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.
St. Catherine’s Monastery (left), also known as the Monastery of the Transfiguration, is the world’s oldest monastery.
