# Christening a baby - 2 religions



## andytandreou (Dec 30, 2010)

Hi all, two friends of mine are trying to get their baby christened. The god parents are two, male and female, one is a Christian orthodox and the other a Catholic. What are their options in terms of getting this done in an orthodox church?


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## SOUL_AK (Apr 7, 2012)

andytandreou said:


> Hi all, two friends of mine are trying to get their baby christened. The god parents are two, male and female, one is a Christian orthodox and the other a Catholic. What are their options in terms of getting this done in an orthodox church?


:confused2: From what i'm aware of, only a greek orthodox person can be a God-parent to this child. I would ask a local priest, and if it is so, then the non-orthodox God parent will have to either be christened him/herself, or step back during the ritual. Good luck in finding out. Post ur findings as this is a very interesting HOT topic!


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## andytandreou (Dec 30, 2010)

I heard there was a blessing that could be done by an orthodox priest to "enable" the catholic godparent to perform the christening. I will look into this but I'm not sure yet. Has anyone heard anything about this. 

Ps thanks Soulla for your comments I will of course update here when I have the answer I'm sure people have had this issue before!


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## zin (Oct 28, 2010)

Church 'law' states the Godparent has to be of the same religion although the Catholic could just lie and say they are Orthodox. I don't believe they need to prove it. Depends how the parents feel about that as well. The law also states they have to be at least 18 to christen. 

End of the day it just depends on the priest and how jobsworth he is


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## andytandreou (Dec 30, 2010)

zin said:


> Church 'law' states the Godparent has to be of the same religion although the Catholic could just lie and say they are Orthodox. I don't believe they need to prove it. Depends how the parents feel about that as well. The law also states they have to be at least 18 to christen.
> 
> End of the day it just depends on the priest and how jobsworth he is



The Catholic in this case did not want to lie due to ethical reasons, you know, basing the whole thing on a lie and such. The reason for not wanting to lie could be retrospective, when in the future the child may turn out to be very religious and look back at his Christening as being a lie/scam of sorts. 

We have found that a priest is willing to do the ritual as long as the Catholic god-parent reads a prayer essentially making them Orthodox, or it blesses them to allow them to Christen a child in an Orthodox ritual. Not really sure how it works. 

Thanks


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## zin (Oct 28, 2010)

If the child turns out to be very religious I'm not sure how he/she will feel about getting christened by someone who essentially is not Orthodox, blessing or not.

I've never really been a fan of two different people christened one child either, you end up in the situation where the child has 2 godfathers and 2 godmothers since they could both get/be married and that can get confusing for the child.


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