I left out something that I just considered, doreen. I see nothing in the canons you’ve quoted to indicate that the parent of an infant cannot appoint himself or herself as a sponsor for the child.
And, yes, I have seen a Catholic baptism in which the child’s sponsor was the child’s mother. This was in Tokyo, Japan.
Maybe I’m misreading, but “To be admitted to undertake the office of sponsor, a person must: . . . not be either the father or the mother of the person to be baptized” looks fairly clear to me.
Canon Law on baptismal sponsors
mm’kay?
Yeah. I missed that too. Drat. So, what the heck’s going on witht the parish in Shibuya that let it happen? I shall query the parish priest in question.
Thanks to all!
Monty, the main responsibility of a Godparent is to see to a child’s religious upbringing in the event of a parent’s death. As such, a parent/godparent would be incapable of fuffling this role in the event of their own death.
The only situation where I can imagene a parent being a logical godparent would be if their was a biological parent and an adoptive parent: if one family has adopted a child in an open-adoption senario, and the biological parents share the religious convictions of the adoptive parents, it would seem pretty logical to me to have the biological parents serve as godparents.
Manda:
It wasn’t just the issue of godparents being discussed. It was actually the issue of who could sponsor the child. Evidently this is yet another difference between the Episcopal and Roman Catholic churhes.
But, getting back to the real issue: neither the parents nor the nominated godparents should be allowed to participate in the sponsoring of the child if the parents & nominated godparents are those scum o’ the Earth criminals.