The Certificate


Adel brought my Certificate of Baptism when she came with Anne today. She had collected it from the Church a while back but we were busy with our own things and have not met for three weeks until today. This certificate is the official affirmation of my being accepted into the Roman Catholic Church. However, this piece of paper will mean nothing if I do not live the way the Christ had prescribed. Everyday I pray that God will guide me in all that I do so that I may do it according to His will.

Author: Peter Tan

Peter Gabriel Tan. Penangite residing in the Klang Valley. Blissfully married to Wuan. A LaSallian through and through. Slave to three cats. Wheelchair user since 1984. End-stage renal disease since 2017. Principal Facilitator at Peter Tan Training specialising in Disability Equality Training. Former columnist of Breaking Barriers with The Borneo Post. This blog chronicles my life, thoughts and opinions. Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.

11 thoughts on “The Certificate”

  1. James,
    Thank you. I chose Gabriel for my baptism name in honour of St. Gabriel the Archangel. There is a meaningful story behind this. Perhaps when I am in the right frame of mind, I will blog about it.

  2. working in the church part-time, i prepared the baptism certificate quite often. i notice these days those who came asking for the baptism certificate only do it for one reason – to get married! yes, if you want to get married, you must have the baptism certificate to show proof that you are baptised as a catholic, so when they want to get married, they rushed for the certificate. otherwise, you wouldn’t see them bothering to retain the copy of certificate.

    speaking of which, i do not have my baptism certificate too. well i can easily prepare one for myself. 😉

  3. Lucia,
    This certificate is printed in normal 70gsm photocopy paper. I would have liked it in thicker stock paper so that I can have it framed up. Is it because this certificate is usually misplaced that it is now issued in this filmsy paper? Perhaps the original copy can be issued in some fancy pre-printed cards while replacements will be in the normal photocopy paper?

  4. peter, yes the baptism certificate comes in this type of normal photocopy paper – the official one use by all churches. your parish is 70gm… same as ours but i notice the taiping church one is 100gm!

    i don’t know if there are other types. maybe there are, but those are not official ones from the church but as you said, fancy pre-printed designs ones where you can get from the catholic/christian bookshop. i haven’t seen a baptism certificate of this kind yet but for marriage certificate, yes, they used those fancy pre-printed ones.

    you know, normally for 1st holy communion and confirmation, there are no certificate issued but if an individual wants it, he can buy a designed one from the bookshop and asked the parish priest to fill in the form with his signature. when i took these 2 sacraments (holy communion and confirmation), i did not have the certificates and i couldn’t bother about having them anyway. however, my uncle, a priest, at one time bought a very beautiful holy communion certificate (from the shop) for me as a gift. i had it framed up and lots of people commented on it being very lovely. it was a picture of jesus giving out communion to a little girl in a beautiful garden! my sister got a confirmation certificate from my uncle, which was just as lovely.

    as i said i haven’t seen a fancy pre-printed designed baptism certificate before but i can enquire from my friend who works in ‘catholic information service (CIS)’ where they sell religious books/articles. i’ll let you know, peter.

    btw peter hope you’ll be on icq tonight after midnight as i need to ask you something regarding streamyx.

  5. Lucia,
    Maybe I can design one for myself, get it printed and then get the parish priest to certify it?

    Ok, we have a date tonite. 😀

  6. Thats interesting no certificate for holy communion and confirmation)i guess it’s different in other countries .
    In oz one must of take the sacraments of holy communion and confirmation before marriage also they must both be rc.

  7. Sweetspirit,
    I had my Baptism, Confirmation and first Holy Communion on the same day. One certificate should suffice instead of three because they will all be the same except for the wordings.

  8. peter, i’m not sure if we can design our own and let the priest sign. i’ll try to find out.

    sweetspirit, there is no certificate for holy communion and confirmation, as they are not really important, i guess. for baptism and marriage, yes, there are certificates because baptism is important to acknoledge you are a RC. and marriage certificate is of course important too.

    peter, since you baptised as an adult, and thereby took all the 3 sacraments together, the sacraments are mentioned in the baptism certificate but it is not really consider certificate for holy communion/confirmation. it IS a baptism certificate.

    as i stated, holy communion and confirmation, there is no ‘official’ certificate from the church. (if you want one, you have to purchase the fancy deisgned one). the only ‘official’ certificate from the church is the baptism certificate. even for marriage, some people don’t bother about the certificate. as long as their marriage are entered in the marriage of registrar, good enough. some people instead of getting a marriage certificate (which btw is the fancy designed one), prefers to have a photocopy of the extract of the marriage registrar (where their signatures, their witness signature, the priest signature are all there) to be certificed true copy of course.

  9. Lucia,
    Thanks for the two very detailed comments here. Although there is no certificate for First Holy Communion the Confirmation details were included in the Baptism Certificate. Certificates like these are something to remind us of important milestones in our lives. I will keep this Baptism Certificate properly whether it is fancy or otherwise. Being accepted as an “official” follower of Jesus is the most important event for me, ever.

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