"your baptism is invalid"


Hey, I don't make the rules...

Phoenix priest resigns after he gave thousands of invalid baptisms
[www.12news.com]

PHOENIX — A Phoenix priest has resigned from his parish after church officials said they discovered he performed thousands of baptisms incorrectly in Arizona and California.

The problem? The priest changed a pronoun in the baptism ceremony that could change the lives of countless Catholics.

Father Andres Arango of Phoenix's St. Gregory Catholic Church said "We baptize you," during the ceremonies.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix, in consultation with the Vatican, determined that Arango should have said, "I baptize you."

"We" represents the community baptizing a person, Olmstead said in a statement to the Diocese.

"'I' represents Christ and Him alone... who presides at all of the sacraments and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes," Olmsted said. "If you were baptized using the wrong words, that means your baptism is invalid, and you are not baptized."


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Now they can join the Jews in eternal hellfires, right, Christians?

for reference

Good grief.

(Deleted a bunch of stuff about how dumb religions can be sometimes.)

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e pluribus unum

Now they can join the Jews in eternal hellfires, right, Christians?*

Well maybe. I suspect they may now become eligible for the long drawn out drip, drip, drip of Purgatory. If on the other hand they can come up with enough cash to buy an indulgence...

* what sort of GPS can be used to find a place that doesn't exist, Apple Maps?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2022 12:22PM by RgrF.

And then there are the LDS folk 'post mortem baptisms..."

Good 'ol John the Baptist's head is spinning on its silver platter...

And you thought the Devil had all the fine print in his contracts.

A ridiculously legalistic and unnecessary PR disaster. It might please a few of the the old hounds, but it will turn off many more people. Can’t the Pope kick some butts here?

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Where is there dignity unless there is also honesty? - Cicero

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. —Wendy Mass

There should be some big lawsuits. I bet the wronged people should have no trouble finding lawyers.

Quote
Dennis S
There should be some big lawsuits. I bet the wronged people should have no trouble finding lawyers.

Oh, suing a religious org for failure to deliver services would just be too awesome.

When my wife and I read this, I pointed out that our Catholic school teaching said that anybody can baptize somebody, particularly in times of extremis. I looked it up at a website that focuses on Catholic issues and they say this:

Who can perform a Catholic baptism?
Anyone can perform a baptism, however this is typically done only in extreme cases in which someone’s life is in danger. The Catholic Church has ordinary ministers for sacraments and those are bishops, priests, and sometimes deacons. An ordinary minister is one who has the authority to perform the sacrament under normal circumstances. The ordinary minister of a sacrament can sometimes delegate this authority to others. For example, a bishop is the ordinary minister for Confirmation, but he can give permission to a priest to do a Confirmation. A priest does not have the authority to do a confirmation without the permission of his bishop. However, priests do have the authority to do baptisms without the permission of the bishop and sometimes delegate the responsibility to a deacon if one is available.

In the Catholic Church today, people are usually baptized as infants by a priest or deacon. There are extreme cases, however, when even an unbaptized person can baptize someone. All that is required is the will to do what the Church does when she baptizes, and to apply the Trinitarian Baptismal formula.

The Trinitarian formula is:

I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

[www.aboutcatholics.com]

We were always taught that priests represent Jesus on earth and so the "I' makes sense from that perspective. But, if anybody can baptize, then I suppose that it must mean that anybody wandering around represents Jesus, as well.

Worrying about a pronoun error seems like a pretty stupid hill that the Catholic church wants to die on.

Aren’t bureaucracies great?

Olmsted is out of the conservative wing of Catholicism, and I have questions about the phrase "in consultation with the Vatican". Wouldn't;t be the first to selectively request a ruling and pick another conservative to give it.

Between the wronged little boys (underwear 1/2 off sale!) and all of these people getting the wrong afterlife sentencing, the church may go broke long before they even have time to sell off all their worldly goods!

(Well, that's hardly likely to happen… ever … right?)

The Devil is in the details.

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I am that Masked Man.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.