206 Dimensions of Baptism
originally non-baptismal setting. The tradition they established has been
widely questioned and often discarded in the later twentieth century and
into the twenty-first. As Pocknee puts it,
The reading of this lection at the font in connexion with infant baptism has
done more than anything else to engulf Christian initiation in false
sentimentality and to obscure the true meaning of Holy Baptism.^63It belongs more fittingly in a non-baptismal service of thanksgiving or
dedication for a newborn or adopted child. Perhaps the expected Roman
recovery of the catechumenate for children will find a place for it. Its
removal from services of infant baptism—out again, after being brought in
at the Reformation—can only serve the rediscovery of infant baptism as an
ordinance or sacrament of the gospel rather than a rite of babyhood.- Pocknee, The Gospel Lection', p. 499.