“ Most churches demand of sponsors that they be in full communion. In the Roman Catholic Church, priests, monks and nuns are disqualified from being sponsors, either “because it might involve their entanglement in worldly affairs,” or more probably because every relationship of fatherhood or motherhood is felt to be in their case inappropriate. The spiritual relationship established between the sponsor and the baptized, and the sponsors and the parents of the baptized, constitutes an impediment to marriage (see Marriage: Canon Law) . ”

“ At the Reformation the Lutheran churches retained godfathers and godmothers, but the Reformed churches reverted to what they believed to be the more primitive rule, that in ordinary circumstances this function should be undertaken by a child's proper parents. ”

“ The rubric of the Church of England according to which “there shall be for every male child to be baptized two godfathers and one godmother, and for every female one godfather and two godmothers,” is not older than 1661; the sponsors are charged with the duty of instructing the child, and in due time presenting it for confirmation, and in the Catechism the child is taught to say that he received his name from his “godfathers and godmothers.” ”