Christening doubts

[MyTiredThirties]

Hello everyone,

This is the first time I post about something so personal, so I've changed my username to keep it private.

I think this may end up being a long post, so apologies in advance, but other than my DH I have literally no one irl I can speak to about this (well, I guess I could speak to the priest, of course, but you'll see where I'm going).

I am from a culturally catholic family, but from a country where catholicism is very tarnished with a history of abuse. I hope I can explain well what I mean: one side of my family (grandmother and other women of that generation and above) practiced a very popular and loose version of catholicism; the other side (again, especially the women but also men) were very dogmatic and authoritarian. There's history of abuse among this side of the family and, unfortunately, it got conflated with religion. As a consecuence of that, one of my parents suffered a deep wound and ended up renouncing and condemning the church, and becoming an atheist.
I was baptised and had my first communion, but my family were completely secular and did not practice. When the moment came, I did not go on with the confirmation and so, there ended my relationship with the church. I always associated it with abuse and harm.

I went through a period of rejection and even explicitely "practiced" paganism (wicca... I know: very original, right?). But I always had a soft spot for christian mysticism and an intimate inclination towards Mary and the saints. This became very strong when I became a mother some years ago and hasn't stopped since. I've read and listened everything that's come to my hands about the church's teaching, and I've had so many revelations that I've lost count.

Now I find myself in this conundrum:
I want to baptise my children but I feel like I would be a hypocrite because I'm not practicing myself, and I'm definitely not a good christian (much less a good catholic). All my social and familial relationships reject the church and catholicism is specially viewed as oppressive and harmful. And I feel I can't blame them for it, honestly. But at the same time I feel this sense of urgent calling to baptise my children into the catholic faith... But how can I teach them and provide spiritual guidance for them when I myself am completely lost? But at the same time, why would I deny them grace just because I can't find it in me?

Many thanks if you've read it all 🙏

How do I navigate this? I sincerely feel adrift...

Hopeful bump 🙏

I can't really help because I'm not Catholic and in our church we baptise people when they ask for it but I wondered if you could go and speak to a local catholic priest?

Same as @ChristmasStars here. I am not a Catholic and our church performs adult baptisms only, or if a younger person has enough understanding, as all children already belong to the Lord. I agree that your best course of action would be to speak with your local priest.

As I said on a similar thread: For me, being a pedant, I have a challenge with the word/idea of ‘christening’ as we cannot impose knowledge of the love of Christ Jesus on anyone, young or old. That is, to become a Christian we need to make our own decision to accept Christ Jesus for ourselves … just because something was done to us as a baby or child, or just because we were dragged to church every Sunday and were raised by Christian parents, does not make anyone automatically ‘Christian’. Most young people are capable of making that decision for themselves around the age of 10 to 14.

Maybe start with attending a few Masses so you get familiar with the priest.

Would you be open to going to classes to be confirmed? Then as a family joining the church?

Do you know people that would be willing to act as godparents?

I'm Catholic. If you want to get them baptised, go ahead. Don't feel uneasy about it. You'll find your way as a family.

For what it's worth, I'm Irish and there's been a lot of problems over the abuse and the Church issue there. I just plug into Celtic Christianity as my inspiration.