Every church and chapel should have this baptismal booklet available to the faithful!
There are three types of Baptism. No, I am not talking about water, blood and desire. Nor am I speaking of immersion, infusion and aspersion. For a normal infant baptism (infusion with water, technically speaking), I have witnessed, “chaotic baptism,” “clueless baptism” and “orderly and intelligent baptism.” What, you may ask, am I talking about?
In “chaotic baptism,” there are generally a bunch of people and the priest shows up with two or three rituals – all of which are shared, tugged at or fought over by the attendees.
At a “clueless baptism,” there may be a few rituals present, fortunately, some St. Andrew Daily Missals and those who are not fortunate enough to have one of the above stand silently and make as much sense of things as possible.
Lastly, “orderly and intelligent baptism.” There is one essential ingredient, and that is that everyone in attendance have a copy of the Rite of Baptism in English and Latin. There are two sources for this. Ideally, one would flip to the Rite of Baptism in Angelus Press’ 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal. Ahh – perfect. The whole rite to follow. You can even share with a neighbor …but hopefully not three or four!
The Baptismal Booklet
Not everyone has the 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal, particularly guests who do not regularly attend the Latin Mass and so we offer the Baptismal Booklet, which contains the entire Rite of Baptism.
Have a Better Participation in the Rich Ceremony of Baptism
Ideally, the church should make them available for use at baptisms, but otherwise, bring your own. Everything you need (and not just for observers, but also parents and godparents) is there. They are inexpensive enough that everyone can have one and fully concentrate on the rich ceremonial the Church provides for creating new members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Simply, I don’t think I have ever been to a baptism where I would not have bought one of these books for everyone present, just so people could pray along with the Church with these beautiful prayers.
The Baptismal Booklet Chapters Include
- On Holy Baptism by Fr. Franz Schmidberger
- Church Teaching About Baptism
- The Ceremonies of Baptism
- The Serious Obligations of Godparents
- The Churching of Women
- Blessing of a Woman after Childbirth and of Her Child
- Consecration of a Child to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
- The Rite for the Baptism of Adults
- The Reception of Converts
