Priest refused to Christen baby because father wore earring

A Romanian priest is facing punishment after refusing to baptise a child because its father was wearing an earring.

Father Mihai Duma, from the Timiseni-Sag monastery near Timisoara, refused to baptise Mircea and Andrea Opris’s new-born son after noticing Mircea had a pierced ear.

Mr Opris, 27, told the Evenimentul Zilei daily: “When he saw me, he said that he didn’t want to talk to me. I was stunned. I couldn’t understand it.

“He turned his back to me and I asked him what was the problem and he told me: “Sir, I don’t speak to men who wear earrings”.”

The couple have since complained to the Timisoara bishopric and have been given an official apology. Father Duma is also likely to be disciplined.

But Father Duma insisted: “I have a duty before God and I told that young man that when he steps inside God’s house he should be dressed accordingly.

“If he were really a believer he would have admitted that he was wrong to come with those earrings.”
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That is pretty silly, we are called called to holiness and so it has to be a good thing that the father had an extra hole to be holey with.

On a related note, when I used to stand brow watches as a Chief on an aircraft carrier. We had to look for was males wearing earrings with their uniform. At that time they were not even allowed to wear earrings in their civilian clothes when coming onboard. If caught wearing a earring they would get sent down to the Master-At-Arms and written up. On a slow day if you were in a bad mood and you saw someone come onboard and noticed that they had a earring hole in their ear you could point at their ear. They would think that they had forgotten to take their earring and freak out before they had realized that they had been tricked.