It used to be more private—just the immediate family gathered after mass, the baptismal font at the rear of the church tiny as a bird bath. The priest would ladle a few teaspoons’ tepid holy water on the bundled baby’s forehead, make a crack about the halo being too tight as the new soul wailed. We’d go home to pancakes and eggs.
These days it’s a big Holy-wood production— midmass, the giant altar rolls back to reveal a Jacuzzi tub surrounded by potted palms. The priest hikes up his chasuble, steps barefoot out of his black leather loafers and wades in like a newfangled John as organ music swells and the baby-bearing families line up like jumbo jets ready for takeoff. But when the godparents handed my niece’s newborn naked to their parish priest, and he dunked her into the Jacuzzi’s bath-warm holy water, her little one grew so calm and blissful she pooped—not a smelly three-days’ worth, explosive diaper load, but enough to notice. As the godparents scooped the turds with a handkerchief, the savvy priest pretended he hadn’t seen, swept through the fouled water with his palm before the next baby in line was submerged.
After mass, my niece sat speechless, red-faced, not knowing what to say— or whether—as church ladies, friends, and family members presented one by one to the tub where the babies had been baptized. As they knelt and bowed and dipped their fingers in, and blessed themselves.
