Preist slaps crying baby in the face at baptism

[Rev. Rye]

Well, in Catholicism, baptism is generally held to be the one thing keeping the baby from eternal damnation, and, according to the Catechism, "The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth." They may not have been immediately browbeaten into it, but they were probably conditioned into just going with it.

No.

I mean, as an older man, the involuntary action that was misconstrued as a "slap" could have been a direct result of the aging process.  Clearly, he's getting up there in age.  Older people are not always in complete control of their bodies.

Why didn't you say it was the slap that was involuntary? I myself have a couple involuntary tics, and if that's the explanation, I can certainly understand it. That said, one would think he might have mentioned something about it in his explanation.