Blinkered materialism

Sometimes, smart people believe dumb things. And philosophies that praise human reason to the high heavens prove shockingly blind to some of the most important realities of life. What’s scary is when those apparently smart people with their supposedly sophisticated worldviews gain access to levers of power. This has been a problem for the West in particular for decades now. Leaders of what was historically Christendom have adopted secularism, and it’s left them grossly unfit to navigate the questions of religion, children, and the family.

This recent article by Mary McAleese is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. In it, McAleese attacks the Roman Catholic Church for its practice of paedobaptism (baptism of infants), regarding it as a violation of human rights. Baptismal promises made on behalf of the child are an affront to their religious freedom, you see. Children shouldn’t be inducted into a religious community until they are of a sufficient age to reason for themselves, do their research, and then freely choose a faith of their own. Baptism should be received only when the child can consent to it.

The argument is audacious enough, from a religious liberty perspective. What’s even more amazing is that McAleese served as president of Ireland from 1997 to 2011, and she claims to be a Catholic, even boasting a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University. Of course, she rejects the Catholic Church’s views on homosexuality, legalized abortion, and ordination.

In one sense, this is a tired-out story: liberal Catholic politicians that use their childhood religion as some kind of spiritual-therapeutic security blanket and tool for political appeal, all while blatantly defying important moral and doctrinal positions of the Roman Church. This brings moral disaster upon the commonwealths that they lead, and it endangers the politicians’ eternal souls. Again, we ask, “What does it take to get excommunicated from today’s Catholic Church?”

In another sense, this is a perfect snapshot of secularism’s insufficiencies. The secularism I am talking about has its roots in Enlightenment philosophies, most of which assume everyone is a rational adult in a material world (or at least a world in which only material is truly recognizable to all of us). God’s involvement with His creation and humans growing up in a family rarely occupy the center of these worldviews. The result? Secularism means we have to give our political imaginations a lobotomy. We have a hard time if things don’t pivot on rational consent. We are trained to excuse anything and everything between “consenting adults.” And we don’t track with themes of inheritance, intergenerational covenant, and un-asked for obligations.

Soon, not only infant baptism but patriotism and family loyalty don’t make much sense. We did not choose our parents, but we are commanded by God to honor them. We did not choose the country in which we were born, but we owe it something—even our very lives. And those ties are not as fundamental to our human identity as being a member of Christ’s Body the Church. Historically, both Judaism and Christianity have a dynamic of being haunted by covenant obligations.

When we Christians stray into sin, our baptisms cry out against us and beckon us back to our heavenly Father. Even baptism in adulthood has this characteristic. Sadly, those raised in the faith and that have visibly partaken of the covenantal signs apostasize to conform to the world. But the covenant dynamic remains. Even Judaism faces a similar challenge from secularism: If we’re attacking infant baptism, should we go after circumcision, eating kosher, and seders as well?

Everyone is raised in a religion and is religious—even if that religion is secularism. McAleese may attend Catholic services, but she renders her ultimate loyalty to an individualistic secularism. She ultimately wants Catholicism to progress and conform to her actual religion’s principles. She, like most western leaders, wants a default agnosticism (i.e. the coward’s atheism) to be the default religion of the land. Parents raising their children in a different religion like Christianity is a problem.

But see it from a paedobaptist’s (baptism of infants) perspective: Baptism is an effectual sign of grace, and Christ tells us to forbid not our children from His embrace. Even credobaptists (baptism on the basis of Christian confession) raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, whether their children consent to it or not. We also feed them, clothe them, shelter them, and make sure they get medical care. To refrain would be neglect—and have they not souls as well as bodies?

A worldview that would deny this is blinkered in its materialism. But it’s scary when leaders think this way. Would they try to ban infant baptisms for violating religious liberty and go to war against churches across the nation?

We’re seeing the serpent eat itself. This is an attack on religious liberty in the name of religious liberty.