Spotlight on the Baptismal Mark or Character

The Roman Catholic Church claims that sprinkling water on a baby or an adult while saying, "I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" does amazing things. It takes away the sin we are born with, original sin, and any other sins and grafts us on to Jesus making us his servants. It puts Jesus and God inside us to live in us and inspire us. The Church says that baptism heals the inclination towards sin that original sin causes. Baptism is a sacrament. It pictures cleansing from sin and the effects of sin and actually does what it pictures.

Roman Catholic doctrine claims that when you are validly baptised, a mark is put on your soul. God puts the mark on so that you will never need to be baptised again and to obligate you to belong to him.  The 'mark' means we are consecrated for Christian worship and faith. It is insane to believe that a mark alone is enough to consecrate you and it is degrading.  You would expect something that causes moral or spiritual change for the better to be the effective thing.  A slave is not made a slave by being branded.  A slave is being a slave by being made to work.
 
A soul is a non-material thing so it cannot carry a mark. And you can mark anything as yours and that does not make it yours.
 
The mark obligates you to carry out your Catholic duties. Is it really right for people to take a baby to impose obligations on it by baptism? If it is bad to take an oath of secrecy when you don't know what it is you are swearing to, imagine how heinous it is to try and impose oaths on a baby!
 
It follows from the doctrine of obligation that if the Church could force them to be obedient Catholics it should. The only objection to forcing is that it does not work. In other words, "The Church would force you to obey if it would work and it's a pity it can't for you are obligated to obey it."
 
The obligation doctrine accuses the careless or lapsed or defected Catholic of stealing from the Church. If you belong to the Church and don't give yourself then you are stealing.
 
The mark doctrine says you will be judged as a Christian even if you convert to Hinduism in all sincerity. This is not the same as once a Catholic always a Catholic. You could imagine God judging a person as follows, "You were obligated to obey the Catholic Church and you left it for Hinduism. That was a hideous sin."
 
The mark makes you capable of receiving all the other sacraments. The Church holds that the sacraments don't work if given to an unbaptised person.
 
The Church claims to be an organised society. It cannot be organised then if it has no method of enrolling its members and making a distinction between those who are inside and those who are outside. See 1 Corinthians 5:12.
 
The Church says that if you are baptised as an adult, God takes away all your sins and all the punishment due to them. That means you will go straight to Heaven if you die.
 
So you can be evil incarnate and as soon as you get baptised you are an instant saint. You don't even need purification from anything in your heart that makes you out of line with God. I am referring to the Catholic doctrine that if you sin and get forgiveness, some attachment to sin remains and that stops you entering God's presence so you need purification in Purgatory. The Church says that for the rest of us, getting forgiven in confession will not give us instant access to Heaven should we die for we need to purify ourselves by penance. This is superstition for it means the newly baptised person and the person who goes to confession to get forgiveness have the same impurities and flaws in their disposition but the newly baptised's faults are ignored. Is that fair? Of course not! And it is contrary to the Church teaching that God has lovingly created Purgatory for us to go after death so that when we go to Heaven we will do so with our full consent and all hindrances to it will have been purged. The baptised person then goes to Heaven despite not fully wanting to be there! He is denied his need and right to purify his acceptance of God!
 
The Roman Catholic Church ridicules the Protestant doctrine that if you find yourself believing that you are saved by the blood of Jesus then God has decreed that you will go to Heaven the second you die even though you have many sins. It sees this doctrine as immoral and absurd. It sees it as evilly refusing to admit that purification is needed. And yet it agrees with the same principle! It thinks an imperfect man can enter Heaven through baptism just because that man was baptised.
 
The Church says it is unjust to a child to baptise him if there is no hope of him being taught to live with the obligations he has got through baptism. This can only mean that if the child will suffer if he does not live up to them. So Hell will be worse for a person who is baptised but who has not lived up to it. Consider this, "I should only believe or encourage what will not deliberately upset or harm another even if it is wrong." Catholic baptism intrinsically stamps upon that principle.
 
Canon Law says, "It remains clear, in any event, that the sacramental bond of belonging to the Body of Christ that is the Church, conferred by the baptismal character, is an ontological and permanent bond which is not lost by reason of any act or fact of defection. "
 
This is a doctrine and not a part of law. A law cannot tell you what to believe for if you believe something it just happens to you that you believe. It is incorrect to imagine its Church law that we believe in the bond.
 
Anyway the law says you have a bond with the Church even if you defect. It at least says defection is possible. It is possible to defect from something partly not fully. The best interpretation of the law is that you defect in reality but not completely. It does not follow that you have the right to be called Catholic or have your name listed as a member. The Church says that those who have a bond with the Church enjoy that bond to different degrees. Protestants if validly baptised have that bond but are not Roman Catholics and have imperfect communion with the Church.
 
The notion of an ontological bond does not make sense. It is taught by the Church that there is an ontological bond between husband and wife. Ontological is about what you are, what your nature is. A stone is a stone ontologically. It is a strange kind of ontological bond that can end at death!
 
Some say it is like your bond with your biological brother. There is an ontological bond even if you hate one another. You are still made of the same flesh though you hate one another.
 
The bond means you are related but it does not make you family for only love does that. Thus it does not follow that if there an ontological bond with the Catholic Church that you are a member in any proper sense.
 
The ontological bond of baptism refers to the soul. But surely if our souls come from God we have the bond by default? We are all souls who have come from the same God. Souls are immaterial - they are not made of material things and they do not have parts. The bond must come from the fact that they are somehow made of the same substance.
 
The danger with thinking religion can effect ontological changes is that you could say that a group of people who are cursed by your pope or Jesus are ontologically changed by the power of that curse into demons and they will gradually become more and more evil. Or you could say that blacks and whites should not intermarry for blacks have their ontological bond and whites their's.
 
One thing is for sure, you are ontologically changed as a human being by baptism into another kind of human being then you must have different rights to others who are not baptised. You must be superior.  And why stop there? Why not kill the family next door for you had a dream that told you they have been ontologically changed into Nazis and worse will be forever?  The ontological change doctrine is evil in principle.

Why can’t an ontological change be temporary?  If it can happen then it can.  But the Christian religion hates the suggestion.  It wants a hold over people.
 
The ontological bond of baptism theology is full of errors.