:: Catholic Sacraments : Baptism ::
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The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) describes Baptism as one of the Sacraments of Initiation and "the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit ..." (CCC ¶1213)
Baptism is a gateway into Christianity, by which someone becomes Christian by virtue of being washed of their sins and renewed for New Life. In the Catholic Church, Holy Water is poured over them, or an infant is partially immersed in Holy Water. The person performing the Baptism, a Priest or Deacon (or any right-intentioned person in an emergency) declares they are Baptizing in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In Baptism, the foundational Sacrament for becoming a Christian, we are reborn as Children of God as our sins are removed from us, including original sin, the innate sinfulness and potential for evil attached to our humanity due to the Fall when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden.
John the Baptist, a New Testament figure and cousin of Jesus, considered the last of the Old Testament prophets as a herald of the coming of the Messiah, carried out his form of baptism in the River Jordan and preached repentance. Jesus Christ went to be Baptized by John, only to God the Father declare Jesus' Divinity as the Father's Son, and the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove.
The Risen Jesus Christ, upon the fulfillment of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, met with the eleven surviving original Apostles on a mountain in Galilee, and instructed them to Baptize, as an integral part of building Holy Mother Church and keeping God's Law:
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church ¶ 1213 describes Baptism as our rebirth as Children of God, the foundational Sacrament that leads to the other Sacraments, the very "gateway to Life in the Spirit" (capitalization added):
Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit (vitae spiritualis ianua) ... the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water and in the word."
Many Christians are baptized as infants, although if one has never been baptized, then upon entering the Catholic Church at an older age naturally one would be baptized as part their conversion, their Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, or "RCIA."
As the Nicene Creed confesses "we acknowledge one Baptism for the orgiveness of sins," generally speaking, once a person has been Baptized they cannot be re-baptized, so that as a result when a Protestant converts to Catholicism, there is not an additional Baptism.
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