Will a Roman Catholic priest refuse to baptize the child of a gay couple or a couple that cannot be married in the Roman Catholic Church because of divorce? I am an usher in a Lutheran church.

Joseph--

One of the requirements for infant baptism in the Catholic Church is that "there be a well-founded hope that the child will be brought up in the Catholic religion. If such hope is truly lacking, the baptism is, in accordance with the provisions of particular law, to be deferred and the parents advised of the reason for this" (canon 868 §1 2°, Code of Canon Law).

If a couple is engaged in ongoing acts of unchastity sufficiently grave enough to give a baptismal celebrant reason to doubt that the couple could or would form a child in Catholic faith and morals, that would be a reason for deferring the child's baptism until the parents' situation is regularized. Certainly living the homosexual lifestyle, to the extent to raising a child to believe such a life is "normal" and moral, rises to such gravity. So too could heterosexual fornication or adultery if the child is to be raised to believe that the parents' actions are morally good.

Michelle Arnold
Catholic Answers

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