Who should you ask to be a godparent?

[mollysmum82]

I did the Rcia journey to become a catholic last year and it was really wonderful. But I'm still learning and feel like a bit of a novice sometimes! We're having our kids christened soon and i'm wondering what to do on the godparent front. I always thought godparents were just legal guardians but having learned more about the catholic faith I know it's a lot more than that. Should all the godparents be practising Catholics? We were going to ask my husbands brother and sister in law to be legal guardians but neither of them are practising Catholics. My dad is baptised catholic but does not practise, my aunt and cousin are practising Catholics and I love them dearly but would not ask them to be legal guardians. So I guess my question is could we have a mixture of godparents, dh's siblings to let them know how much they mean to us and my aunt or cousin to let them know how much we value their spiritual guidance? Thanks for any advice x

It's normal in the Catholic church to have 3 godparents (2 women if baby is female, 2 men if baby is male). They have to be Catholic themselves, although whether they are practising or not depends on the priest.

Godparents have nothing to do with legal guardianship, it's all about spiritual guidance (in theory, in practise it's just someone special).

Originally the purpose of godparents was purely to ensure citizenship of the child. Roman citizens had more rights than others. Baptism was when the baby was recorded into state records. None Roman parents would get Roman friends/acquaintances to stand in for them at the baptism so their baby was recorded as Roman instead of the parents ethnicity.

GPS have nothing to do with guardianship if anything happens to you, you still need to do a will etc, DS's catholic GPs would not be his guardians if anything happend to us (for one thing they're too old) - I'm honestly blue in the face saying this but I'm sure after posting more people will come on and trot out the guardian line

they don't all need to be practicing catholics, but some do (check with your priest if it needs to be one or 2) you don't need a man and a woman, DS's are 2 women, you can have more than 2

and if you can't choose catholic friends/relatives you're happy with the church will allocate you 2 practicing lay members of the community and you can have them alongside non catholic friends/family

its really very flexible, forget the guardianshp thing and do that properly/legally

You don't have to be Catholic to be godparents. Our god-daughter and her parents are catholic, we're anglican. The fact we have faith, are practicing Christians, and respect the differences in our beliefs is enough for them.

The priest wasn't too happy but relented as they're regulars at his church and our god-daughter has other catholic role models in her life at church.

Maybe have a word with the priest to see what he expects as I know each one can be different.

You only need one godparent - and that one Godparent has to be a baptised and confirmed catholic. You can have two - one male, one female. Non-catholic baptised Christians (or additional Catholics) can strictly only be "christian witnesses", so for example my oldest has four people listed on her baptism certificate, strictly the Catholics couple are her Godparents and the other two (who happen not to be Catholic but are baptised Christians) are witnesses. Our PP listed them all under the Godparent line on the baptism certificate and that is how we think of them all.

Sorry - now that looks even more confusing because we are all saying something slightly different - Lacking's second post is good - you can borrow a member of the parish to be the official Catholic godparent if necessary - although it is nice if you have a catholic friend who will follow through to be sponsor at confirmation etc. The others might officially only be 'witnesses' but they are treated the same as Godparents and it is the relationship between you, your child, and the people you chose that really makes the Godparent-Godchild relationship work.