We Baptize You
Hölfgar’s “Thee”
This is old news (about 6 years old to be precise) but, hey, I wanna talk about it now.
And look, yes, I have a chip on my shoulder because I feel I was led down the primrose path and sold a bill of goods when I converted to Catholicism. What was in the box was decidedly not what was on the brochure. So, yeah, some of this is me venting. Sorry. But also, I’m right. What I’m describing is a huge problem that needs to be rectified.
People need to learn what Love is, and what it is ain’t this…
Some decades ago, it was in fashion for some Catholic priests to be a little less than rigorous with the wording in the rubrics than they were supposed to be. Not a lot mind you but, as it turns out, more than enough for it to matter. Specifically, when performing the sacrament of Baptism, they were supposed to say, “I baptize you” but, because they were often standing in a crowd of people and were trying to be nice and communal, they’d often say, without really thinking about it, “We baptize you,” a single pronoun’s worth of difference. Now, most sane people wouldn’t think anything of such a change however, in 2020, under Pope Francis, the Vatican declared that any and all Baptisms performed by the Catholic Church in which the officiating priest used the words “We Baptize You” instead of “I Baptize you” were invalid and, in the Catholic world, invalid means a very specific thing.
It means “doesn’t take.”
It means isn’t real.
Invalid, to a Catholic, means, “Does not work.”
According to official Catholic teaching, all the people baptized using “We” weren’t really baptized. They did not have the stain of their original sin washed away. They were not made new in Christ.
This has knock-on effects.
For one, the most obvious, any of those people that died under the incorrect pronoun cannot be assumed to be in Heaven. They might be, because of God’s mercy, sure, but, whereas, ordinarily, an infant who dies shortly after baptism is presumed to be in Heaven (infants can’t sin mortally), no such presumption can be made of those baptized under “We”. Moreover, since Baptism is the first sacrament one receives, and the one which opens all the other sacraments to you, under Catholic theology all other sacraments these invalidly baptized people received were *also* invalid. Confirmation? Invalid. Eucharist? Not validly received. Marriage? Nope. Sorry. You were never validly married and could easily seek an annulment. Thousands of people who’d grown up in the Catholic Church, devoted their lives to the faith, gone to Mass every Sunday and dutifully received the sacraments, found out, with quite the shock, that they were never even Catholic. Not only were they not in a State of Grace, they never had been and, if they died, they would have, presumably, died in Sin.
Crazy.
Huge mistake.
It gets worse though. A few of those people baptized under “We” had grown up to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders and become priests themselves. But, again, because their baptisms were invalid, so were their orders, meaning, even though they fulfilled the role in their local congregation, officiated over the Mass, heard confessions and baptized infants and performed marriages… all of that was INVALID too. Like, every sacrament they performed as priests simply does not count.
Here…
Lest you think I exaggerate…
Okay so, this is all, in a word, really fucking stupid, and frankly it confirms every criticism any Evangelical ever leveled at the Catholic faith. Rather than set us free from the Mosaic Law, as Saint Paul spoke of often, the Catholic Church has set up a new law which is even more convoluted and more insane. In the whole history of Judaism, for example, I don’t think there’s ever been an instance where someone said “You’re not a real Jew because the Mohel held his tongue wrong when you were circumcised.” Or, “Sorry guys… we’re all going to hell because the Seder chair left out for Elijah was supposed to be mahogany and we accidently used pine.” I mean, okay, they can’t flip a light switch on Saturday and that is a bit bizarre, sure, but at least they aren’t putting people’s eternal souls on the line for the choice of a pronoun… (and, when I say it out loud like that, it’s suddenly no wonder why Catholicism is so prone to falling to the ideology of “Woke”.)
I will say this unequivocally. None of the people who think saying “we” instead of “I” matters that much to God understand what Grace is. Zero people. They know neither the Love nor the heart of God, and I honestly question whether or not they really even understand how to love anyone at all, especially themselves. This may sound harsh, I understand, but truly, think about it, what kind of messed up psyche do you need to have in order to think that God the Father is up there considering people “Not Christian” due to a technicality. Such people do not have a Heavenly Father. They have a Heavenly Lawyer and maybe even worse than that since Lawyers usually have to operate under at least the pretense of the idea of “Reasonable.” They actually have something closer to a Heavenly Hall Monitor, a sneering, vindictive rule maker who is simply itching to catch you in an infraction, be it minor or major. No wonder people have religious trauma. No wonder people constantly tell me they were taught that God hates them. I would be traumatized too. Not only can Catholics not have assurance of their salvation in the normal course of things, as one’s salvation depends on one’s ability to not sin, but even if you somehow prevail against all odds and die without having committed a deadly sin, you could still be on the outs with God because someone once accidentally said the wrong word at a crucial time.
It’s insane.
It’s literally, clinically, insane.
And listen… just how logical is this, really? Okay so, one word, one pronoun, can invalidate an entire religious life, yeah? Okay. So how sure are you, really, that there haven’t been numerous other infractions of just that sort? How sure are you that one never slipped through the cracks? What if Father Hölfgar of 13th century Saxony accidently said Thee instead of Thou when Baptizing an infant who went on to later become a Bishop who then consecrated another Bishop who then consecrated a Pope? Would not then everything downstream of Hölfgar’s “Thee” be invalid too? Like, the whole religion?
Perhaps it is my Baptist upbringing talking but honestly the more you learn about Catholicism the more it reads like a DnD manual, all the various rites, rituals, and artifacts conferring various stat buffs and giving you defensive rolls. “He died before confession, yes, BUT! he perished while wearing the brown scapular! That’s a get out of Hell free card when used in conjunction with a plenary indulgence gained by walking through a Cathedral door on a Tuesday. Do a skill check. How much mana did he have?”
It’s stupid. It’s dumb. It is not the Love of God nor the Gospel of Christ who for Freedom has set us Free. God actually does Love you, and when I say that I mean it in a way that doesn’t require you to twist the definition of “Love” into a pretzel that looks like legalism, disdain, and abuse. I mean actual Love. Like, he cares for you. For you, personally, as a human being, and that he does so way, WAY more than he cares about any rules. I’m talking about actual Love. The kind that is unfailing, never-ending, inexhaustible, and without conditions.
The only barrier that exists is you believing that.
That’s it.
The Gate is Gateless. God is saying over and over again that He loves you and you keep trying to make that mean something other and more complicated than it does because you can’t accept that you are loveable exactly as you are.
In the end, Martin Luther’s challenge to the Church remains undefeated. “If,” said the German, “the Pope has the power to bind and loose, and to forgive sins, why not wake up every morning and forgive all the sins of the whole world, simply out of his mercy? A blanket pardon for all the Earth.”
Ah.
But then what would keep you coming back?
Where’s the pay-to-play model in that?
,,,
Amor vincit omnia,
Yoshi
I can appreciate your frustration with this matter and things like it, but it doesn’t seem to me like you looked into it with too much depth. Your analysis of the effects of this declaration by P Francis make logical sense, but you seem to have abandoned reading church statements just after the declaration, which is why youve made some mistakes.
The church has always held that there is a baptism of desire, which is why catechumens who die before receiving baptism are not condemned to hell. If you are incorrectly baptized (which was almost never accidentally said in a large community as you shoehorn into your article, but by liberal priests who were invalidating their office as the instrument through whom Christ works sacraments), and you do not know you are, then you can assume God’s love and mercy. A priest would need to be re-ordained, yes, but any confessions he heard are not automatically null, which the church has been very clear about. Marriage is another one you mentioned, which shows you understand almost nothing about the Catholic understanding of it, I guess. The priest does not administer the sacrament, but the couple does. The priest is the universal witness, so his lack of correct ordination does not affect the validity of the marriage, nor would it affect baptisms because anyone is technically allowed to baptize someone if it is under the correct form (way it’s said) and intention.
There is a huge difference between the validity of the sacrament and the mercy and Grace of God, and you seem to make the unjustifiable assumption that the Catholic Church focuses on one at the exclusion of the other. I don’t know what happened to you, or which aggrieved priest you were listening to, but that is far from the reality of the Catholic Church, as made obvious if you took the time to dig even a modicum deeper into the subject you’re writing an entire article about.
"it confirms every criticism any Evangelical ever leveled at the Catholic faith." - indeed it does. The legalistic nature of the catholic church's rules led me to quip once "it's Judaism, but for Christians.". And my other favorite, "they took a good religion and added a human government to it, and ruined it".