re: #466 Naso Tang

Thanks. I wasn’t sure if it was a specific ritual or not. Sounds more like a knowledge test, which of course makes sense, but I presume that someone could learn, or be self taugh in much less than a year if they chose to?

The baptism however must be in a Catholic church? A Lutheran baptism isn’t any good, for example?

Naso -
No, it isn’t self-taught. And there aren’t any “tests”. There are people who have been trained to teach the Catholic faith, and there are classes that people must attend, and they are designed to cover certain topics in the “Catholic” way, and it takes about a year. It’s to ensure that people have a full understanding of what Catholicism is, what the faith is all about.

A person who is baptized in another Christian faith and then converts to Catholicism does not need to be baptized again. But they do go through the education process, and there is usually a special mass where they are accepted fully and receive their first communion.

People who have never been baptized in any faith must be baptized.

Naso, from your questions I get the feeling that you have not been exposed to any religious experience in your life. Your question about being able to be “self-taught” was just really odd, at least to me - not in a bad way, just strange, I would never be able to think a person could “self-teach” Christian or Jewish faith. Most religions are going to require some sort of instruction in the faith by a person trained and qualified to teach it.