The Vatican on the Sacrament of Baptism:"Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called.50 The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.51"
In practice, however, the sacrament also benefits the religious public. Recently, the Catholic Church has been making an effort to reintegrate the Sacraments into the Mass and therefore the community (per the American Catholic Dioscese). Witnessing a baptism can have have empathetic effect upon the congregation: they are reminded of viewing God, and the external world, in a child-like state. (The child-like state obviously referring to post-baptism, minus the original sin, power of darkness, etc.)
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