‘Sinless’ infant: priest wrong on theology too

I disagree completely with that priest who berated the young, unwed mother of 17 as she was having her infant baptized in a church in Cebu, when he said the child is without sin. Wrong. The Catholic Church says that all infants are born with sin—the original sin—because our supposedly first parents, Adam and Eve, went against God’s wishes. This is why the Church insists that we have our children baptized—to cleanse them of the original sin!

Inquirer columnist Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, in her July 10 article, says: “If I were to defend the teenager, I would not do what the priest did.” She would tell him off gently. Well, if I were there in that instance, I would have given him a dose of his own medicine. In a not-too-gentle voice, I would have told him to piss off; that he was the one who was shameful.

This type of bigoted “representative of the Lord here on earth” and the interpretation of Church teachings that would send unbaptized children to hell are the reasons the number of atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and humanists is growing inexorably faster in the world, and in this predominantly Catholic country in Southeast Asia.

—ROBERT ALVAREZ HYNDMAN,

Tahanan Village, Parañaque City