Sunday, January 11, 2026, is in the calendar of the Catholic Church, the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, our remembrance of when Jesus chose to be baptized by his cousin, St John the Baptist. Today’s Gospel reading was from Matthew 3:13-17:

3:13 Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him.
14 But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I have the need to be baptized by You, and yet You are coming to me?”
15 But Jesus, answering, said to him, “Allow it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he *allowed Him.
16 After He was baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on Him,
17 and behold, a voice from the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Hardly an offensive passage, but naturally that was the day The Irish Times chose to print an essay from Dr Mary McAleese, who claims to be an “academic civil and canon lawyer, (and the) author of Children’s Rights and Obligations in Canon Law: the Christening Contract (Brill 2019),” to claim that the Catholic practice of infant baptism is evil, evil, evil!
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Baptism denies babies their human rights

Rite & Reason: No one is Catholic by birth and the notion of ‘Baptismal promises’ is risible

by Dr Mary McAleese | Sunday, January 11, 2026

Throughout the world, there continues a long-standing, systemic and overlooked severe restriction on children’s rights with regard to religion. This warrants, but has yet to receive, serious examination. It impacts Ireland in a special way and contemporary circumstances make Ireland an ideal place to conduct that examination.

Let me set the scene with a couple of brief, inter-related stories. They concern the relationship between children’s rights and religion in Ireland, and certain unchallenged aspects of the canon law of Ireland’s major Christian denomination and provider of education, the Latin Catholic Church.

It restricts children’s rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, to which both Ireland and the Holy See – which governs the Catholic Church and is effectively the author of canon law – are State Parties.

Good heavens! Baptism “restricts children’s rights”? Which rights? It certainly does not prevent those baptized as Catholic from joining most Protestant churches, nor does it somehow drag reluctant people to Mass on Sundays. More, the Catholic Church accepts most baptisms conducted by Protestant churches as valid. Muslims do not accept baptism as valid for anything, because they have no equivalent ritual. Jews have ritual cleansing, the Tevilah, but it is not the same under Judaism as baptism is for Christians.

Atheists? Buddhists? Whateverists? Being baptized as a Catholic does not prohibit anyone from joining another religion, or deciding that they have no faith at all.

If you are a Christian, baptism means a great deal to you; if you are not Christian, baptism means nothing to you, and as either a sprinkling or an immersion in water, it has done you no harm.

The distinguished Dr McAleese is very concerned that baptism means you are irreversibly a Catholic according to canon law, and that’s true enough, but my response is: so what? The Church cannot force you to go to Mass, and cannot force you to believe anything. The Church has no gendarmerie which can arrest you if you walk into a Pentecostalist or Baptist church on Sunday, nor the authority to show up at your door on a wintry Sunday morning in which you chose to stay under the covers.

Attempts to leave the Church or change religion or challenge Church teaching or magisterial authority, constitute canonical crimes of heresy, apostasy, schism. Among the punishments attached to such acts is the much-misunderstood penalty of excommunication, which in fact leaves membership intact but subject to restrictions.

It should be obvious that, if someone does wish to change religion, to not be a Catholic any longer, the penalty of excommunication is meaningless. It means, in effect, that you can’t go to church in the church where you didn’t want to go.

I suppose that for “an academic civil and canon lawyer,” that might be of overwhelming concern, but out in the real world, it’s pretty much meaningless.

There are many things that parents can command as they rear their children, from going to church to eating their hated peas for supper, a mortal sin in my mind.

There’s more at Dr McAleese’s original, but really, it’s silliness. Baptism, and membership in the Catholic Church is voluntary, even if the Church already has someone listed in its rolls.