water on their head?

And why would anyone want to share eternity with a God that would choose to behave like that?

No disrespect to you and your beliefs, OP. I recognise that this is what you were brought up with, and I know from my own family's experience with Catholicism that it can be hard for people to shake these beliefs off. But from an outsider's point of view, they are truly incomprehensible.

Out of interest, do you worry about where your DH will end up in the afterlife?!

I am non white . I also feel that this is a part of me that I can pass to the children. I got shivers when I read your post. It’s abit about my heritage . My fathers family are Jamaican and devoted and my mother is Irish and still lives in ireland. I feel the RC is apart of my heritage . I feel up with it and I want DCs to have something of Me. COE is not RC though . But it is something. .

I do think that unpicking your own beliefs would be helpful.
I don't know about RC church, but CofE do not believe that christening a child gives them access to heaven.

The best way of summarising would be something like - belief in Jesus gives you access to heaven. (not baptism). For those too young to understand or to make a decision, they would be considered innocent when they die, and so go to heaven. CofE is a broad church so there will be variations on that, but I think that is the basics.
there is no purgatory or limbo etc in CofE. YOu can't pray for people after they have died to go to heaven. It is about their choice to believe when alive.

I am not making a comment on those views, or on how they compare to RC, just trying to clarify what you might believe v. the church. But it would be good for you to examine and understand what your own view is.
I didn't think that the RC still held to the idea that an unbaptised child goes to hell? But I may be wrong.

@x2boys mostly to do with the fire and brimstone, anti gay, oppression of women (by keeping them pregnant and beholden to men) that was the Catholic Church of my youth. COE, by contrast, was the New Testament, love thy neighbour, happy clappy version of religion. I appreciate both have probably changed beyond recognition now but I genuinely couldn’t allow DC in be induced into a system that, if they do turn out to be gay, infers that they will go to hell.

Look it's all good and well strangers on the internet having opinions but it’s your life….

I am a big believer in options.

not christening them takes away an option both in terms of lifestyle / “environmental values” and in terms of schooling

pretty much all our friends are Jewish or Christian and most are looking to send their children to faith schools and raise them in their culture.

it’s culturally important for us.
my DH and I are both catholic (RC v orthodox but still) but if my DH wasn’t I wouldn’t have given that up…

modern Catholicism (in fact even 80s Catholicism) in schools IME has been very much centred around love thy neighbour and do unto others vs burn the gays

It sounds to me like your religion is quite important to you and frankly I cannot understand how you’ve married a staunch atheist . WRT the children leave them to decide later in their lives .

This sounds like it matters to you so much whereas your husband isn't actually arsed. He's heard something about the RC church not being very liberal and he's gone oh, I'm not bothered but not that one.

Honestly, I'd push for them to be christened the same as me. RC, not some compromise with someone who doesn't care anyway!

I think if you really want them baptised and your husband doesn’t object you should just do it. No need to make it a big occasion. The children can make their own decisions about religion when they get older but there’s no harm in them being baptised and it will put your mind at rest.

I totally respect the fact that religion is important to many people. We're all entitled to our beliefs and that's absoultely fair enough - who am I to say that my beliefs are right and yours are wrong when none of us can ever actually know for sure?

And if your faith is important to you, then it's completely natural to want to pass it on to your children. I get that.

What I don't really understand is why someone for whom religion is important would marry someone who not only doesn't share that religion but actually perceives it as a negative force in the world? And if someone did choose to marry someone in that situation, surely they would reach agreements on how any kids would be raised before they came along? If your faith truly matters to you, wouldn't this come up at a very early stage? Or is it a case of people thinking that they don't really care when they are at the stage of getting married and then suddenly finding that it is more important to them as they get older? I'm genuinely curious as to how these situations come about?

We recently decided to start attending mass at the local Catholic church. There were/are some difficulties in our marriage and we felt that it might help. I grew up CofE: my husband is RC, from a very different culture (misunderstandings and language issues are the cause of many of our problems TBH). We don't live in the UK so a CofE church is not an option, though that would have been my personal preference. Attending mass has actually helped a lot: it has brought us together. It has anchored us as a family. I feel as though my children, while they of course object to going to mass, are understanding how precious they are, and that they have talents and gifts it is their duty to develop. I am so worried about my kids becoming depressed and losing direction in the modern world. Sounds dramatic, but that is how we feel. Perhaps because we both live apart from our families and cultures.

So I would say go for it, if something is pulling you there. It will bring you comfort. I don't find the RC mass to be very different from the CofE services but if you would prefer RC since that is your background, definitely go with that. The sins of the Catholic church are perpetrated by corrupt individuals and are not the fault of millions of ordinary Catholics.