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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Can we baptize our baby in the Catholic church even though we are not married?

Question:

My boyfriend and I have been together for six years and we are both Catholic. Can we baptize our baby in the Catholic church even though we are not married?

Answer:

As Catholic parents, you have an obligation to have your child baptized. Code of Canon Law states, “Parents are obliged to take care that infants are baptized in the first few weeks; as soon as possible after the birth or even before it, they are to go to the pastor to request the sacrament for their child and to be prepared properly for it” (CIC 867 §1).

However, to baptize your child licitly, the Church requires that

[T]here must be a founded hope that the [child] will be brought up in the Catholic religion; if such hope is altogether lacking, the baptism is to be delayed according to the prescripts of particular law after the parents have been advised about the reason. (CIC 868 §1)

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