They have to be baptized again and are considered among the "non baptized" group according to http://www.canonlaw.info/blog.html
Oh no! Not Ecclesia supplet again! Actually, Mark, that notion does not help here. See my post http://www.canonlaw.info/2007/02...-notion-
of.html
Fr. Hoffman reformed his thoughts on this one, btw, most excellently a little later on.
Ahh, the Job Description sign of the Cross rears it's head again.
Mark:
Unfortunately, "Ecclesia supplet" does not apply in the case of invalid baptisms, or most other invalid administration of sacraments.
If the unfortunate person who was invalidly baptized has a real faith in Christ and is unaware that his baptism was invalid, I would imagine he would be covered under "baptism of desire". But that person has not, in fact received the Sacrament of Baptism.
Those wifty priests have really done a horrific thing by treating the sacrament of baptism as an outlet for their creativity. I shudder at the thought of the judgment that might await them.
'Its' is the possessive pronoun. 'It's' is a contraction of 'it is.'
I wonnder how many of us since the 1970s have not really been baptised? Moreover, since most of us were too young to remember it, it presents a certain "Donatistic" dilemna... Do we ask to be baptised again, implicitly denying the validity of our baptism? Or do we trust that our baptisms were in fact valid, ignoring the possibilities that (a) we are not actually saved, and (b) we commit sacrilege by receiving the other sacraments?
Kozaburo, if you really are that worried about it, ask your mother or father if Father, Son and Holy Ghost - or whatever - was said. In the so-called bad old days, a malicious priest might have pronounced a solemn curse in Latin to his penitents rather than absolution, and no one would be the wiser. You can't go around worrying about your salvation if in good faith you received a "sacrament" where the priest failed to say the "magic words" correctly - life's too short. Nor can you worry about sacrilege, because sacrilege implies intent.
As far as CDF - hooray, it is about time that this was authoritatively said.
Kozaburo, this situation has in fact arisen in the past.
If you have real doubt that the right formula was used -- or for any other reason there is real doubt about whether you are baptized -- you need a conditional baptism.
Note that the question explicitly says that those who were baptized in the wrong formula must be baptized absolutely, not conditionally, but those where there is doubt would require a conditional baptism.
Patrick Rothwell, they are not "magic words" but rather the words and instructions that Christ himself gave us.
Mary is correct. Those who have real doubt should seek to be conditionally baptized.
I heard a npr story about a young girl who was dying, and how a chaplain in the hospital baptized the dying girl and her twin sister. It was lovely until she described how she baptized them with the abovementioned invalid formula.
Blech!
Re: curse
Oh, please. Lay people in the depths of the Middle Ages knew the baptismal formula and the formula of absolution in Latin, even if they didn't know how to order Chardonnay in it. And they knew what the formulas meant. So if you want your priest to be pronouncing curses instead of absolution, you'd have to assign him to a village, cut it off from civilization, kill everyone over the age of six, and then have him tell lies about Latin to all the kiddies. But even then you couldn't be sure; some kids are pretty quick about learning words and asking what they mean....
Actually, that sounds like an awesome medieval horror movie. You could call it FATHER OF LIES, or something.
Several years ago, when Francis (now Cardinal) Stafford was archbishop of Denver, a priest of that archdiocese was using an invalid "inclusive" baptismal formula. He was called on it, and a number of children were "re"baptized, with the correct words from Matthew 28. It was an alert grandma of one of said infants who called the archbishop's attention to the problem. God bless her!
And let's not forget the huge issue for RCIA. In some liberal Protestant circles, the invalid, "inclusive" formulas are entrenched. Countless American Protestants have probably been baptized this way. For some reason they don't see it as counter-ecumenical. But when those baptized in such churches since say, 1980 present themselves for full communion with the Catholic Church, we can no longer just assume they were validly baptized.
Drusilla, you are mistaken. There has never been a permanent formula of baptism, as stated by authorities as varied as Ludwig Ott, Thomas Aquinas and occasional combox veteren Frederick Bauerschmidt - even though it is true that the Church rightly does so based on the ordinace of Matt. 28, 19. That means no "magic words." The formulae of the Latin Church and the Greek Church differ slightly. There is some debate whether the apostles or early bishops baptized in the name of "Christ," rather than the Trinity, a debate never quite resolved. Moreover, the earliest Roman formulae of baptism includes the following:
"When each of them to be baptized has gone down into the water, the one baptizing shall lay hands on each of them, asking, "Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?" And the one being baptized shall answer, "I believe." He shall then baptize each of them once, laying his hand upon each of their heads. Then he shall ask, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died, and rose on the third day living from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, the one coming to judge the living and the dead?" When each has answered, "I believe," he shall baptize a second time. Then he shall ask, "Do you believe in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Church and the resurrection of the flesh?" Then each being baptized shall answer, "I believe." And thus let him baptize the third time."
As our friend FCB has said elsewhere, if this formula isn't valid, then all of the other sacraments of the Catholic Church have been pretty much invalidated. Yet, Cardinal Levada is correct to declare the gender neutral forms to be invalid. All sacraments are signs. When a person baptizes in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, what is being signaled here? Does the sign correspond to traditional Christian understandings of the Godhead? The answer, of course, is that it does not - one is being baptized into something else - whatever it may mean!
My other larger point about fretting over one's baptism remains. Unless one has well-founded reasons to be concerned that one wasn't baptized according to the norm, there is no reason to start going down that road. For most people, one might as well worry that one's baptismal certificate was forged. Life is too short.
From the Vatican Information Service (VIS) press release, 29 Feb 2008, quoting from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF):
"Variations to the baptismal formula - using NON-BIBLICAL DESIGNATIONS OF THE DIVINE PERSONS [my emphasis]- as considered in this reply, arise from so-called feminist theology", being an attempt "to avoid using the words Father and Son, which are held to be chauvinistc, substituting them with other names. Such variants, however, UNDERMINE FAITH IN THE TRINITY [my emphasis]."
And from the CNS article, quoting Msgr. Antonio Miralles (professor at a Pontifical University in Rome), "The problem with usuing 'creator' and 'redeemer' is not that they do not identify God as male, but they 'subvert faith in the Trinity' because they do not make clear the relationship among the three distinct persons..."
By the way, I've noticed a couple of secular news stories using the term "non-exclusive language" to describe the femininst-language substitutions for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Talk about bias! Let's counter them with the term "non-biblical language" whenever we can.
"But when those baptized in such churches since say, 1980 present themselves for full communion with the Catholic Church, we can no longer just assume they were validly baptized."
I would say the overwhelming majority of liberal Protestants were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But we know some are not, and more and more will have invalid baptisms. The upshot may very well be, some day, that we will be conditionally baptizing certain kinds of Protestant converts again. The ecumenical, social, and political consequences of effectively declaring these churches to be non-Christian are going to be quite profound.
I'm still waiting on a ruling for my formulation of "daddy, junior, and spook."
There was also "the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier" down here in Virginia in a few liberal bastions. Still a no-no. Nice try, Stephen, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. 
Yours in Christ,
Though mildly sacrilegious, Stephen's humorous "daddy, junior, and spook" is actually closer in spirit to the true intent of the trinitarian formula than anything these idiots were doing for the very reasons Mark points out.
Just goes to show, "It's all About Me" cannot produce something that even rises to the level of a joke.
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