Baptism Card Quotes

You were baptized?" "My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in.

Our understanding of doctrine is not perfect, and no matter what the popes have said, I don't believe for a moment that God is going to damn for eternity the billions of children he allowed to born and die without baptism. No, I think you're likely to go to hell because, despite all your brilliance, you are still quite amoral. Sometime before you die, I pray most earnestly that you will learn that there are higher laws that transcend mere survival, and higher causes to serve. When you give yourself to such a great cause, my dear boy, then I will not fear your death, because I know that a just God will forgive you for the oversight of not having recognized the truth of Christianity during your lifetime.

But before we leave the Iconoclastic Controversy, it is worth asking if Protestants have been iconoclastic in the wrong sense—failing our Lord by a disregard of the two icons He has given to us. Twenty-first-century Christians do not seem to give their baptism much thought after the event itself, unless to debate it. And then, imagine members of a congregation being given a blank card after the Lord’s Supper and asked to fill in what—if anything—they think “happened” at the service. Could we be confident that the answers in our own church family would display simplicity, clarity, unity—and even orthodoxy? So, perhaps if we are critical of the use of icons in the Eastern church, we ought also to be critical of ourselves that we have paid so little attention to the “icons” we believe Jesus has given to us. Mystery