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Handout #195 |
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The baptism of moribund infants in China |
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One particular theology, disturbed over the fate of infants
who died unbaptized, led the missionaries to baptize as many moribund
infants as possible, outside any family or community context. A Jesuit
Father in Peking gives an account of this apostolate for a benefactress in
Europe.
In most years our churches in Peking alone can reckon on five or six thousand of these children being purified by the waters of baptism. This harvest is more or less abundant, in proportion to the number of catechists than we can support. If we had a sufficient number, their care would go beyond the moribund infants who are exposed to die; they would have yet other occasions to exercise their zeal, above all at certain times of the year, when smallpox or other epidemics kill off an unbelievable number of small children ... One could win over infidel midwives, who would allow Christian girls to follow them. It often happens that the Chinese, finding it impossible to feed a large family, order the midwives to drown the girls in a bowl of water as soon as they are born. These sad victims of the need of their parents would also find eternal life in the very waters which removed them from a short and perishable life. Letter of Fr d'Entrecolles, Peking, 19 October 1720 A.D., in Lettres ediftatites et curieuses de Chine par des missionnaires jesuites (1979 A.D.). |
