In a recent comment on my review of CM Gschwandtner's Welcoming Finitude, Joseph Charles noted a preposterous story appearing in the Associated Press, which reported the possibility that some infants might not have validly received the sacrament of baptism because of an anomaly in the form of the sacrament ministered by a certain deacon who altered the language "I baptize" to "We baptize." Joseph appropriately dubbed this hilarity with the hilarious phrase, "sacramental slapstick." Now while Joseph's critique of Catholicism runs very deep and sharp, far more deeply and sharply than his detour through a modicum of levity (indeed, he might find more "slapstick" in what follows), it does serve to underscore what's been afoot in Catholic circles these days.
First, a little reassurance for the worried well: unless the deacon was a malicious and evil person---intending to defraud the church---then the sacrament is valid (even if liceity is put into question). To keep things simple, a review of the basic tenet of sacramental theology: a sacrament has a hylomorphic structure, that is, it is constructed of a form, in this case the words used in the ceremony/liturgy, and the matter, in this case, water. In the sacrament of baptism, the core of the form is "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," not "I/we" (which are always ambiguous). Moreover, any baptized Christian can baptize, so long as she does what the Church has always intended to do. Now if the deacon deliberately intended to do otherwise than what the Church has always done, there could be a problem with validity. The first-person pronoun's use here would not invalidate the sacrament in and of itself.
So just what has turned sacramental theology into low comedy's banana peel in the path of everyday Catholics? My surmise is the appearance of the ugly head of ultramontane fundamentalism slowly creeping into the life of the church. One needn't look too far to find well-meaning but misguided Catholics who have lost faith in Pope Francis because of his human frailties, as if the pope were himself the Church. When such fundamentalist Catholics put all their faith in a particular personage, it is easy to see how fragile such faith can become. Such faith has recourse only to dogma, and closes itself off to the living, breathing Catholic faith.
Such Catholics find reassurance in "knowing" just how many people are in hell, for example, and shiver in their boots at the suggestion that humans on earth cannot know the judgement of God at the end of any human life. It seems such people cannot have faith in their own 'heavenly reward' unless the reward of bad people is clearly stated, known and an incontrovertible fact. For such people, there can be no beatific vision without the music of the sizzling flesh of the damned.
Many such Catholics identify themselves as "traditional," and as such, embrace many Catholic devotions, such as the Tridentine Rite of the Mass. Truth be told, I personally have great admiration for the beauty and majesty of that rite; it is the rite of my own childhood. There is nothing in the 1962 missal that warrants the fundamentalism that slips on the banana peels of the "I/we," or the reluctance of a pope who is slow to judge.
Whatever happened to the notion of the indefectability of the church? Popes come and go, but nothing can militate against the abiding presence of Christ in the church. The 1962 missal has become a stumbling block, a wedge between Catholic and Catholic, a scandal that threatens to reduce ritual and liturgy to "slapstick," and fertile ground for the work of the devil's divisiveness. The blinding zeal of fundamentalism will undoubtedly lead to a blindness to banana peels. When did the likes of Jerry Lewis become papabile?
Here is the relevant portion from the Vatican’s response, followed by a link to the complete text:
ReplyDeleteFirst question: Whether the Baptism conferred with the formula «We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit» is valid?
Second question: Whether those persons for whom baptism was celebrated with this formula must be baptized in forma absoluta?
RESPONSES
To the first question: Negative.
To the second question: Affirmative.
The Supreme Pontiff Francis, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On June 8, 2020, approved these Responses and ordered their publication.
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2020/08/06/0406/00923.html#rispostein
The pope approved the response. Let’s not pretend he didn’t.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me want to write a humorous short story where all the baptisms ever performed are found to be universally invalid when an assistant librarian in the Vatican accidentally discovers an ancient error in the Aramaic translations. Turns out, nobody was ever Catholic. When brought to the attention of the pope, he nods and thinks for a moment. He asks the librarian for the book, and the librarian hands it to him. The pope immediately rips the incriminating pages out and eats them. Nice try, Satan!
Seriously, though, the religion is a joke.
I don’t think you appreciate the true depth of this thing. The Vatican said definitively that these people must be baptized again. One of the priests resigned over this. The (so far) two priests who discovered their baptism was not valid are not priests. They only thought they were. All the sacraments, the marriages, all of it, gone. That is what Rome said. That is why the dioceses are reaching out to the people that might be affected by this, telling them they must be baptized again. Or for the first time, really. Marriage vows have to be taken again. Confession? None of those people received valid forgiveness. This all comes down to the biggest, funniest aspect of this whole thing:
ReplyDeleteNo baptism, no confirmation, no ordination—no consecration. All the Masses these men said as priests were invalid. The thousands of people who attended those Masses did not receive the body of Christ. They ate a stale, tasteless wafer. The tabernacle? A glorified bread box. Literally, that is all it was. There was no transubstantiation. There was no Real Presence.
This isn’t Catholic fundamentalism, it’s just Catholic. Ask the pope. No, literally, ask the pope. He told us what he thinks. It really is as ridiculous as it looks.
This is not about militant fundamentalists. It’s actually about the heart of Catholicism. I know that because that is what the church says it is. That is how it is responding to this.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/02/17/invalid-baptism-arizona-242422
Joseph:
DeleteThank you for keeping Currents in Catholic Thought current. In all humility, I apologize to you and anyone reading along for my ignorance in this matter: I was unaware of the developments in this misfortune, and nonetheless blogged this little piece without having done my homework. I think it’s painfully obvious that I rattled off that blogpost too hastily. I’m flabbergasted at the outcome (thanks again for providing the link to the Vatican response), and my head is spinning around the fundamentals of sacramental theology. I find the whole issue scandalous, and I do indeed wonder if the pressures of very conservative Catholics upon the pope could have contributed to what seems to me a rash ruling in this matter: the pope, after a series of perceived missteps, asserting the authority of Rome as some kind of appeasement and reassurance to the more traditionally-minded.
I really have to question my own understanding of the finer points of sacramental theology. While I still believe it’s doubtful that many marriages would have to be ‘re-done’ (in the Roman Rite, the ministers of the sacrament are the spouses themselves and the priest an official witness only), the prospect of rebaptism opens to door to charges of anabaptism. As I have understood baptism, any baptized Christian can perform the rite so long as the intent is to do what the Church has always done in the acceptable form and matter. The Didache provides perhaps the earliest formula for baptism, and clearly states the form as “in the name of the Father…” and the matter as “water.” In my understanding, now greatly suspect, a Christian even without the faculty of speech can perform a valid baptism, by making the sign of the Cross and pouring water.
The biblical warrant for Baptism as a sacrament initiated by Christ is of course the great commission, and the form (but not the matter) is clearly stated (cf. Matt. 28:16ff).
Still, now that you’ve provided important information about what the problem actually is, I certainly concede that a real anomaly was introduced into the rite for many children. It certainly does suggest that the priest in question was doing something other that what the church has always done by introducing a far more intense communal element than the tradition has allowed. But is even all that really enough to render all those baptisms illicit or invalid? The question has been asked and answered, and one response is simply to say that Rome has spoken—the matter is finished.
The somewhat arcane theological features of ex opere operato and ex opere operantis can either roil or clarify the problem, which is why I initially avoided them in my hasty discussion in the blogpost. Still, they would tend toward validity of the baptisms performed with anomalous language. Theologically speaking, what then is really the sacramentum tantum? Is it the “I baptize” or the invocation of the Trinity? Just who is the Lord of grace here? God, or rigidity of form?
I think you are right to point out the willy-nilly flavor in all of this. I remain perplexed.
The theologians quoted in the America article (a Jesuit publication) and any of the other AP articles (which are really excellent in their unbiased tone, making sure they do not leave an anti-Catholic impression) all agreed, even those who said they thought they were illicit but not necessarily invalid, they all agreed on the assumption that the church cannot know if they are valid at all and cannot say that they are and have to assume they aren’t. That is the consensus among the sacramental theologians that have been interviewed in the various sources I’ve read. Not one of them said flat out that they were valid.
DeleteYou’re perplexed. Why? I think one possibility is your idiosyncratic intellectual landscape through which you interpret these issues. The Catholicism that emerges is also highly personal and idiosyncratic. Like your whole take on the Immaculate Conception of Mary having nothing to do with a unique and singular grace that no one but her is given.
I’m not perplexed—I’m amused and saddened at once—but I’m not perplexed because this is what theism, Christianity and western religion is all about: it binds the eternal, the infinite and the ineffable to the transitory, the finite and the knowable and in doing so, ruins them both. Here we find entire lives suddenly different, the relationship between the finite and the infinite altered, with a change of a single word. I expect this kind of thing. This is the same church that believes that Jesus Christ, God the Son, can come to look and taste like bread because he gave the church the authority to make this change using particular words in a certain particular way. Why are you perplexed by the belief that a word or a phrase is the difference between grace and nothing?
If you believe in transubstantiation, then...you should be perplexed that you are perplexed. Maybe this whole thing will jolt some people into seeing their religion in sharper relief when they realize what they have been taking for granted is shaken. This might make better Catholics, and that’s all the church can hope for, because it most definitely will have fewer of them.
That's as good a summary of points surrounding this sad episode as any. We see the matter somewhat similarly, though from differing perspectives.
ReplyDeleteThere is probably nothing really perplexing in the final disposition of Rome. It's simply disheartening, unimaginative, and will have an impact across the sacramental life of the Church. In this instance, your critique is very powerful: in this instance it really does appear that the Church has bound "the eternal, the infinite and the ineffable to the transitory, the finite and the knowable." Well said.
Though you're not speaking of the binding and loosing charism of the Church here, I think it raises the question of how that charism functions in the living Church.
Something's just not right about all this; there appears to be a dearth of justice at work, indeed a dearth of love, of charity. The solution is a prosaic response to the very life of grace.
A marginal 1st-century religious figure executed by Rome is the reason and summit of creation and divine self-expression and only through this marginal figure is human existence and creation transformed and perfected—but a single word determining the validity of a sacrament is prosaic?
DeleteFor instance, what is the difference between a Catholic who has received the consecrated host, the real presence of Jesus Christ, and those who thought that is what they received, but only received a wafer of bread because they attended a sham liturgy by a man who thought he was a priest?
DeleteMany Catholics went to these sham liturgies by sham priests for years. But what difference did it make in their lives? Were they less joyous than Catholics receiving the real thing? Were they less wise? Were they less compassionate? Less forgiving? Just what does the real presence of Jesus Christ actually do that would be impossible without it? Is there any discernable difference at all?
There must be a difference. There has to be a difference if the sacraments are to mean anything to the person receiving them. Not receiving them must mean something. Just like the absence of a miracle must mean something if miracles are to have any meaning at all.