Sunday, December 05, 2004
Invalid Baptisms
UGH.
According to ABCNEWS On-Line, a parish church in Australia might have performed thousands (yes, thousands) of invalid baptisms over the years as a result of its priests changing the Trinitarian formula (the words) used at baptism. Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby has stated: "At a certain stage a parish could—and I'm not saying it has happened here—a parish could make so many changes that they really are no longer Catholic…Perhaps they're a type of Christian church in their own right but they're not a part of what we would refer to as a Catholic church."
In some respects, even these worrisome words understate the problem.
Invalid Catholic baptisms do not result in some half-way form of Christianity. They result in nothing. One who is invalidly baptized is in exactly the same ecclesial status as one who was never baptized. Period. Think about it this way: when Angela and I brought home each of our new-borns, they were the cutest little pagan babies in the world. But if they had never been baptized (validly, of course), they would have remained our cute "pagan" babies. Just progressively taller.
Given, moreover, evidence that such invalid baptisms have been going for many years, one must now ask how many of these deceived people went on to first Communion, Confirmation, perhaps even married, without benefit of the desired sacraments, because no sacrament can be validly received without prior Baptism (1983 CIC 842, 849). The complications in those areas alone will be enormous, and we haven't even raised potential penal implications of sacramental simulation (1983 CIC 1379), let alone sacrilege, by offending clerics (1983 CIC 1389).
In light of such factors, I have to wonder how priests who seem to have performed so disastrously for so long on such an incredibly simple but vitally important point are actually being left in place pending investigation. +++
According to ABCNEWS On-Line, a parish church in Australia might have performed thousands (yes, thousands) of invalid baptisms over the years as a result of its priests changing the Trinitarian formula (the words) used at baptism. Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby has stated: "At a certain stage a parish could—and I'm not saying it has happened here—a parish could make so many changes that they really are no longer Catholic…Perhaps they're a type of Christian church in their own right but they're not a part of what we would refer to as a Catholic church."
In some respects, even these worrisome words understate the problem.
Invalid Catholic baptisms do not result in some half-way form of Christianity. They result in nothing. One who is invalidly baptized is in exactly the same ecclesial status as one who was never baptized. Period. Think about it this way: when Angela and I brought home each of our new-borns, they were the cutest little pagan babies in the world. But if they had never been baptized (validly, of course), they would have remained our cute "pagan" babies. Just progressively taller.
Given, moreover, evidence that such invalid baptisms have been going for many years, one must now ask how many of these deceived people went on to first Communion, Confirmation, perhaps even married, without benefit of the desired sacraments, because no sacrament can be validly received without prior Baptism (1983 CIC 842, 849). The complications in those areas alone will be enormous, and we haven't even raised potential penal implications of sacramental simulation (1983 CIC 1379), let alone sacrilege, by offending clerics (1983 CIC 1389).
In light of such factors, I have to wonder how priests who seem to have performed so disastrously for so long on such an incredibly simple but vitally important point are actually being left in place pending investigation. +++
