Not the usual subject of conversations, I have amazingly found myself for two straight days now among two different groups of people involved in conversations regarding 'emergency baptism', and these conversations have caused me to look into the facts behind my beliefs.
I suppose those conversations were not too amazing, considering that my eldest daughter is about to give birth to my 2nd grandchild, and that one of my nieces gave birth last year and is about to have her child baptized.
My first grandchild, my granddaughter Elysia, was not formally baptized in Church, despite my wife and I trying to encourage my daughter to do so. She simply feels that it is something that my granddaughter should seek for herself when she gets older, not something that should be 'forced on her' or 'decided for her'.
We love our daughter, and have no choice but to simply agree to disagree. Well, that's really not the only choice. I had heard of 'emergency baptism', the idea that any Christian could baptize someone simply by blessing them with water and saying a prayer over them, as long as the person doing the baptizing was sincere in the danger to the soul of the baptized.
That was how I felt on the day that I was alone with my granddaughter and simply took some tap water, made the sign of the cross on her head and said "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit", held my hand on her head and said a prayer for her. But in the end, is she really now officially baptized?
