Letters to the Editor: Survivors of Church of Ireland home dismayed by Synod baptism vote

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Motion on baptism defeated at Church of Ireland Synod and former residents of the Westbank Orphanage in Co Wicklow are dismayed.

We are former residents, mostly conceived and born out of wedlock, of the Westbank Orphanage, Greystones, Wicklow, which Church of Ireland institutions facilitated. We are therefore dismayed that a motion was defeated at the Church of Ireland Synod, requiring that, “irrespective of the marital status of the parents of an infant, a minister must not refuse or [...] delay to baptise any child” (Church of Ireland Synod report). 

The motion, designed to regularise practice throughout Ireland, received a slap in the face from a decisive majority of clergy and over a third of lay delegates.