The Issue of Burying Unbaptized Babies, in the Orthodox Church
The Issue of Burying Unbaptized Babies, in the Orthodox Church

Summary/Abstract: Man’s life is full of the unpredictable; it consists in joys and sorrows, which arise through the mysterious economy of God. If the joys can be easily assimilated, the troubles are “tests of fire“ for the mental balance, faith, and love of the Christian. The hardest ordeal is caused by the death of a loved one; and among the situations in which a person dies, the death of a child is terrible, terrifying and never rationally understood … Therefore, the present study aims to analyze, from a theological point of view, the way which the Orthodox Church tried to find pastoral-missionary and liturgical solutions for the hardest test that the Christian family faced over time: the premature death of a baby and the service that can be performed by the priest in this situation. The text combines the scriptural arguments regarding the baby as a gift of God for a family, with the patristic theologism on this topic, then makes a synthesis of the practice of Church life on the death and burial of infants, in Slavic and Greek Orthodoxy, face to face with the rules of the Romanian space on the problem. Pointing out and criticizing various non-canonical and non-liturgical practices, the study considers the newest Decision of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which clarifies the issue and establishes the liturgical ordinances that the priest is obliged to perform in such situations. The note of interest and novelty of the study is amplified by three markers. The first is the notification of the lack, of a specific liturgical ritual for the burial of unbaptized infants throughout Orthodoxy, for hundreds of years. The second is given by the disapproval of liturgical innovations for such a life situation, coming from antiquity; unfortunately, such liturgical improvisations have passed to the present day! The third is to emphasize the fact that the bibliography on the subject is extremely poor, an element that denotes the caution and even the retention of theologians to approach this delicate subject.

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