By God, a rite should be done right.
That apparently was the thinking of a Pointe Calumet
woman who complained in 1996 that her grandchild was given a botched baptism, a
claim that led Catholic Church investigators to determine that about 300
children hadn’t received the holy sacrament.
Instead of having one designated person sprinkle the
child with holy water while proclaiming “I baptize you in the name of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” a priest handled the water while a lay
person, properly designated to do baptisms, recited the sacred line, according
to a Presse Canadienne report.
“It should be done by one (properly designated) person at
the same time … in one movement,” Gaetan Baillargeon, director of the church’s
national office of liturgy, said yesterday. [Full Story]
