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Converting from Presbyterianism to Catholicism

  • 10-08-2018 7:36am
    #1
    Meursault
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 459 ✭✭


    HI All,

    I was hoping you might be able to enlighten me on what are the steps involved in converting from Presbyterianism to Catholicism. The reason I ask is that I am currently putting together a family tree for my parents and i note that my Great Grandfather married a Catholic, and it appears he converted either before or after his marriage.

    The may be a query for the Genealogy section but if anyone has any information on what would have been the steps in this process back in the early 20th Century Ireland, I would be grateful.

    - Would it require a new baptism in the Catholic church?
    - Would baptism documents from the Presbyterian church be required?
    - Would the Presbyterian church be even notified?
    - How long does this normally take?
    - Presumably there must be some record in a catholic church. Would this be stored centrally in Dublin or would it be kept in the local church?

    Any advice would be very much appreciated.

    Thanks.


Comments

  • #2
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,997 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Meursault wrote: »
    HI All,

    I was hoping you might be able to enlighten me on what are the steps involved in converting from Presbyterianism to Catholicism. The reason I ask is that I am currently putting together a family tree for my parents and i note that my Great Grandfather married a Catholic, and it appears he converted either before or after his marriage.

    The may be a query for the Genealogy section but if anyone has any information on what would have been the steps in this process back in the early 20th Century Ireland, I would be grateful.

    - Would it require a new baptism in the Catholic church?
    At that time, yes. When a person baptised in Protestant denomination was received into the Catholic church it was customary to conditionally baptise them in a Catholic ceremony. This practice changed about 50 years ago, but it would have been usual in the early twentieth century.
    Meursault wrote: »
    - Would baptism documents from the Presbyterian church be required?
    No. The whole point of the rebaptism was that no reliance was placed on the Presbyterian baptism, so it wasn’t necessary to show that it had ever happened.
    Meursault wrote: »
    - Would the Presbyterian church be even notified?
    Not by the Catholic church. And almost certainly not by the individual becoming a Catholic. But, this being Ireland, no doubt they would have got to hear about it.
    Meursault wrote: »
    - How long does this normally take?
    No set time. An adult wishing to become a Catholic “took instruction” from a priest, usually in a series of one-to-one meetings. It was up to the priest to decide when the individual was sufficiently prepared for baptism.
    Meursault wrote: »
    - Presumably there must be some record in a catholic church. Would this be stored centrally in Dublin or would it be kept in the local church?
    It would be a standard entry in the baptism register, originally created and kept in the parish of baptism. (Each parish has its own register.) Very likely by now records from that far back have been sent to the diocesan archives, but even if it’s held by the diocese now, tracing it will require you to know what parish he was baptised in.

    There’s every chance that it’s the same parish that he was married in.

    The record won’t be in Dublin, unless the baptism was in the Dublin diocese. The Catholic church in Ireland doesn’t maintain its archives on a national basis; it’s done by diocese.


  • #3
    Meursault
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 459 ✭✭Meursault


    Thanks for your help and the quick response Peregrinus.

    I have been in contact with the Catholic church in which he was married. They were very helpful, but unfortunately they had no record of his baptism/conversion. Its strange though, because it was the local catholic church and all his children were baptised there.

    On the 1911 census his stated religion was Presbyterian. He was based in Dublin at the time. He then moved to Cork and got married. On the marriage records in 1914 he is registered as Catholic, so he must have converted at some stage in those three years. To add to the complexity, he was born in Scotland, so it is very tricky to trace where was baptised originally as a Presbyterian.

    Anyway, thanks again for your help!


  • #4
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,997 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Providing adult instruction was regarded as slightly specialised work, so it's possible that he wasn't instructed in his own parish, but referred to another priest - maybe a member of a religious order rather than a diocesan priest. Even so, he would still normally have been actually baptised in his own parish, and the record kept there, but maybe in his case it was somewhere else. In which case, it could be almost anywhere. Unless you can find out more about the time and circumstances of his conversion, it's going to be very hard to narrow down.


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