In a recent Irish Times article, Mary McAleese argues that infant baptism undermines the human rights of children. Specifically, she argues that:
“It restricts children’s rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, to which both Ireland and the Holy See – which governs the Catholic Church and is effectively the author of canon law – are State Parties…
Both entities as State Parties to that Convention are obliged through their laws and practices to respect and vindicate a comprehensive list of children’s rights. These include a number which have direct relevance to Church teachings and its claimed authority over the lives of more than 300 million Church members who are children.
Among them: the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of gender; the intellectual human rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the right to change religion (which is not specified in the UN Convention but is presumed); freedom of expression, including the right to be heard in all matters affecting the child, the right to know one’s rights, and to the education that facilitates the exercise of one’s rights and freedom from physical violence.”
This is based on her doctoral thesis in canon law, for which she won the Alfons Auer Ethics Award award in 2019. She has elaborated on the theme in various speeches on her website (which we quote from in more detail later in this article). In these speeches she adds:
- Baptising infants ignores their later rights as maturing children, under human rights law, to freely decide for themselves their religious identity, to accept and embrace church membership or to change religion if that is their choice.
- Why should the Church undertake a debate about the provisions of a secular treaty? The answer is deceptively simple? Because it gave a solemn undertaking to do so when it acceded to the UN Convention.
- Instead of doing so the Holy See has become locked in a dispute with the Committee on the Rights of the Child about the extent of the Holy See’s State Party obligations and the extent of the UN Committee’s jurisdiction.
- That jurisdictional dispute, which the Holy See first raised twenty years after ratification, and only after the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child had begun to raise questions about the clerical abuse scandals, remains unresolved.
- There is a disconnect between what the Church says to the outside world and what it says internally, and between what it says as a UN Convention State Party about freedom of religion, conscience, belief and opinion and what canon law provides in its restrictions on those freedoms.
- The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has not heard from the Holy See since 2014 when the latter threatened to withdraw from the Convention, and argued it had no obligation to apply the Convention to the universal Church’s canon law. The Committee was astounded and has sternly contradicted that assertion. That is where things rest today.
What does this mean in human rights law?
Let’s look at what this means in practice in terms of international human rights law.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 14, states:
- States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
- States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.
The European Court of Human Rights has said the Convention protects rights that are practical and effective, not merely theoretical. That means that a State (or a powerful institution acting through state systems) cannot claim “the right exists” while structuring things so exercising it is unduly burdensome.
On accession to the Convention, the Holy See declared it interprets the Convention to safeguard “the primary and inalienable rights of parents,” explicitly including rights around education (Arts 13, 28) and religion (Art 14).
The UN Committee’s 2014 concluding observations expressed concern about a restrictive interpretation of children’s rights (including freedoms of expression/association/religion), and concern that the Holy See treated children’s participatory rights as undermining parental rights.
In its 2014 session report and dialogue summary, the UN Committee underlined the fact that the Holy See’s reservations to Articles 13, 14, 15 and 16 of the Convention questioned some of its core principles, such as the child being a subject of law. It explained that the CRC recognised the rights and duties of parents, while acknowledging children as rights holders.
The Committee added that the definition of the child by the Catholic Church would not prevent the child from being seen as an independent subject of law. The Holy See delegation stated that parental rights were primary and inalienable but that that the definition of the child would be discussed within the Bishops’ meeting on family issues that was scheduled for February 2014.
We can’t find any Holy See document after February 2014 that announces a change flowing from that meeting to the Holy See’s position on “the definition of the child” or on the parental-primacy declaration. Instead, the Holy See’s public position remains that parental rights are primary and inalienable.
The UN Committee also recommended in 2014 that the Holy See undertake the necessary steps to withdraw all its reservations to the Convention and to ensure that the Convention has precedence over internal laws and regulations. Instead, the Holy See, in its comments on the concluding observations, said: “the Holy See reaffirms its own reservations [and] interpretative declaration.”
Some theological counter-arguments
One theological counter-argument is that the church does not apply personal responsibility for, or certain consequences of, baptismally-created duties until an infant is seven or a minor sixteen. This does not resolve the human rights concern, because the church does apply responsibility and consequences to minors at those ages, and the source of these obligations is their baptism as an infant. As Mary McAleese puts it, “That practice ignores their later rights as maturing children to freely decide for themselves their religious identity, to accept and embrace Church membership or to change religion if that is their choice.”
Another theological counter-argument is that canon law 748 §2 says: “No one is ever permitted to coerce persons to embrace the Catholic faith against their conscience.” This does not resolve the human rights concern, because it only applies to coercing non-Catholics to embrace the Catholic faith. Once you are a Catholic (including by infant baptism) your conscience must be formed and informed by the truth as revealed by the church. Also, coercion in human rights law can include psychological pressure.
Another theological counter-argument is that human rights law also gives parents rights over children. This does not resolve the human rights concern, because the way this is interpreted is different. Under human rights law, parents’ rights evolve along with the child’s capacities. Under canon law, parents must implement their rights in accordance with their duty to form their child as a Catholic.
A counter-argument that fudges Catholic theology is that anyone can leave the church anytime they want (until 2009 by an act of defection, now by an act of apostasy, causing excommunication). But the church considers anyone who has been baptised to be a lifelong member of the church by virtue of that baptism, and therefore still under the obligations, so they cannot freely leave in a practical and effective way (which is the human rights test). Even if they are excommunicated, they remain members with restrictions.
The Catholic Catechism states:
- 1267 Baptism incorporates us into the Church.
- 1269 Having become a member of the Church, the person baptised belongs no longer to himself, but to him who died and rose for us. From now on, he is called to … “obey and submit” to the Church’s leaders … Just as Baptism is the source of responsibilities and duties …
The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has published an Instruction on Infant Baptism that includes:
- 21. Some people also object that baptising infants is a restriction of their freedom. They say that it is contrary to the dignity of the children as persons to impose on them future religious obligations that they may perhaps later be led to reject.
- 22. Such an attitude is simply an illusion: there is no such thing as pure human freedom, immune from being influenced in any way … Above all, those who claim that the sacrament of Baptism compromises a child’s freedom forget that every individual, baptised or not, is, as a creature, bound by indefeasible duties to God, duties which Baptism ratifies and ennobles through the adoption as a child of God.
However, by signing up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Holy See has committed to comply with the international human rights law interpretation of these ideas, not its own internal interpretations. And so far the Holy See has reneged on that commitment.
More detailed extracts from speeches by Mary McAleese
In Mary McAleese’s 2019 speech on accepting the Alfons Auer Ethics Award for her thesis, she said:
“Why should the Church undertake a debate about the provisions of a secular treaty? The answer is deceptively simple? Because it gave a solemn undertaking to do so… Every State Party voluntarily undertakes the same treaty obligations to respect and ensure the Convention’s rights ‘to each child within their jurisdiction’ and to ‘undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures for the implementation of the rights’…
The Committee has asked the Holy See to ‘undertake a comprehensive review of its normative framework, in particular Canon Law, with a view to ensuring its full compliance with the Convention.’ Instead of doing so the Holy See has become locked in a dispute with the CRC about the extent of the Holy See’s State Party obligations and the extent of the CRC’S jurisdiction. That jurisdictional dispute, which the Holy See first raised twenty years after ratification and only after the CRC had begun to raise questions about the clerical abuse scandals, remains unresolved…
But all the time one of the basic building blocks of the Church, infant Baptism, conceals probably the most serious realm of juridic obfuscation. The Church claims the right to impose on non-sentient infants, lifelong denominational membership and considerable canonical obligations which intrude on all Article 14 freedoms, as a direct consequence of their Baptism…
To avoid all doubt let me be clear that I am talking here about the juridic and not the theological consequences of Baptism… The juridic or canon law consequences include becoming a life long member of the Latin Catholic Church, becoming subject to its laws and undertaking the obligations it imposes on members. Members have rights but the rights acknowledged in the secular world to freedom of religion, conscience, opinion and belief are subordinated to the demands of compulsory obedience to the Church’s magisterium and the obligation to maintain communion with the Church. There are canonical penalties for serious dissent, including for schism, heresy and apostasy…
The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom17. Art. 2 avers that ‘no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs’ but so far this principle has not been applied internally within the Church to those already baptised. The wording of Dignitatis Humanae was carefully chosen to apply only to those outside the Church. They cannot be forced to embrace the Catholic faith. It does not apply to those who are deemed to have already embraced it and as such are obliged to profess the Catholic faith among whom according the Church are the paedobaptised members of the Church. There is a disconnect here between what the Church says to the outside world and what it says internally, and a disconnect between what it says as a UNCRC State Party about freedom of religion, conscience, belief and opinion and what canon law provides in its restrictions on those freedoms.”
In her 2019 Edmund Burke lecture at Trinity College Dublin, she added:
“It is one thing to acknowledge the right of parents to bring their children up in their faith and to introduce them to the rites and rituals of their faith as national and international law do but it is quite another to impose significant obligations on those children which trammel on their freedom of religion, thought and conscience as canon law does. The Holy See has never considered the ethical, legal and moral implications of imposing lifelong membership of the Church and a body of obligations on a baby who is not in a position to weigh the implications. Yet the Church is well aware that there is a dilemma here for its own Theological Commission has said that in the case of those baptised as infants there is a ‘lack of free-will and responsible choice on the part of infants’. The logic of that statement has never been faced by the Catholic Church.”
In her 2020 speech to the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Frankfurt, she added:
“The ongoing failure of theology, canon law and secular human rights law to intellectually interact in a way which explores the structure of the christening contract in the light of our developing understanding of the human rights of the individual, leaves the Church open to accusations of double-standards when it preaches respect for human rights to the world at large but fails to engage with them in its own internal sphere.”
In her 2024 speech to the University of Lucerne, she added:
“While the [UN] Convention respects the rights and duties of parents and clearly acknowledges the right of parents to raise their children in their faith, crucially it recalibrates the role of parents so that they cannot force their faith on a child and the child must have access to education which helps explain that he or she has autonomous, personal choice and fundamental intellectual freedoms (Arts. 13 and 17). The Catholic Church has never produced a document setting out the rights of its child members under the Convention or under Canon Law.
As external scrutiny revealed Church scandal after scandal and as questions grew about human rights implications of magisterial teaching on women and homosexuality, the Holy See’s goodwill towards the UNCRC evaporated… Today the relationship between the Holy See and the Committee on the Rights of the Child is in crisis. The Church authorities have reverted to the traditional idea of the Church as a “perfect society” which is entitled to operate without outside scrutiny or internal accountability.”
In her 2025 speech in University College Cork, she added:
“Today the Code of Canon Law 1983 governs the lives of Church members all over the
world. Here are some insights into how it impacts children. From age seven, with the use of reason, the baptised child is obliged by its membership imposed at Baptism to obey Church law (cf. can.11)… Here are examples which trammel on the child’s God-given freedom of conscience, opinion, and expression:
- At and from the age of discretion, usually also the age of reason, they must confess their grave sins at least once a year (cf. cans. 916; 989);
- They are always “obliged to maintain communion with the Church even in their external actions” (can. 209) in other words to obey Church teaching in their civic and political life;
- They are “bound to follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors… declare as teachers or establish as rulers of the Church” (can. 212 §1);
- While they have a right to manifest their opinion to each other and to their sacred pastors on matters pertaining to the good of the Church, they must do so “without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals and with reverence toward their sacred pastors” (can. 212 §3);
- Ecclesiastical authority can “direct the exercise of rights” of Church members (can. 223 §1);
The language of these canons is designed to exercise institutional control over members’ conscience, opinion, actions and freedom of speech. It is the language of top down tight institutional control redolent of imperial and imperious times and out of line with the natural (God-given) rights set out in the UNCHR and UNCRC.”
And she summarised the situation between the UN CRC and the Holy See as follows:
“Under the terms of the Convention the Holy See should by now have submitted seven periodic reports to the CRC setting out and discussing with the committee how it has implemented the Convention. So far it has submitted only two periodic reports, the first in 1994 when remarkably no one raised the issue of clerical abuse and episcopal mismanagement and the second in 2011 when the issue was raised and when the question of amending canon law to take account of children’s rights was discussed.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has not heard from the Holy See since 2014 when the latter threatened to withdraw from the Convention, accused the Committee of exceeding its authority, and claimed for the first time since it ratified the convention in 1990 that it was only obliged to implement the convention in a physical territory. It argued that the only such it had was the tiny Vatican City State and it had no obligation to apply the Convention to the universal Church’s canon law… The Committee was astounded and has sternly contradicted that assertion. That is where things rest today.”
In her recent Irish Times article she added:
“As a consequence of [a person’s baptism], Church law deemed her to have been enrolled as a member for life, with substantial inescapable obligations of membership…
Baptismal promises are a significant part of the foundational narrative on which the Church’s governing authorities claim authority over Church members and claim members must honour the compulsory obligations entered into at Baptism. These mostly concern submission to magisterial control (to the authority and teachings of the Pope and bishops) rather than to Christian love of neighbour…
Catholic parents are under a strict Catholic canon law obligation to have their children baptised at the earliest opportunity, hence infant Baptism is normative…. Naturally, parental fear of the uncertain salvific consequences of those children who die unbaptised still has a powerful psychological hold which bolsters the traditional practice of infant Baptism. “
That practice ignores their later rights as maturing children to freely decide for themselves their religious identity, to accept and embrace Church membership or to change religion if that is their choice… No such right to change or exit religion is acknowledged in the Church’s canon law. In fact, the opposite is the case, as canon law imposes penalties on those who leave the Catholic Church, even in adulthood …
Attempts to leave the Church or change religion or challenge Church teaching or magisterial authority, constitute canonical crimes of heresy, apostasy, schism. Among the punishments attached to such acts is the much-misunderstood penalty of excommunication, which in fact leaves membership intact but subject to restrictions.”