The Pillar Catholic portal reports a surge in adult baptisms in Belgium for 2026, with 689 candidates compared to 534 in 2025, describing it as an “adult ‘baptism boom'” and a source of joy for Belgium’s Catholics. The article contrasts this with a “relentless” decline in infant baptisms and Sunday Mass attendance, framing the trend as a shift from “cultural Christianity to a Christianity of conviction.” It notes regional variations, with French-speaking dioceses showing higher numbers, and cites similar rises in France. The report concludes with a note of optimism, suggesting religion “appears not to be so dead and gone after all.”
This statist optimism is a profound illusion, a final flicker of the conciliar sect’s naturalistic humanism as it accelerates its collapse. The article’s focus on raw numbers and sociological trends, while omitting any discussion of sacramental validity, doctrinal integrity, or the state of souls, exposes the complete theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the post-Vatican II ecclesial structure. The so-called “baptism boom” is not a sign of spiritual renewal but a symptom of the catastrophic confusion wrought by the revolution of aggiornamento, where external ritual replaces interior grace and human activity supplants divine sovereignty.
Factual Deconstruction: The Illusion of Growth
The article presents raw numbers—689 adult baptisms in 2026—as an unalloyed good. This is a classic conciliar tactic: measuring the Church’s health by quantitative metrics borrowed from sociology, not by qualitative adherence to immutable Catholic doctrine. The data must be interrogated.
First, the article explicitly states that infant baptisms have fallen from 51,000 in 2017 to 30,000 in 2024. This catastrophic collapse—a loss of over 40% in seven years—is the true story of the Belgian “Church.” It signifies the utter failure of Catholic family life and the loss of the supernatural habit of faith passed from parents to children. The Council of Trent, in its Decree on Infant Baptism (Session V, Canon 4), anathematized anyone who would say that “the baptism of infants is to be rejected as unnecessary.” The plummeting infant baptism rate is a direct repudiation of this defined dogma in practice, as parents now presume to withhold the sacrament necessary for the remission of original sin and incorporation into Christ. The article mentions this decline only in passing, treating it as a separate, less interesting statistic.
Second, the definition of “adult baptism” is opaque. Does it include:
- Former Catholics who left the Church after adolescence and are now returning?
- Immigrants from traditionally Catholic countries (e.g., Poland, Italy, Latin America) who were baptized as infants elsewhere but are now receiving the sacrament in Belgium after a catechetical process?
- Converts from non-Christian religions or no religion?
The article provides no breakdown. In the context of Belgium’s mass immigration, a significant portion of these “adults” are likely merely transferring their baptismal record from a parish in another country, not undergoing a genuine conversion from infidelity. The article’s own quote from otheo.be reveals a crucial detail: “In rural Flanders, many people are still baptized as children, and when they find their way to the Church, they are not included in these statistics. It is better to refer to them as ‘newcomers’ or ‘returnees.’” This admission fatally undermines the “conversion” narrative. The “boom” may largely consist of “returnees”—lapsed Catholics who were already sacramentally incorporated years ago—and immigrants. The article’s framing is therefore deliberately misleading.
Third, and most critically, the article assumes the baptisms being performed are valid. This is a fatal, unexamined premise. The post-conciliar rite for the baptism of adults (the “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults,” RCIA) is a radically altered ceremony. The essential form of the sacrament—the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”—is retained, but the surrounding prayers, exorcisms, and the very intention of the minister are contaminated by Modernist theology. The 1969 Roman Missal and the 1972 “Ordo Initiationis Christianae Adultorum” were composed under the influence of the same theological current condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu. The Modernist, as defined by Pius X, “regards and treats dogmas as… symbolic expressions of a truth… which is ever to be further investigated” (Lamentabili, Prop. 21). A minister who holds such a view cannot intend to do what the Church does—to cleanse the soul from original sin and imprint an indelible character. The validity of the sacrament depends on the minister’s intention to do what Christ instituted and what the Church does. If the “Church” performing the baptism is the conciliar sect—a structure that officially endorses religious liberty, ecumenism, and the evolution of doctrine—its ministers’ intention is necessarily ambiguous and likely defective. Therefore, the vast majority of these “baptisms” are, with moral certainty, invalid. They are empty rituals, producing no sacramental effect. The article celebrates a numerical increase in what are, in all likelihood, null acts.
Linguistic Analysis: The Language of Naturalistic Humanism
The article’s language is a telltale sign of the Modernist disease. It employs the vocabulary of sociology, marketing, and humanistic optimism, completely evacuating the supernatural.
Key phrases:
- “baptism boom“: A commercial/economic term applied to a sacred sacrament. This reduces a supernatural event to a trend in a market.
- “source of joy for Belgium’s Catholics“: Joy is rooted in human sentiment, not in the objective restoration of sanctifying grace to souls or the honor rendered to God.
- “transition from cultural Christianity to a Christianity of conviction“: This is pure Modernist jargon. “Cultural Christianity” is a pejorative term for a faith inherited by osmosis, while “Christianity of conviction” suggests a subjective, personal choice. Both are denigrations of the objective, sacramental, hierarchical Faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). The pre-1958 Church never spoke of “conviction” as the criterion; she spoke of faith, a supernatural virtue infused by God, and of religion, the virtue that renders to God the worship due to Him. The dichotomy is false and heretical, pitting a sterile externalism against a sterile interiorism, both devoid of the sacramental-ecclesial reality.
- “religion appears not to be so dead and gone after all“: The perspective is purely phenomenological. “Appears” indicates a surface observation. “Dead and gone” is a naturalistic assessment. There is no mention of the status animarum, the judgment of souls before God. The article operates on the level of visible, worldly vitality, utterly ignoring the invisible reality of grace, sin, and damnation.
- “new dynamic“: A management consulting term. The Church is not a corporation undergoing a “dynamic” turnaround; she is the Mystical Body of Christ, whose life depends on the integrity of doctrine and sacraments.
The tone is cautiously optimistic, bureaucratic, and reportorial. There is no cry of “Eureka!” for a lost soul, no doxology to the Trinity for a baptism, no mention of the terrible responsibility of bringing an unbaptized infant into a world of original sin. The silence on the supernatural is deafening and damning. It is the language of a committee reporting on membership drives, not of the Body of Christ rejoicing at the recovery of a lost sheep (Luke 15:6).
Theological Confrontation: Immutable Doctrine vs. Conciliar Delusion
Every optimism in the article collapses when confronted with the unchangeable Catholic Faith, as defined before the revolution of Vatican II.
1. The Primacy of Infant Baptism and the Disaster of Its Decline. The article treats the collapse of infant baptism as a secondary statistic. For the Catholic Church, this is a catastrophe of the first order. The Council of Trent, Session V, Canons 2 and 3, declares anathema on anyone who says:
- “that baptism is not necessary for salvation” (Can. 2).
- “that the baptism of infants is to be rejected as unnecessary” (Can. 3).
Infant baptism is not optional; it is the ordinary, necessary means by which children are delivered from original sin, incorporated into Christ, and made heirs of heaven. The 40%+ drop in Belgium is a mass, public, practical denial of this dogma. It is a sign that parents, and the “pastors” who fail to preach this truth with apostolic zeal, are living in mortal sin and leading their children to perdition. The article’s silence on this is an implicit approval of apostasy.
2. The Absolute Necessity of Baptism for Salvation. The article celebrates “baptisms” without once affirming the Catholic dogma: “Outside the Church there is no salvation” (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus). Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15). He also condemned: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation” (Error 16). The “adult baptisms” in Belgium are presumably of people from non-Catholic backgrounds (secular, Muslim, etc.). For these souls, baptism is not a nice option; it is the sine qua non for salvation. The article’s failure to state this absolute truth reduces baptism to a cultural milestone or a social service, not a matter of eternal life or death.
3. The Invalidity of Post-Conciliar Baptismal Rites and Intentions. As argued in the factual section, the validity of the sacrament is in grave doubt. The pre-1958 Church was crystal clear: the minister must intend “to do what the Church does.” The Church’s intention is to baptize ex opere operato to remit sin and sanctify. The Modernist theology that permeates the RCIA and the minds of most conciliar clergy explicitly rejects the notion of original sin as a transmitted guilt (see Lamentabili, Prop. 29: “The resurrection of the Savior is not properly a historical fact…”; the denial of original sin is its corollary). A minister who does not believe in original sin cannot intend to remit it. Therefore, the “baptism” is a nullity. The article’s celebration is a celebration of nothing.
4. The Heresy of “Religious Freedom” and Its Fruits. The article’s entire premise—that a “boom” in one sacramental statistic amidst a collapse of all others is a positive sign—rests on the Modernist, secularist principle of quantity over quality. This is the logical fruit of Dignitatis Humanae (1965) and the entire conciliar embrace of the “rights of man” over the rights of God. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned the idea that the “civil liberty of every form of worship… conduce[s] more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people” (Error 79). The situation in Belgium—where the “Church” coexists peacefully with a state that promotes abortion, euthanasia, and the LGBTQ+ agenda—is the direct result of this error. The “Church” has no prophetic voice, no social kingship. Its “joy” over a few baptisms is the joy of a patient noticing a minor uptick in a terminal illness.
Symptomatic Analysis: The Conciliar Sect’s Death Rattle
This article is not an anomaly; it is the perfect expression of the post-conciliar paradigm.
The Hermeneutics of Continuity in Action: The article treats the “Church in Belgium” as a continuous entity with the pre-1958 Catholic Church. It uses terms like “Catholic Church,” “baptism,” “Easter Vigil” without qualification. This is the “hermeneutics of continuity” condemned by sedevacantists as a fraud. There is no continuity between the Catholic Church, which condemned the errors of Modernism in Lamentabili and the Syllabus, and the conciliar sect, which has embraced those errors as its official teaching. The “baptisms” reported are performed by a hierarchy that, since John XXIII, has propagated the heresies listed in Lamentabili (e.g., Prop. 22: “The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts…”). A body that teaches heresy ceases to be a teacher of truth and, by the doctrine of St. Robert Bellarmine (cited in the “Defense of Sedevacantism” file), a manifest heretic loses all jurisdiction ipso facto. Therefore, the “archbishops” and “bishops” quoted or implied in this article are not legitimate pastors but usurpers. Their statistics are the records of a schismatic sect, not the Catholic Church.
Omission of the Supernatural: The article’s gravest sin is its total silence on the condition of the soul. Where is the discussion of:
- The necessity of contrition and faith for adult baptism?
- The state of mortal sin in which most Belgians live (contraception, abortion, idolatry of the state)?
- The terrifying reality of hell for the unbaptized?
- The absolute sovereignty of God’s grace versus human “conviction”?
This silence is the hallmark of the “Church of the New Advent.” It has exchanged the “sensus Catholicus”—the supernatural vision of all things in God—for a worldly, democratic, and bureaucratic perspective. The pre-1958 Church would have seen the 30,000 unbaptized infants as 30,000 souls in danger of eternal perdition and would have launched a crusade of preaching and parental admonition. The conciliar sect sees a “statistical challenge” and celebrates a marginal increase in a ritual it no longer understands.
The Cult of Man and the Rejection of Christ’s Kingship: Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that “removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from… public life.” The article’s optimism is rooted in the same secularism. It finds hope in human activity (“the arrival of converts,” “a new dynamic”) rather than in the public reign of Christ the King over Belgium’s laws, institutions, and families. Pius XI warned: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Belgium is a living proof: a nation that has formally rejected Christ’s kingship in its laws (legalized abortion, euthanasia, same-sex “marriage”)
Source:
Adult baptisms surge again in Belgium (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 18.02.2026