Paris, France, Jan 15, 2020 / 06:00 am
The French Catholic bishops' conference permanent council has approved a recommendation to remove references to the sex of parents on baptismal registry forms.
"The increasingly complex situation of families in France makes it extremely difficult to draft Catholic acts, especially regarding baptism," Bishop Joseph de Metz-Noblat of Langres, president of the French bishops' conference Council for Canonical Questions, wrote in a letter dated Dec. 13, 2018.
He said, because of complex family situations, chanceries in several dioceses in France had "faced problems of vocabulary."
According to canon law, he said, "ministers cannot refuse sacraments to persons who opportunely ask for them, while children cannot be held responsible for the situation of their parents."