Had my son baptised twice

[Sadatschool]

I had my child baptised in a Church of England church when he was 6 months old as this was something that my husband wanted to do and as a lapsed Catholic I had no strong feelings on the matter. As our child begun to get nearer to school age we looked at the primary schools in the area, and secondary schools also and the ones they we preferred him to go to are Catholic. I also childmind from this school and have 5 children before and after school which go to thei school.
I decided to begin going back to Catholic Church and eventually after attending for around 6 months had my son baptised a Catholic.

We applied for a primary school place at the catholic school and yesterday found out he hasn't been offered a place, we live on the doorstep and as he is a baptised child I was confused as to why until I spoke to the school headmistress and was told they they have discounted his baptism certificate as they know he has already been baptised before and therefore you cannot be baptised twice so they have to discount the second, Catholic time.

Does anyone have any experience with anything like this as I am wondering if there is any point in my appealing this decision?

I spoke to the school headmistress and was told they they have discounted his baptism certificate as they know he has already been baptised before

Allocation of places is nothing to do with the school, it's the LEA that make the decisions. I'm surprised that your HT even had this information. I would have thought that they would just have a list of children who had been allocated a place, not a list of those that hadn't and the reasons why.

But whether you agree with faith schools or not (you say you don't but still want to go to one?), the fact is you lied to get into a school, you got caught. I'm surprised you have come onto a forum to defend your actions.

Also, you have avoided the questions with regards your Church commitment. Could that be because you don't have any?

If you're applying under a faith commitment they can check that.

Faith schools are often the best schools in an area, another. I don't blame parents for trying to get their child into the best school in an area.

You lied to a priest?

My siblings and I all went to a (poor, under subscribed) catholic school. I was the only one baptised as my Parents had a "mixed marriage" and had parental pressures which eased after me (pfb)
When it came to applying for my younger sister my parents told them she had been baptised, in Ireland. They came straight back and said they knew she hadn't been. Mind blowing! You can't SWIZZ the Catholic Church, they has their ways

Church Keeps Extensive Records Shock

Like the da vinchi code

My friend started attending Church when her children were toddlers as she wanted a certain school. They are now at secondary and she is still very involved in the Church and attends every week, as do her children. She may have started going to get a school place but I think that's fine given 10+ years later they are still members.

Tough luck, OP but no sympathy.

Something that surprises me about this story (and other posters have mentioned it as well) is how the school know about the previous baptism. And, as someone else mentioned, the application process isn't rigorous enough for them to do a full background check on every child. Hmmmm.......

Maybe the priest did know and mentioned it to the school when they checked?

There's a separate form for some faith schools that the school gives out and asks for details of faith commitment (as in bums on pews rather than just saying you uphold that faith). Maybe schools are allowed to run their own checks on the info?
A secondary near us asked us to fill one in and return it to them, as "the LEA don't handle admissions, we do". Implied it was a done deal if we signed up and the LEA process was just a formality. Load of bollocks, that, so they didn't get put on our list.

The priest will have known. It will be the priest who blocked it. In the meantime he got the attendance and donations. Here it is 2 forms. School do list and check against la. La allocate non Catholics if not full.if unexpectedly oversubscribed by non Catholics the priests have been know to do mass baptism of catholic families with non baptised children.

It's a bit of a funny one, how to 'convert' to Catholicism at a young age when you've already been baptised. As has been pointed out, the Catholic Church recognise any trinitarian baptism, even if it was by a non-believer. They cannot do another baptism unless there are doubts about the first (and it would be called a conditional baptism), but that's not going to be a problem with the CofE. Once the children get to a certain age there would be first communion and so on, and I don't think there would need to be anything different, just because they had been baptised in a different denomination.

With the benefit of hindsight you could have declared a reviving of your faith to the priest and broached the subject of the previous baptism and school applications at some point. He'd have probably seen straight through it, but I can't really see why it's any different to those who suddenly start coming along a couple of years before their kids start school anyway....

I'm sure the priest and school have seen it all before, and the school probably has to be strict about who gets a place.

Don't they have xx% places to 'good catholics', xx% to not so good and 0.x% unsaved heathens?

At the appeal what are your grounds to appeal?

That its close by? That's not going to help. Unfortunately you lied and tried to beat the system. In the process you have pissed off the priest and the school itself.

You may not agree that your child should have to be catholic to go there. But thems the rules. You would have possibly got in, if (since you live so close) you had been honest. Unless the school was over subscribed with catholic children in the catchment area.

You made the decision to try and cheat the system.

By all means try an appeal. But I think they can retract offers if the parents turn out to be lying. So I imagine your appeal wouldn't be successful.

Did you have guests or godparents attending both baptisms? Perhaps one of them made a comment that made the priest aware it might not be the first time.

Catholic schools are included in the decision about who goes there and who doesn't. I know quite a few people who lived close to our catholic school and didn't get in based on faith.

When we applied for dd catholic schools the criteria was different to non faith schools.

Children who were fostered in the are came first (some other groups were included but I can't recall what they were)

Then catholic children in the catchment area, then non catholic in the catchment area, then Catholics outside the area an so on.

Children with siblings were somewhere in there. But can't remember where.

This information is cross checked with the church and school. It could be the priest suspected the OP was only doing it because she wanted a place at the school and the school did further checks.

What amazes me is that she obviously lied to the priests face. Since there are meetings to attend etc and now is upset her child didn't get a place.

Our parish writes the date of baptism on the back of birth certificates so could this be the case?

I say our church, I of course mean the place my mother dragged me to every week where I literally felt the fear of God in me, then 5 days a week of the same fear at school, waking up sweating with the worry that I'd spend an eternity and never see my non Catholic father again.

I'm assuming that the OP included the original baptism information with the application as well as the recent one. Definitely only need one baptism although when I was received into the Catholic Church as an adult and couldn't find my baptism certificate my priest (who is a mate of mine) just said "do t worry luv, I'll just dunk you again if you can't get a copy of it" .
OP although you have played a game and lost it I feel for you, I think it's absolutely ridiculous that you cannot get your child into a school THAT close just because he was baptised into the "wrong" church....and I sa that as a card carrying Catholic.

Just to correct a point upthread, marriage in another faith does not always count as valid from the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church. As I understand it, if a Catholic marries someone in a Non-roman Catholic Church without the consent of the church and/or presence of an RC priest, that marriage will not be valid from the persective of the RC church. So if the couple are later divorced, either one of them can go on to marry validly in a RC church. Although permission does have to be sought from Rome by the Priest who will preside at the later marriage.

So, to be honest, it surprises me that the RC church recognise other baptismal rites as valid although I appreciate they are different sacraments. But then it never ceases to surprise me how little I seem to know about Catholicism.

You lied to a priest?

I think that shoots any appeal out of the water.

Baptisms, cradle rolls etc are public information. Changes are guest or even OP DH muttered something in hearing of priest and raised a red flag.

Priests would have checked CofE Cradle Roll and told school.

it surprises me that the RC church recognise other baptismal rites as valid although I appreciate they are different sacraments

This was established so long ago in the history of the church that there were no other rites, sacraments or denominations. In the very earliest timea of the church, when they were trying to define what makes you a christian, every so often it would be decided that someone or other has beliefs too far from the mainstream and should be considered to have never been a christian all along. To avoid there being a huge panic every time this happened (because at the time they firmly believed that anyone who died unbaptised would not be saved) it was very soon established that the state of the person baptising is irrelevant - even a non Christian can perform a valid baptism if they say the right words. Otherwise there would have to be mass rebaptisms every time someone was declared heretic, which happened a lot. The Catholic Church are therefore required to consider CofE baptism valid for the purpose of "being saved" - it is heretical to believe otherwise - but there is no obligation for them to consider it equivalent for school admissions purposes.

It is quite clear to me that you’re Catholic only when it suited you (and/or your child). OK you did admit that you’re a lapsed Catholic. You apparently didn’t even realise or understand one of the most fundamental concepts of Christian beliefs:

There is only one baptism! End of story.

My DP was baptised in a Methodist Church. I’m a born Catholic. The Catholic Church recognises the Methodist baptism and we had a Catholic wedding - communion and all. My DP also received the sacrament of Confirmation. Our kids are born Catholic and baptised in the Catholic Church shortly after birth.

And I think all Catholic schools should scrap their nonsensical ‘Catholicity’ admissions criteria and accept all faiths and no faith because there are too many hypocrites in there interpreting the rules to benefit and suit themselves.