Buddhist Baptisms

"Bye, now! We're going to attend a Buddhist Baptism!" yells the man who is married to one of my best friends, as he jets out the front door. I am left alone in their house to chuckle at the suggestion implied by the sarcastic comment. What isn't funny is the truth contained within the joke.
The truth is that the baptism is at a Catholic Church--at the parish across town, where we would never think to go for Mass, except in extreme circumstances. One of those Catholic parishes that seems to hold onto the fear that it will be "too Catholic" for its parishioners. Because of this, everything that happens takes on a form of relativism, modifying practices and rubrics--sometimes even doctrine--to meet the perceived comfort level of the parishioners. The currently popular but misguided principle takes effect: If we do not clearly tell people the difference between right and wrong, less harm will be done.
This philosophy finds its origin in the observation that people are often attracted to a perceived good that is not necessarily in union with the objective, or actual, Good. This reality, however, is due to our fallen human nature. It is one of the effects of sin. It should not be encouraged or exploited by our Church, which St. Paul refers to as The Pillar of Truth. Rather, the goal of each parish should be to educate its parishioners so that they may recognize the difference between a perceived good and an actual good. And then after that, encourage them to seek after the actual good.
Fortunately, the Roman Catholic Church herself stands firmly in the Truth, as she has from the beginning. But she is ailing, suffering from a sickness in her members--a disunity in her body.

And thus, the Buddhism analogy. The first precept of Buddhism is to abstain from harming living beings. This includes killing animals, insects, plants, etc: anything that has life is put on the same level of equality. There is no distinction between vegetative, animate, and rational souls in the Buddhist system. In fact, one of the highest forms of "blessedness" in neoBuddhism, according to my friendly source of Buddhist information, consists in starving oneself, since eating anything inevitably does "harm" to some living being.

So the analogy is quite simple: Buddhists actually believe that all living things should be treated with the same reverence, simply because they are living. Some parishes in the present state of our Church operate on the principle that all parishioners should stay at their own comfort level, regardless of whether they are in accordance with objective good.

Thus the term "Buddhist Baptism."

They just came back.
"How was the baptism?" I asked.
"It was valid," came the reply.
Sad that in these times, that's often the most we can hope for.