Problem identified with interpretation of "Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1740-1900"
This is a bug report for FamilySearch.
Then a source from "Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1740-1900" is accepted, it creates two entries in the FamilySearch page for a person.
Entry 1: Birth date is entered under "Birth" if the date is included in the original source.
Entry 2: A Custom Event "Baptism" is created for the person with the date and location is copied from the original source.
The action to create this second entry is incorrect. This data should be recorded under the standard Christening section of the person's FamilySearch page. A Custom Event is not needed and results in additional manual work to copy the details into the standard Christening event.
To give an example where this behavior can be seen....Please look at James Haraghy GFSJ-CXW
James has a source attached from "Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1740-1900". This source attachment has created a 16 December 1875 Custom Event entitled "Baptism", however, the standard Christening event has not been populated.
Can this be automated action be rectified for other sources accepted from "Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1740-1900"?
Best regards, John.
Answers
-
In the Roman Catholic Church baptism is one of the sacraments. Christening, in the Roman Catholic Church, is the naming ceremony.
In my opinion, populating the baptismal field from the baptismal register is correct.
0 -
As far as I can tell, English is the only language in existence that has two words for the sacrament of baptism/christening. However, language shapes thought, and therefore, the largely English-speaking designers/engineers at FamilySearch continue to treat "baptism" as a separate species from "christening". This means that the random word choice of a project manager somewhere up the line ends up resulting in thousands (or probably millions) of spurious custom events.
@Áine Ní Donnghaile, if I'm getting the distinction correct, English speakers use "baptism" for the watery bit and "christening" for the naming bit. However, to the best of my knowledge, the Roman Catholic church does not separate these: nobody gets named without getting wet, and nobody gets wet without acquiring a name out of it. They're a single sacrament. The distinction is impossible in Latin: there's only the one word (baptismus) for it.
0 -
A good description of the distinction here, although the font is terribly light and hard to read. https://giftedmemoriesfaith.com.au/GiftedMemoriesFaithAustraliablog/what-is-the-difference-between-a-baptism-and-a-christening/
The short of it - baptism is a sacrament while christening is not. Since these are baptismal registers, the record should be recorded in the baptism fact.
0 -
That blog post is trying to make sense of the confusion that has resulted due to the existence in English of two words for one thing. While most of what it says is strictly speaking true, the overall conclusion about the state of the world is ....inaccurate.
The reason people can't tell baptisms from christenings is that they are Exactly The Same Thing.
No, the Roman Catholic church doesn't have a sacrament of naming that's separate from the initiatory sacrament. But they equally do not have a sacrament of initiation that doesn't include the giving of a name: "[Name], I baptize you in the name of the Father, ...". The same thing is true of most of the "mainstream" Protestant denominations. Whether the chosen English word happens to be "baptism" or "christening", they're exactly the same rite, and they all belong in the same place on Family Tree.
1 -
I used to express your view about the "christening" being the naming part of the ceremony - I was sure I had read that somewhere in the past. However, I have since visited the websites of Roman Catholic, Anglican and other "Christian" denominations and find no distinction is made and/or the terms are used interchangeably.
I would be interested in any link you can find (from an "official" church website) that suggests the contrary.
This issue is a pet peeve of mine and shows no sign of going away. It has already been established this does not arise as part of the work in indexing projects, but in the process - post-indexing - of getting the records online.
Again, I have been working with records (in the last couple of days, relating to parishes in Lancashire) where, say, multiple indexing projects carry, two "Baptism" and two "Christening" records for the exact same event.
How we can stop FamilySearch engaging in this time-wasting and highly annoying practice is beyond me. Again, can the message be passed on to whoever is "responsible" that 99% of these should be classified as Christenings (perhaps only adult baptism records being an exception). Recording these (generally infant) events as Baptisms is wasting our valuable time.
1
