Preist slaps crying baby in the face at baptism

[Rev. Rye]

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.

Yeah, unless you check on it, it can be really hard to tell what kind of cry a baby is doing, as you yourself have pointed out, especially since, at that point in its development, it's the only communication it can even do at that point. And I don't know exactly what stimulus would have triggered a cry of fear until the slap (except maybe the fear of an unfamiliar place.)

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Boy, that was the most violent caress I’ve ever seen! 🤔

There's an awesome metal band or song title there.