Congratulations on the birth of your child.
The Parish wishes you every blessing at this special time for you and in the years ahead. We would like to welcome your child into our community of faith, here in Kilbeggan and Rahugh and into the family of God, the Church.
It is traditional for a child to be baptised in the parish where it lives. Parents need to make a commitment to practise the faith and to bring the newly baptised child up in the practise of the Faith.
Baptism is celebrated in the Parish, at 3 p.m. on Saturdays.
Parents who wish to have a child baptised need to meet Fr. Brendan to arrange the time, and to fill a Baptism Request Form.
The Baptism of infants
1250 – Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called.50 The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. the Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.51
1251 – Christian parents will recognize that this practice also accords with their role as nurturers of the life that God has entrusted to them.52
1252 – The practice of infant Baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church. There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on, and it is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole “households” received baptism, infants may also have been baptized.53
Faith and Baptism
1253 – Baptism is the sacrament of faith.54 But faith needs the community of believers. It is only within the faith of the Church that each of the faithful can believe. the faith required for Baptism is not a perfect and mature faith, but a beginning that is called to develop. the catechumen or the godparent is asked: “What do you ask of God’s Church?” the response is: “Faith!”
1254 – For all the baptized, children or adults, faith must grow after Baptism. For this reason the Church celebrates each year at the Easter Vigil the renewal of baptismal promises. Preparation for Baptism leads only to the threshold of new life. Baptism is the source of that new life in Christ from which the entire Christian life springs forth.
1255 – For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents’ help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized – child or adult on the road of Christian life.55 Their task is a truly ecclesial function (officium).56 The whole ecclesial community bears some responsibility for the development and safeguarding of the grace given at Baptism.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church