Baptism & Christening 101

Tuesday, 8 May 2007
Jack Waterford

EMILY POST , I am not. The knife and fork, came late into most of the root systems of my family tree and the scars on the face of some of my ancestors bear witness. Napkins came in first with our bushranging. I am not normally held out to be any model of courtesy, manners or proper behaviour by anyone. But I do claim an expertise of sorts on rules of conduct and relationship for spiritual affinity.

We are talking godparents and such like. The people who stood by your side at baptism. Who, on your behalf, renounced Satan and all of his works and pomps. Who swore, more or less, to stand by your side through life, offering good counsel, help and even the occasional interference, focused on keeping you on the right path.

Even in these godless days and these days without formal baptism, or naming ceremonies as some of the godless call them godparents are not uncommon, for purposes venal as well as spiritual. By any standard they are people, often not strictly relatives, who are designated as special in relation to the children, and in a hoped-for future relationship with them.

A more secular and ruthless Post once told the parents of a child in whom the devils still resided that one should chose a childless person, especially a gay one, and especially a rich one, for godparenthood. Not only was there a better than even chance the person would take his or her duties as spiritual guide and friend seriously, but, with any luck, she or he might leave the child some money. This is what one might call the 19th-century English upper-class model. In that dread period, members of the aristocracy, despite their manifest advantages tended to die earlier than the working class, but would, during their lifetimes, tend to inherit several times, often from relatively remote relatives. It was worth one’s while to cultivate relatives, even remote ones, with whims about who, out of someone in the family, might collect the goodies.

It was not on that account that my parents chose my godparents, though I cannot deny having benefited very materially from them, if not in their will. Win and Stan, one the sister of my maternal grandfather, and the other the brother of my maternal grandmother, married late in life and had no children, but they were selected as my spiritual sentinels on the grounds of my mother’s fondness for them, and (probably) on the open rectitude of their lives (especially Win’s), not in any hope or expectation, as it were, in the life thereafter. Anyway, one of them was my mother’s own godfather, and had been road-tested for avuncular feelings for personal and spiritual welfare, somewhat more difficult given that my mother grew up as one of 12 (among about 50 other nieces and nephews), all reasonably demanding of personal attention.

My mother’s feelings might have changed somewhat when she had her fourth baby in less than four years and her own grandmother suggested she “give” this latest addition to Win and Stan on the basis that they could never, poor things, have children of their own.

Had there been (I am sure there was not) any ambivalence in my mother about possession of and maternal feeling for the new mewing darling, it was more than dispelled by this suggestion, which had, in any event, in no way emanated from the putative adoptive parents.

Be all of that as it may, my godparents, as bossy volunteers rather than with any prompting, paid for a good deal of my boarding-school education at a time when my parents could not have afforded it, and maintained a keen interest in my intellectual and moral development even when, from their own viewpoints, I was beyond redemption. Mercifully, they were, by disposition, greatly inclined to argument as the ordinary means of discourse and counselling, and, since I could argue from somewhat different viewpoints from those with which they were familiar, I had some capacity to entertain them. God rest their souls; I owe them much.

All of us have three types of relatives. Those to whom we are directly related by blood (ie, have common ancestors) are physical affines. Those who are related by the marriage of ourself, or a physical affine, are collateral relatives. My wife’s mother, or my sister-in-law or my father’s brother’s wife are collateral relatives: we have no blood in common, but we are bound by a marriage in our family group. In more traditional times, the nature, and closeness, of that marriage would determine our own relationship, which would be, in effect, as though we were affines. Thus my wife’s sisters’ daughters are my nieces, and I owe to my father’s sister’s husband’s mother much the same sort of respect I would give a grandmother, or at least a great aunt. A good few old notions of incest not least bans on marrying close collateral relatives flow from this idea.

In physical terms, in most societies, aunts and uncles, have some auntlie and avuncular duties in relation to their nieces and nephews in some ways akin to those of parents. Indeed in some societies, including many Aboriginal groups, your father’s brother and your mother’s sister stand in equal relationship to you as your parents, and your father’s sister, and mother’s brother the “proper” aunt and uncle, are, in effect, your godparents, and play the critical role in arranging initiation and marriage.

The difference between an honorary parent and an aunt or uncle is that the former can nag you, as your parent might, remind you of right and wrong and of your duty, and periodically forgive or overlook your trespasses in the hope you have learnt something.

They are fiercely loyal to you and what they believe to be your best interests, but their core interest is the preservation of the group interests of your family.

By contrast, the true uncle or aunt, while recognising these considerations, is your advocate, making sure that all which could be said on your behalf is on the scale before any sort of judgment is made. They give you counsel but they also listen. They are on the one hand more, and on the other, less, forgiving.

A godparent, it might be said, is somewhat similar, if more focused on making sure you remember your moral and religious duties.

Jewish and Christian communities recognise spiritual as well as physical affinity, and treat them much the same. The primary spiritual affinity is through becoming a godparent, though there are some who would argue, in the modern age, the taking of positions of trust over children or those at a disadvantage, creates a position, and a duty, of spiritual affinity. One might suggest, say, that a doctor, a priest, a counsellor, a bank manager or a swimming coach has moral duties to his or her charge, and that abuse of that trust, and putting one’s own personal interests ahead of those duties, is a peculiarly bad moral sin and, often, civil tort or crime.

My son-out-law, organising the christening of his son, recently wanted to know how many godparents you can have. The more the merrier, I say. There was never a religious limit. Royal families have had 12 of either sex. All my children have at least four, and one, as well, has a fairy godfather overlooked at the original time.

Must they be religious, adherent or exemplars of the religious life? No, so long as they actually mean what they promise about being moral and physical lookouts for their godchildren’s spiritual welfare. If you just want to make someone feel special, or loved, or to make them think of your child in their will, go and find another name for the relationship, rather than appropriating another quite different and important one.

Original source:
http://jindabyne.yourguide.com.au/articles/582732.html?src=topstories