Why do people believe in baptizing infants to remove original sin?

Answer 1

Saint Augustine developed the concept of original sin, so there needs to be a way of removing that sin, or logic would say that no-one can ever go to heaven. People believe that by means of baptism, that sin is removed.

Answer 2

A:Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) introduced the concept to the western half of the Christian Church, but it was never accepted in the Greek-speaking east and has been largely abandoned by many of the Protestant Churches. Augustine said that original sin resulted directly from the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and believed that it could only be removed by baptism, so without baptism, souls could not go to heaven.

Cardinal George Pell recently stated that the story of Adam and Eve is a myth, describing it as a religious story told for religious purposes. Without their existence, it will be hard to sustain the belief that Christians are born with original sin as a consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve. Now, we need to establish whether or not original sin really exists before we can really say whether baptism really takes away original sin, as Augustine asserted.

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Catholic AnswerBasically baptism takes away original sin, actually all sin including original, AND the effects of that sin, because this is how God set it up, and Our Blessed Lord revealed this to us, commanding that the Gospel be preached to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...

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from The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, English translation 1994

405 Although it is proper to each individual, (Cf. Council of Trent: Denzinger-Schonmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, definitionum de rebus fidei et morum (1965) 1514) original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death; and inclined to sin--an inclination to evil that is called "concupiscence." Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

406

The Church's teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in the fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine's reflections against Pelagianism, and in the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example. The first Protestant reformers, on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically perverted man and destroyed his freedom; they identified the sin inherited by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which would be insurmountable. The Church pronounced on the meaning of the data of Revelation on original sin especial at the second Council of Orange (529) (Denzinger-Schonmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, definitionum de rebus fidei et morum (1965) 371-372) and at the Council of Trent (1546). (Cf. Denzinger-Schonmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, definitionum de rebus fidei et morum (1965) 1510-1516)