Godparents?

[gratefulmum]

I was raised Catholic and am therefore used to the ideas that children should have Godparents in their lives. The problem is that I am not a practicing Catholic anymore and am not going to baptize dd. I do however, like the idea of having people who are close to the parents be special in a child's life. Does anyone's dd/ds have Godparents although they are not baptized? Is there maybe a more appropriate term that could designate their role as spiritual/life mentor without offending my Catholic family?

[momto l&a]

I never knew godparents had to do with a religion.

I know of plenty of children who have godparents and are not religious.

[lotusdebi]

DH and I are atheists. We chose my best friend as our son's Godmother. She's spiritual, but not religious. She's also named in our wills as our son's Guardian, if anything happens to us. Basically, that's what we consider the godparents role to be. I know many (most?) religious people name a godparent to be someone who will be a religious guide to their child. I was raised as an atheist, and my godmother was my agnostic aunt. Same situation - she would have been my Guardian, if my parents had died. We didn't have a celebration or ritual for DS's Godmother. She was at his birth, though!

[eilonwy]

Godparents have a different significance to different people. In Judaism, a boy's Godfather holds him at his Bris, and there might be one or two other things, but I'm not quite sure what they are. In most Christian cultures, I think the Godparent is supposed to be responsible for the child's religious instruction/training/whatever, but in most cases it's just a formality and someone else they call for presents on the kid's birthday. :

Many people refer to their child's legal guardians as Godparents; the people they have designated in their will to take custody of their child should anything happen to them (God forbid!)