Well, Musket -

The Romans see baptism as the sacrament of initiation into membership in the church. If the parents have no intention to raise the child Catholic, most parishes will refuse to baptize the child. They view receiving a sacrament with no religious intent, as hypocrisy. I agree.

Musket sez: But only clever Christians like Joe and Keith are good enough to pick and choose it seems. Rational people who enjoy the traditional public service churches supply have to tell lies in order to do so.

Nobody's forcing you to tell lies - you should just forgo the ritual if you don't believe in it, and don't expect the church to perform a ritual for you if it means nothing to you.

As for picking and choosing beliefs, uniformity of belief is not as important to Catholics, as it may be to some others. The basic Catholic belief is the Nicene Creed, and almost all Catholics accept the Creed without question (but with various interpretations) - almost everything else is open to discussion and to a variety of perspectives, just like in real life. Right-wing Catholics have their religious litmus tests and rant on about how so-and-so isn't really Catholic, but the official position is far more open to a much broader variety of opinions. On the other hand, churches take their religious rituals seriously, as expressions of faith. People who want to receive such rituals, can rightly be expected to express some modicum of faith.

Pete, there is no required Catholic belief about the origin of the world. Catholics are free to take a literalist view of the biblical story of creation. Some do, but most American and European Catholics think creation took place by evolution - and evolution is what is usually taught in Catholic schools.

-Joe-