Family dynamics are often pretty tricky. This can be especially true when it comes to religion
The dad wrote that it all started when he and his wife went out of town and asked if her parents would watch their 2-year-old. More from LittleThings: Mom Lives With 2 Husbands And Raises 3 Kids Under The Same Roof: 'Three Is Not A Crowd' "My wife and I have a 2-year old son and have been married for 4 years. Our anniversary was a month ago and we found a nice, secluded cabin on AirBnB and rented it out for a long weekend getaway," he began. "My wife asked her parents if they would be willing to watch our son and they agreed as long as we dropped him off at their house. That worked for us since it was on our way anyway." It's so important for parents to get out of town together, so it's great that they were able to do so. But … it seems that they both definitely wish they had gotten different babysitters for their trip. He continued by noting that while he and his wife were both raised in religious households, they don't adhere to any belief system now: "I was raised Lutheran and my wife was raised Catholic, but neither of us currently go to church and have not had our son baptized. My MIL knows this and hates it. She thinks our son needs to be baptized or he will burn in hell, she's that kind of Catholic." Even though they knew how she felt, it's hard to believe that the man or his wife thought that her mom would do what she ended up doing. "So we go on our trip and when we pick up our son and ask how the weekend went, MIL says everything went fine and that she has saved my son's soul from the devil. I ask her what she meant and she says she had our son baptized that morning at her church. I tried my best to keep my cool so I didn't scream at MIL in front of my son, but I pretty much grabbed my son and left." It's not hard to believe that the man was pretty mad. "On the car ride home I was fuming and told my wife as calmly as I could that this would be the last time her parents have our son unsupervised. She tried to downplay what her mom had done but I told her we need to wait until we get home to talk about it because I'm not fighting in front of my kid." The pair returned home with their son and started trying to talk it out. "When we got home and had a chance to talk about it, things got heated. I told my wife I no longer trust her parents with our son and that if they did something like this behind our backs I can't trust them to respect our wishes as parents in the future. I said this was a huge breach of trust and I will forever look [at] her mom differently." "She continued to try to defend her mom saying that she was only doing what she thought was best for her grandson. She even downplayed it by saying that it's just a little water and a few words and we don't go to church anyway so what does it matter." The man was set: This was totally a breach of trust. "I told her that under no circumstances will I allow her parents to watch our son by themselves again. I said that we can still let them see their grandson, but only if we are present. I also said that if she doesn't see what the big deal is with this situation, that maybe we aren't on the same page as parents and maybe we need to see a counselor. She started crying and said that this isn't the kind of decision I get to make on my own and I'm an [expletive] for trying to tell her what kind of relationship her parents can have with our son." The man even went so far as to say that he's willing to take this all the way, because he feels very strongly about how wrong it is that his in-laws did this in the first place. "I told her that I no longer have any trust or respect for her parents and that I don't know if there's anything they can do to repair that. I told her I don't care if that makes me an [expletive], but what her parents did was unforgivable in my eyes and they put themselves in this position to lose privileges with our son. She's been trying to convince me to change my mind for the last month, but I'm not budging. To me this is a hill I'm willing to die on." People were quick to agree that the man isn't in the wrong here; it even turns out that a secret baptism violates some church law. "These types of baptisms violate church law, and if it actually was done by their priest you should contact the bishop and file a complaint." Another person was just confused about how this could have happened in the first place. "I'm confused how this even could have gone down. Did Grandma just show up at Mass on Sunday and say to the priest, "Hey, I've got this baby I need baptized, can you do me a solid?" There's a lot more prep that goes into a Catholic baptism then just showing up and getting dunked in water. So either grandma is lying, or the priest connived to baptize a child against the parents wishes. If the latter, he's in deep trouble." Another person said that not only is the man not in the wrong, but his wife needs to be clearly on his side. "Your wife is downplaying her mother's actions when she should be standing up next to you as half of a united couple. Your wife is deliberately closing her eyes to what's happening and is putting your marriage in jeopardy by trying to say this breach of trust was no big deal." Plenty of people also definitely think the couple needs to see a counselor together. Ultimately, most commenters are united that this isn't really about the baptism and is in fact about mother-in-law's blatant disregard for how her daughter and son-in-law are choosing to raise their child. "This is exactly it. This wasn't about the baptism or saving the child's soul, this was about MIL deciding that she was right and she was going to do what she wanted to do at first opportunity, with a complete disregard for what the parents wanted. I wouldn't leave my kid with someone like that either."
