Preist slaps crying baby in the face at baptism

[LadyForCamus]

It’s so awful.  The baby was clearly already terrified of what was going on.  And his own mother makes no move to take him, or comfort him.  It makes me feel sick.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree on this point. One crucial thing to know about babies: they cry. A lot. They cry when they're hungry, they cry when they've crapped themselves, they cry for no reason whatsoever. It's a big reason (besides my own mental issues and my anti-natalist philosophy) I've decided to never become a parent. It's impossible to judge from the video what kind of cry it is (at least until the priest slaps him), but it doesn't look like any water has touched the kid's head at any point in the video. And, as far as I can tell, he's probably not even old enough to understand language yet (when I was baptized, as a Lutheran, I was only two months old). There is no reason to believe anything specifically related to the scenario (besides maybe not being where he expected to be) is stressing him out at this point. If we saw the priest dunk him in the baptismal font or pouring water on his head, or even if it seemed sinister that he's making the sign of the cross on the baby with holy water, that idea would work, but nothing has happened until the slap.

I don’t think I expressed my thoughts clearly.  I wasn’t implying that the baptism itself was some kind of wrongful, traumatic antecedent.  I don’t think that.  If that were the case you’d have to argue similarly that everything nurses have to do to newborns after delivery is equally as harmful.  To me it seemed like he was crying because he was scared (and I certainly could be wrong as I was wrong often with my own two little ones 😛), but I’m not saying that means the baptism ritual is abusive in its own right.  My point was more to the fact that a baby, who was already distraught and crying, got a slap to his face instead of comforting arms.  That is what’s so heartbreaking to me.