In ecumenical news: A proposed agreement between the American Catholic bishops and four Reformed “ecclesial communities”, including the mainline Presbyterian Church USA, appears to ignore the Vatican’s concerns about the mode of baptism, according to CatholicCulture.org. (The Catholic participant perhaps best known to readers is Father Thomas Weinandy, a Capuchin, the Reformed Dr. Richard Mouw of Fuller seminary. Here is the Catholic bishops’ press release on the dialogue.)
The Vatican’s difficulty will, I fully realize, appear to be one of those “angels-dancing-on-the-heads-of-pins” questions, but it’s really not, but explaining why not is not so easy and I’m not going to try here. This is more an fyi kind of story.
The Catholic-Reformed dialogue recently produced a statement titled These Living Waters: Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism. The statement declares that:
In order for a baptism to be valid, it must be administered by someone authorized to do so, using water and the Trinitarian formula. Typically, baptism is administered by an ordained minister or priest, within a worship service, using water (either dipping the baptizand into the water or pouring or sprinkling the water on the baptizand), and following the command of Jesus to baptize people of all nations “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).
To this the Catholic signers added that “Baptism must be administered with water and in the name of the Triune God since ‘entry into the life of the Most Holy Trinity through configuration to the Paschal mystery of Christ’ is signified and enacted in the sacrament.”
The difficulty is over the possibility of invalid baptisms performed by sprinkling in which the water does not flow, important as signifying living water. That the Vatican seems to have thought not adequately dealt with in the official report.
For those who are interested, recent “On the Square” articles on ecumenical subjects include the Catholic priest David Poecking’s The Skeleton of Genuine Reconciliation, the Reformed theologian and pastor Peter Leithart’s Priesthood of Believers, and my No Mere Christianity.
November 2nd, 2010 | 7:31 pm
So who sprinkles? Certainly the Latin Church has abandoned this since Vatican II, and the Eastern Churches prefer full immersion.
November 2nd, 2010 | 9:04 pm
My understanding is that the Catholic Church accepts as valid any baptism that is in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (i.e., Trinitarian) and makes use of water. Adult converts from Protestant denominations do not receive Baptism if previously baptized, while they do need to be confirmed, even if confirmed in their previous denomination. Mormons who convert (a rare breed, no doubt), do need to be baptized, since the Mormons do not understand the Trinity the way the Catholic Church does.
November 3rd, 2010 | 9:02 am
In order for a baptism to be valid, it must be administered by someone authorized to do so…
Wait. Really? What happened to this passage from the Catholic Catechism?
1256 …In case of necessity, anyone, even a nonbaptized person, with the required intention, can baptize , by using the Trinitarian baptismal formula. The intention required is to will to do what the church does when she baptizes. …
Am I reading too much into the first statement?
November 3rd, 2010 | 9:37 am
Jack,
In case of necessity someone who uses the Trinitarian formula and intends to do what the Church does when she baptizes is an authorized person. I’m not sure what is meant by necessity but I would assume that it means there is a risk of dying before an ordinary minister of baptism can arrive to administer the sacrament. You would have to ask a cannon lawyer if necessity could include simply having to wait for a very long time before an ordinary minister of baptism could be found.
November 4th, 2010 | 3:12 pm
To Mr. Koehl: Many protestant churches baptize by sprinkling or pouring, since the water is from the “waters above the firmament” that are the entry into heaven. Water from above unites the baptizand with Christ in heaven, who sent down the Spirit from heaven in the first New Creation baptism in Acts 2. Psalm 77:16-18 says that while the Egyptians drowned by submersion, the Israelites were baptized by rain from above. Reformed churches will recognize baptism by submersion as valid though irregular, but only water flowing from above to below: rain, river, sprinkling, etc., is living water. (BTW: being showered upon is immersion, but not submersion. We who sprinkle immerse, but do not submerge.)
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