Why Do Catholics Baptise Babies?

Two Views of Baptism

Most Christians in the world baptise babies: Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and others. But many Baptist, Pentecostal and evangelical churches practise only believer’s baptism: baptism for those old enough to repent and profess faith personally.

Their objection is serious and sincere. A baby cannot believe, repent or choose to follow Christ. Isn’t baptism meant to be a public declaration of one’s own faith? And isn’t there no clear example of a baby being baptised in the New Testament?

Catholics answer that infant baptism is biblical, ancient, and flows from what baptism actually is.

What Baptism Is

The disagreement begins with what baptism does.

For many evangelicals, baptism is mainly a public sign of a person’s faith, an act of obedience that follows conversion. If that is all it is, then it makes sense to wait until someone can believe.

For Catholics, baptism is first of all God’s action, not ours. It is a sacrament in which God washes away original sin, gives the new life of grace, makes the person His child and joins them to the Church (CCC 1213, 1263–1270). Jesus said, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). St Peter said, “Baptism… now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21).

If baptism is God’s gift of grace, then a baby can receive it, just as a baby can receive love, food and a family name long before understanding them. The Catechism says that the sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant baptism (CCC 1250).

The Biblical Evidence

Whole households

The New Testament records several baptisms of entire households:

Lydia “was baptised, with her household” (Acts 16:15).
The Philippian jailer “was baptised at once, with all his family” (Acts 16:33).
Paul baptised “the household of Stephanas” (1 Corinthians 1:16).

In the ancient world, a household included children and servants. The texts do not say that infants were present. But nor do they exclude them, and it would be surprising if no household contained a small child.

”The promise is to you and to your children”

At Pentecost, Peter told the crowd: “Repent, and be baptised every one of you… For the promise is to you and to your children” (Acts 2:38–39).

Baptism replaces circumcision

St Paul links baptism with circumcision: “In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands… and you were buried with Him in baptism” (Colossians 2:11–12). Under the Old Covenant, Jewish boys were circumcised as infants, at eight days old, entering God’s covenant people long before they could understand it. If baptism is the new circumcision, it would be strange for the New Covenant to be less generous to children than the Old.

”Let the children come to Me”

When people brought “even infants” to Jesus, the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said: “Let the children come to Me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:15–16). The Greek word Luke uses, brephē, means babies.

The Early Church

The strongest evidence comes from early Christian history.

St Irenaeus, around 180, wrote that Christ came to save all who are born again to God through Him: “infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men.”

The Apostolic Tradition, a church order traditionally attributed to St Hippolytus of Rome (around 215), gives instructions for baptism: “Baptise first the children; and if they can speak for themselves let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them.”

Origen, around 248, wrote that the Church had received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants.

St Cyprian and a council of North African bishops, in 251 or 253, discussed whether infants should be baptised on the eighth day after birth, like circumcision, or sooner. They decided they should not wait. No one at that council questioned whether infants should be baptised at all.

There is no record of any early Christian protest that infant baptism was a new invention. It was only in the sixteenth century, among the Anabaptists, that the practice was widely rejected.

Answering the Objections

”Babies can’t believe”

True. But baptism is not mainly about what we do; it is about what God does. Children are baptised in the faith of the Church, professed by their parents and godparents, who promise to raise them in that faith (CCC 1253–1255). As the child grows, they are called to make that faith their own, especially at Confirmation.

”There’s no explicit example”

There is no explicit example of an infant being baptised, but neither is there a command to delay baptism, nor any example of a child raised in a Christian home being baptised as an adult. The household baptisms, the link with circumcision and the unanimous early practice point strongly in one direction.

”It makes people think they’re saved without faith”

Infant baptism is the beginning, not the end. The Church insists that the baptised must be raised in the faith and must respond to God’s grace personally. Parents who baptise their children take on a serious responsibility. (See How Do I Pass On the Faith to My Children?)

A Gift Before We Ask

Infant baptism expresses a beautiful truth: God loves us first. Before we can do anything, understand anything or ask for anything, He welcomes us into His family. As St John wrote, “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).