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Water is poured on the head of an infant held over the baptismal font of a Roman Catholic church. Infant baptism [1] [2] (or paedobaptism) is the practice of baptizing infants or young children. Infant baptism is also called christening by some faith traditions. Most Christians belong to denominations that practice infant baptism.
For Roman Catholics, baptism by water is a sacrament of initiation into the life of the children of God (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1212–13). It configures the person to Christ (CCC 1272), and obliges the Christian to share in the church's apostolic and missionary activity (CCC 1270).
Nonetheless, according to Catholic dogma, baptism, or at least the desire for it, along with supernatural faith or at least the "habit of faith", are necessary for salvation. Hence, it is not immediately clear how to reconcile the mercy of God for unbaptized infants with the necessity of baptism and Catholic faith for salvation.
The Roman Catholic Church sees baptism as the first and basic sacrament of Christian initiation. [27] In the Western or Latin Church , baptism is usually conferred today by pouring water three times on the recipient's head, while reciting the baptismal formula: "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit " (cf ...
The Roman Catholic view is that baptism is necessary for salvation and that it frees the recipient from original sin. Roman Catholic tradition teaches that unbaptized infants, not being freed from original sin, go to Limbo (Latin: limbus infantium), which is an afterlife condition distinct from Hell. This is not, however, official church dogma.
Naming a child, popularly referred to as "Christening", is usually through the baptism ceremony in Christianity, especially Catholic culture, and to a lesser degree among those Protestants who practice infant baptism.
Girl in christening gown being baptized in a Roman Catholic church.. In the Roman Catholic Church, most of those born into the faith are baptized as infants.The traditional clothing for a child being baptized into the Roman Catholic faith is a baptismal gown, a very long, white infants' garment now made especially for the ceremony of christening and usually only worn then.
The practice of allowing young children to receive communion has fallen into disfavor in the Latin-Rite of the Catholic Church. Latin-Rite Catholics generally refrain from infant communion and instead have a special ceremony when the child receives his or her First Communion, usually around the age of seven or eight years old.