Baptism Recertification
Baptism recertification
Baptism recertification
‘For Baptism to be valid the Catholic Church requires that the minister must pour the water and say the words in the ritual. This has not always happened in this parish. This certificate attests that a ceremony took place but is not a guarantee that the Baptism was valid. If the one whose name appears on the certificate is preparing for the reception of other sacraments such as the reconciliation and confirmation reception of first holy communion or wishing to be married in the Catholic Church please show this certificate to the priest involved in the preparation. He will do what is needed to ensure validity of the baptism.’
Peter Kennedy response
This is an excellent example of what the former Scottish Anglican Primate Richard Holloway calls the “theology of anxiety” which the church imposes upon its people, in the name of orthodoxy”.
It is moreover a nonsense to argue that a baptism is invalid – “read ‘does not work” – because the celebrant uses the words “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of Life” instead of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. We can only talk about God in metaphor – that which is unknowable, ineffable is always beyond words.
The Leadership of the Catholic Church in this Archdiocese is complicit in encouraging unnecessary anxiety in the minds of some parents. But not many I would suggest.
As Father Eric Hodgers – a priest in the Melbourne Archdiocese – said only last year: “of course baptisms at St Mary’s are valid. All you have to do is apply the ‘duck test’. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck”.
What Eric Hodgers is pointing out, albeit humorously, is that the INTENTION to baptise is what matters, not the use or non-use of a “magical” formula/metaphor.
The Catholic Church under its current leadership is rapidly descending into farce.
Where are the voices of sanity?
28/01/2010 at 8:22 am Permalink
One only has to look at how the numbers swell at local parishes when people are wanting to jump through the hoops to enrol their kids at posh private schools to see what a farce the whole thing is.
I had a friend who had his kids baptized in the Uniting Church. He was non-churched. And then when heh was trying to break the barrier of getting into a local catholic primary school as a non-catholic, fronted up to a catholic church and had the kids baptized pretending they were Roman Catholic. I mean please what a joke.
28/01/2010 at 8:39 am Permalink
Why would any member of this community care a toss about something written on a piece of paper issued by the Catholic church, an organisation which they have left, if they ever belonged to it, and for which they express their contempt at every turn. If you are happy with a Baptism according to the rites of Terry and Peter then fine, no problem. If any member of the community has a concern (however illogically) that a Baptism may not have been according to the rites of the Catholic church, then there is a simple remedy available. Again, no problem.
28/01/2010 at 9:05 am Permalink
I recently left a comment on the website re a fantastic homily from Fr. Terry about the Original blessing rather than Original sin. I came home from holidays to find a lovely calendar had been sent to me from your Micah Projects. Thank you so much. It hangs proudly at my work desk. I will get therE to your place of worship one day for a visit for sure. As for the letter re the authenitcity of baptism held in your church. I laughed at loud at the comment about the duck. A sense of humour is what we all need. We. who are benefiting from the changes this amazing universe if sending our way, know that the triviality of this arguement is exactly that – trivial and of no consequence what so ever.
Keep smiling. It is the only way. Quote for the week from me to you: “Never doubt that a small group of throughtful, committd citizens can change the world. Indeed its the only thing that ever does”. ( Margaret Mead),
P.S. I AM SO EXCITED – I happen to see that the book launch to be held in Glebe on the 23 Feb coincides with my working down there that very day. I will be going a buying a book.
Love and blessings Carmel Hanlon ( Fassifern Lake Macquarie NSW)
02/02/2010 at 7:20 pm Permalink
I have heard from a USA source that some baptisms may have appeared to contain soup please comment. Moreover it was soup of a thick consistency that did not flow across the scalp and forehead of the baby’s in question. Ott does not contain the word soup or it’s Latin equivalent in the Index. I am perplexed.
03/02/2010 at 8:15 am Permalink
I understand this criticism came from a Fr Robert Lyons of East Texas. His position on these baptisms is one of doubt. Nuff said.
04/02/2010 at 4:10 pm Permalink
Note to Papa. Soup or snake oil, the essential problem remains that Terry’s definition of Baptism is different to the church’s. Compare his article (recently on this website) with any Catechism. Chalk and cheese. The choice for anyone from this community wanting Baptism is quite simple. If your idea of Baptism is the same as Terry’s, don’t kid yourself that you are getting the genuine Catholic article. If your idea of Baptism is the same as the church’s, then don’t let Terry or Peter anywhere near your baptismal font.
04/02/2010 at 10:04 pm Permalink
SMX call to mind the scene from that John Hurt movie version of 1984 and how everyone was conditioned to shout at the contrived enemy once they came on the TV screens. Every day, Terry and Peter look deeply into their navels, drag out the lint and turn it into a straw man named the Catholic church so that SMX people can howl it down. If you’ve never been freer why do you protesteth so much? If you are no longer a part of it, why do you want to control how they run their own show? As they say back in England ‘you want the penny and the bun’. Get on with your own gig which has its own fruits to offer and don’t look back in anger.
07/02/2010 at 12:05 pm Permalink
I am reminded of a story told by physicist Richard Feynmann about his youth. He was arguing to his friend that thinking was just talking to yourself. His friend asked him to think of an engine crankshaft and then asked; “what words were you thinking?” Argument lost!
Words reflect reality, they do not create it …oh..except in the church:)
07/02/2010 at 9:23 pm Permalink
Feynman might have been a good scientist, but would you have gone to him for spiritual advice? Seriously though, Owen Ronalds, I agree words should reflect reality. The trouble here is that we are dealing with two different realities. The reality of father Terry’s baptism seems to be something like a kind of cool little initiation ceremony. On the other hand, you have the reality of the ‘one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins’. Does anyone remember, in the dim, distant days, standing and declaring their Creed?
11/02/2010 at 4:06 pm Permalink
“Baptism for the forgiveness of sins?” Have you ever looked into an infant’s eyes? I have always found love reflected there and a thirst for communication with another. .
Forgiveness of sins may have made sense with adult baptism as we have all, yes each and every one of us, done some things which were not exactly honest or loving but a child is so open, so willing to listen, so desirous of communicating with others and so full of enthusiasm for life and love.
Isn’t it a pity we so often squash such openness and love.
11/02/2010 at 6:41 pm Permalink
How sad is all of this!
All of this talk about “validity” of sacraments makes a couple of assumptions.
The first is that God cannot act unless we get it right . . . or to put a fine a point on it . . . God is limited by the way in which things are done. Question: can God be limited?
One has to ask who is that baptises, celebrates the Eucharist, or ordains to holy orders? It is said to be Christ himself and the Holy Spirit, acting through a human agent, usually a male, ordained person. Although it is said that anyone can be an agent for baptism . . . even a Jewish doctor.
Do we have to ask questions like . . . were the correct words spoken, in the correct order, and were the correct manual acts (blessings etc) performed? Now it is one thing to set out a normal usage for this as the Church does. It is God (note: God, not a bishop or priest or other human being) who does baptising, presiding, or ordaining). If this imbroglio is correct, then we then finish up by saying that God, the creator of the universe, is limited by whether we do something correctly or incorrectly. What we are saying is that God cannot be generous because a mistake is made (and the question of whether a mistake is a mistake can be debated. This really gets down to claiming that God can only act within OUR rules. Excuse me . . . who set the whole thing up first . . . I think we have the whole thing in reverse!
The second assumption is that in certain situations such as the disputed baptisms which are the subjects of the articles above, the troglodytes from the church are saying that God is actually choosing not to act. What those who maintain the baptisms referred to above are invalid are really saying is that God has made a deliberate choice here. God has decided that this child/person will not be baptised because somebody spoke some incorrect words, or performed a manual act in a less than perfect way. To those who maintain this, I would ask, “Just how petty is your God?” This seems to be a little power game played by human beings . . . not much different from the kindergarten games some of us played at school to exclude others such as . . . “you can’t come to my place to play because you don’t wear the right coloured socks, or because you don’t wave the right way, or whatever, so nur!”
The consequences of this kind of thinking is in fact, a redefinition of God. If the creator is, as we were all taught, omnipotent, omniscient, and all good, then it is not possible for God to be petty and unloving. And the legalistic being who rejects people on technical grounds, is not the God whom Jesus redefined from the jealous, tribal God we read about in the old Testament.
One final point: St Augustine of Hippo made the point that it is possible for somebody who was not able to have the sacrament of baptism physically administered to their body, to receive what he called “Baptism by desire” . . . unless St Augustine has been discredited in recent times, and is no longer regarded as one of the fathers of the Church, (and even if the dreadful scenario painted by the Church of children not belonging applies, and I don’t for one minute think it does), why would not St Augustine’s definition of baptism by desire not apply here?
Or perhaps it’s just another little power game?
14/02/2010 at 10:02 pm Permalink
What large misunderstandings might have been forestalled by even a small effort to understand elementary Catholic teaching.
No one is saying that a baby could be personally responsible for any wrongdoing. ‘Sins’, in context, refers to wrongdoing before Baptism (irrelevant in the case of a baby) together with the effects of Original Sin. My apologies to Terry for mentioning this latter Catholic belief which he finds so odious.
Can God be limited? I guess so, if He chooses to be. Catholics place a lot of emphasis on the biblical passages referring to ‘binding on Earth hence binding in Heaven’, etc.
St Augustine. Isn’t it fascinating that he is a power-hungry, misogynist liar (paraphrasing Terry) when you don’t agree with him, but a reliable Doctor of the Church if his authority happens to be convenient on another point. He would have thought of Baptism of Desire as a desire to enter the Catholic church through Baptism, thwarted by events beyond your control. However, If your ‘desire’ was to have a nice, feel-good, Terry-style naming ceremony, well … that’s very likely what you got.
04/03/2010 at 9:16 am Permalink
Whatsoever you shall bind on earth it shall be bound in Heaven
Years ago I gave some thought to this phrase. i finally decided that we probably had it upside down. If we do not forgive someone then within our hearts and in our consequent actions we keep alive the effects of an action. Let go and let God.. We do the binding.
When we give freedom to someone to work out for themselves an understanding of life that satisfies them at least at this stage in their lives, we open up the possibility that they will come to a deeper and truer understanding of what is. Demanding belief keeps minds and hearts closed (bound).
With my own children I tried to show that you can never prove a point by force and with their agreement gave them a gentle chinese burn till they agreed that 2+2 =5. It did not take them long to realise that at some point they would agree wholeheartedly while still KNOWING that two and two make four. New Testament teaching calls us to be authentic in what we accept.
04/03/2010 at 9:43 am Permalink
Original sin
The world we come into at birth is not a perfect world. We may be unlucky enough to have a dysfunctual famiy. We may have our options limited by poverty. These and many others are the sins of the past that we inherit and that can limit our spiritual growth. They are not however removed at Baptism. By accepting ourselves as we are and in the relationship we have with others we may find the strength to overcome the limitations of our environment and our own physical and mental limitations. What has happened in the past has deep roots and leaves a long trail and in this way we are born into sin – not the sin of Adam and Eve but a world that still suffers from previous generations who failed to express the love Jesus called on us to make the centre point of our lives.
The story of Adam and Eve tells us that in accepting the self awareness that is the essential part of what separates us from the animals we take on the task of discovering for ourselves who we are, where we come from and how we relate to the rest of creation. This is fraught with danger as well as opening up the wonderful discoveries of science that are still transforming the world we live in. This is what we inherited from them – danger yes but above all opportunity to learn to really LOVE – ourselves each other, our God, and the whole of creation.
04/03/2010 at 9:48 pm Permalink
I understand all that.
I understand that a person may come to a point where they no longer accept catholic teaching, may find the church’s way too narrow for them, or may suffer some perceived slight from a church official. I understand that they might find a community outside the church to be more congenial and fulfilling.
What I still don’t understand is why contributors to this site are so persistent in trying to paint the church in the darkest possible light, and to criticise church officials for no more than doing their job. Why should the Bishop and the current parish priest be singled out as two people for whom it is not acceptable that they act in accordance with their beliefs?