A reader writes:
As a recent convert from the PCA, I have been placed on the parish’s Adult
Faith Formation Committee, where I hear enough half-truths and outright
rejections of Church teaching to keep five apologists working
overtime.The latest: I was told by the head of the committee that, prior
to Vatican II, "the Church did not accept Protestant baptisms," and
therefore insisted on re-baptizing anyone who converted. After Vatican II,
I was told, the Church now "accepts Protestant baptisms and therefore
accepts Protestants as brothers and sisters in Christ." He stopped short
of place I think he was trying to go, namely: "Therefore there’s no
substantive difference between being a Protestant and a Catholic."Now, this all sounds wrong to me. My understanding is that the Church has
long accepted the validity of any baptism, as long as the intent was to
baptize, the actions were correct, and the Trinitarian formula was
used. Further, I wasn’t aware that the Church, at Vatican II, had made any
new doctrinal teaching about the validity of Protestant baptisms (or any
new doctrinal teaching at all, for that matter). But before I begin to
scour Church documents and previous Catechisms looking for a refutation (or
at least a clarification), I wanted to ask you how to approach this question.
If he said what you report, the head of the committee is seriously in error. The Church dealt with the question of whether the baptism of heretics and schismatics were valid as early as the third century and concluded that they were.
What’s more, the matter was infallibly defined no later than the Council of Trent (earlier councils may have already taken care of this), whose Canons on Baptism contain the following:
Canon 4. If anyone says that the baptism which is given by heretics in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit with the intention of doing what the Church does, is not true baptism, let him be anathema.
Consequently, the Church has always regarded Protestant baptism as valid in principle, and Vatican II made no changes in this respect.
There was a change in the Church’s common practice following the Council, however. (Which is not to say that the Council itself mandated the change.)
It had been customary to administer conditional baptism to Protestants converting to the Catholic faith in case there had been a defect in form, matter, or intention when baptism was administered to them in their original church. A conditional baptism is not the same as "re-baptizing" someone, however. Conditional baptisms respect the validity (if it was present) of a person’s original baptism by using formulas such as "If you are not baptized, I baptize you . . . "
After the revision of the rites that followed the Council (please note: not everything that has changed in recent years is to be attrbuted to Vatican II!), it became less common to administer conditional baptism to Protestants becoming Catholic, though it is still done (as it was in my own case).
The head of the committee therefore was wrong if he asserted:
- That the Church did not recognize the validity of Protstant baptisms prior to Vatican II,
- That Vatican II changed this, or
- That prior to the Council converts from Protestantism were "re-baptized" (as opposed to being conditionally baptized).
If he said such things, the head of the committee really should study these matters more thoroughly before pronouncing upon them.
Was there sometimes a requirement of shaving one’s head before being baptised (so that the water could flow on the head)?
I think that, before the Council, there was less willingness to presume that the rite had been administered according to the valid form. After all, a number of Protestant sects baptize in the name of Jesus Christ only, and the lack of central oversight within denominations meant that, even if a given denomination promulgated a valid ritual, it could not verify that the ritual was faithfully followed by a given local congregation.
You may ask, how has this changed after Vatican II? Only that the latter concern has sometimes been an issue *within* our own church…oops, we’re not supposed to talk about that….
I remember reading this in Radio Replies and it is something I never really appreciated.
Baptism, if valid, makes a Christian and Catholicity is the only true form of Christianity. Therefore anyone validly baptised is radically a Catholic, even though they are unaware of it. If Baptism administered by an Anglican is valid, the person is baptised IN Church of England not INTO the Church of England.
Christ instituted Baptism into the Catholic Church. A child baptised in the Church of England remains a Catholic until the age of reason and if adopts Anglicanism then it belongs to a heretical/schismatic Church
It’s true that we believe in “One Baptism” as long as it is a True Baptism.
The practice of the Church was to baptize every convert from Protestantism because there’s no way you can prove that the so-called Protestant Baptism was performed correctly and that the priest had the correct intention.
It’s asumed that some sects (the old sects) just as the Anglicans and the Lutherans do so correctly, but most of the modern Protestants (Evangelicals, Pentecostals) have a wrapped view of the Trinity and the meaning of Baptism itself.
What the modernist hierarchy is doing in the United States recognizing the so-called Baptisms of sects as valid is nothing but the fruit of false Ecumenism that says that “all religions are partially true”.
Juan: All religions are partially true.
However, as per Lumen Gentium, in the case of non-Catholic Trinitarians baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we are not dealing with “other religions,” but with Christians variously in schism and heresy. One can hold false views on some subjects and still be Christian. (For example, it looks likely to me that you hold false views on some subjects, but I bet you’re a Christian.)
While it is true that most Evangelicals have defective views of Baptism, errors on the Trinity are not as widespread as you suggest. There are Oneness Pentecostals and the like, but they are not the mainstream of Evangelical Protestantism.
Dear SDG,
You wrote:
Juan: All religions are partially true.
Better to say: All religions, except one, are partially true. One religion really is totally true 🙂
The Nit-picking Chicken
Nit-picking Chicken:
I guess I took the main point of Juan’s quarrel with “false Ecumenism” to be, not that Christianity is totally true, but that other religions are false rather than “partially true.” My intent was thus to deny that religions that are not totally true are totally false, or, conversely, to affirm that all religions have at least some degree of truth — that truth per se, as distinct from the fullness of revealed truth, is not the sole possession of one religion.
But your point is well taken. If I wanted to be cute, I might try to mount an a fortiori that any attribute an entity has in fullness it necessarily has in part, but.
Dear SDG,
You wrote:
But your point is well taken. If I wanted to be cute, I might try to mount an a fortiori that any attribute an entity has in fullness it necessarily has in part, but.
Like the number, one 🙂
Sorry. I know what you mean. I understood what you were trying to say. I just had to let my inner silliness out for the day. Its always dangerous, though.
The Chicken
Jimmy, nice cowboy hat!
I’m wondering do the Novus Ordo use a protestant rite or something? I remember reading Michael Davie’s book on the New Mass, and it seems Paul the Sixth sked Protesants to make a “New Mass.”
I guess the same thing happened with Annibale Bugnini and the New Rite of Baptism? I recently got this book, it seems scholarly, but it has a suprising thesis:
A Moral-Theological Conclusion On The New Modernist Rite of Baptism
http://www.lulu.com/content/3824207
What I don’t get, if we are trying to be so “Ecumenical” toward Protestants, does that require to invalidae the 7 Sacraments for Catholics? I don’t the old Latin rites, but the new rites, I question. Any opinion?
Catechumen,
My starting point is Jesus’ promise to Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church built “upon this rock.”
Where the bishop of Rome is, there is the Catholic Church, and there I will be. Lunatic-fringe conspiracy theories — among which I would count sede-vancantism, quasi-anonymous claimants to the Chair of Peter living in the United States, and radical-Traditionalist denials of the validity of eucharistic liturgies (and a fortiori baptisms) as celebrated by the bishop of Rome — cut no ice with me. If each of us is to sit in judgment of the validity of the Church’s teaching and praxis, we might as well be Orthodox, or even Protestant, or simply belong to the Church of Myself. It makes just as much sense.
[COMMENT DELETED]
Praxis/Catechumen/etc.: Please follow the rules.
Catechumen,
Beaware, there are some invalid feminist baptisms being used by very Liberal priests. If you go to EWTN’s web site, you can find the CDF Document on “Dubia” of this “Baptism Praxis” of baptism in the “Name of the Mother” or “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier” or anything odd. Could there be other “defects” like this? Sure!
It does not take 40 years to realize this, just some common sense.
Also some Protestant churches have invalid baptism rites, so they may need conditional baptism. As far as I know, the Orthodox’s baptism is valid!
Dear Jimmy,
I read this objection to Baptism, and I am not sure if you know about this one it summed up this way:
…the Pope taught error in an official document, my opponent pointed out the letter of Pope Nicholas I to the Bulgars (Denzinger n. 335), in which the Pope says that those baptized in the name of Christ are not to be rebaptized (see Ott, 353, and Summa III, Q66, A6.)
Ott says it is an open question. St. Thomas in the body of the article seems to say that you need to use the explicit Trinitarian formula, while in the answers to the objections, he says the Apostles baptized in the name of Christ by a special inspiration.
Was Pope Nicholas in error?
Jimmy, I thought a Trinitarian formula must be used for a valid sacrament? Is not the Mormon baptism invalid?
Hey “The Nit-picking Chicken ”
Are you a rooster or what? What color red or yellow? Well I’m a mighty duck. Anyhow…
There is only one True Religion – the Catholic Religion.
No sect of the devil has “some” truth in of itself. Either you have the Whole Truth or NO Truth. Either you worship the True God or the False god of this world-the Devil. Sure the Devil can quote a scripture passage, and pretend to have “truth”, big deal. Don’t lay your eggs in that nest, lest they all scatter!
Vatican II taught the gross error that The Truth “susbsists in” non-Catholic sects. Sure they may steal the sacraments like baptism from the true Church, but they do not own them proper, and they cannot profit the sacrament out of the Church for – there is no remission of sin without being subject to the Pope of Rome. This is Catholic Dogma! We read Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928):
Let them hear Lactantius crying out: “The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind.”
So much for “the economy of ecumenism.” It’s bankrupt theology.
Anyhow, I hope I’m more a “Mighty Duck” then a “Nit-picking Chicken”.
🙂
Did Moses and King David have “the Whole Truth”?
Did the first-century Jews about whom St. Paul wrote in Romans chapters 3 and 9?
How about Apollos in Acts 18, who “had been instructed in the Way of the Lord and, with ardent spirit, spoke and taught accurately about Jesus, although he knew only the baptism of John” until Priscilla and Aquila “took him aside and explained to him the Way more accurately”?
Pope St. Stephen declared that the baptism of heretics was valid. I expect you would agree that Mormon baptisms are invalid. So what did the heretics that Pope St. Stephen was thinking of have that the Mormons didn’t have? Could it be… partial truths lacking in Mormonism?
St. Thomas didn’t believe in the Immaculate Conception. Which did he have, “the Whole Truth or NO Truth”?
Are you really consigning the separated Eastern Churches (both Orthodox and Oriental) to the outer darkness of “NO Truth”?
You are mistaken. You will not find that word used that way (with or without extra “s”) in the documents of Vatican II. Hint: Check Lumen Gentium.
Does anyone know what the infallible teachings or infallible declarations of the Catholic Church are besides the 2 concerning the Blessed Mother?
Dear RonnyC,
To my knowledge, there is no such definitive list. Such a list would compose the canons of ecumenical councils, papal pronouncements, ex cathedra, and other pronouncements which are part of the Ordinary Magisterium. Unfortunately, there is no complete list of infallible pronouncements by popes before the doctrine of papal infallibility was declared (there has been only one papal infallible pronouncement, so far, after Vatican I – the dogma of the Assumption, in 1950). Popes spoke infallibly on occasion before the doctrine was declared at Vatican I, but it was hard to tell when. Part of what Vatican I did was to give a concrete structure for making these pronouncements.
A good reference book that contains many of the Churches teaching as well as their status (de fide, sensus commun, etc.) is Ludwig Otts, “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.” It was translated into English in the 1950’s and does not contain any information post-Vatican II, but it is a place to start.
If anyone else knows of any other good references, I would love to know, as well.
The Chicken