Transgender people can be godparents at Roman Catholic baptisms, witnesses at religious weddings and receive baptism themselves, the Vatican's doctrinal office said on Wednesday.
I’m fairly certain that is the same of ANY individual. If they are known to be the crack dealer, who sells child pornography under the table at your “adult entertainment” establishment, a pastor would be in his right to decline to baptize them or proceed over a baptism/confirmation where they were to serve as a godparent.
Then again in any diocese I suspect if you search long enough, you’ll find a priest who is willing to as his belief in the sacrament is greater than any fear of his bishop’s politics. The pastor at the parish we belonged to for 4 years before moving to our current home was one of those. Whilst we were members, I know of at least one infant baptism he performed for an adopted child of a same-sex partnership in the back font well after mass. And I had heard stories of how in the 1980s he was the only one around willing to enter into the home of those suffering of AIDS whom he did not know, to be a comfort & minster to them, before we really understood the disease beyond what looked as gay leprosery.
Of course, any individual can baptize anyone else, though the preferred norm is a deacon or priest in the presence of your local parish (I know there is some flowery church language I’m missing here). As long as it’s done in the name of the father, the son and holy spirit, and if he be of an age of reason he has consented to being baptized, its valid. God knows no bounds to his grace.
I’m fairly certain that is the same of ANY individual. If they are known to be the crack dealer, who sells child pornography under the table at your “adult entertainment” establishment, a pastor would be in his right to decline to baptize them or proceed over a baptism/confirmation where they were to serve as a godparent.
Then again in any diocese I suspect if you search long enough, you’ll find a priest who is willing to as his belief in the sacrament is greater than any fear of his bishop’s politics. The pastor at the parish we belonged to for 4 years before moving to our current home was one of those. Whilst we were members, I know of at least one infant baptism he performed for an adopted child of a same-sex partnership in the back font well after mass. And I had heard stories of how in the 1980s he was the only one around willing to enter into the home of those suffering of AIDS whom he did not know, to be a comfort & minster to them, before we really understood the disease beyond what looked as gay leprosery.
Of course, any individual can baptize anyone else, though the preferred norm is a deacon or priest in the presence of your local parish (I know there is some flowery church language I’m missing here). As long as it’s done in the name of the father, the son and holy spirit, and if he be of an age of reason he has consented to being baptized, its valid. God knows no bounds to his grace.