[RCL]

When The Word Isn’t

How wretched can they be?
The catholic hierarchy
the tenants of limbo increased
and fired their baptizing priest
for saying one wrong word:
We, not I, baptize. Absurd!


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pr...?ocid=msedgntp

[Matt Q]

Hi Ralph,

According to the article you link to the priest wasn't fired:

When reached by PEOPLE, a spokesperson for the diocese emphasized that Arango "remains a priest in good standing." Arango voluntarily resigned his position as pastor of St. Gregory Parish in order to "spend his full-time ministry helping and healing the people affected by this mistake," they added.

Him resigning so as to right the perceived wrong might might make for a more interesting poem, though, I reckon. Presumably he's going to re-doing the baptisms too.

Matt

[Roger Slater]

I don't think he can redo all of them. There were thousands over a long period of years. Some of the baptisms were of people who already died and must now spend eternity in howling with pain in fiery brimstone because of a pronoun mix-up.

For goodness sake, couldn't they just decide that he was using the royal we? Or that, since he was at least part of the "we", the baptism was valid despite the sloppy language?

It's hard to believe that canon law doesn't give canon lawyers at least a little bit of wiggle room to rise above technicalities that harm thousands of people who did nothing wrong.

Given the ruling, there should be a class action against the priest. If everyone has to re-baptize, think of the money they wasted on caterers and transportation the first time around!

[Allen Tice]

I don’t think baptisms can be “invalidated” by fiat (or lamborghini), especially when performed with the family (we) and church member guests attending. I’m not RCC, so what do I know? But I do think that intention is an important feature, so my thought is that in a rite that can, according to my understanding, even be performed using less than ideal fluids when pure water is unavailable, it will stick as long as one might wish. A spare tire is still a tire; you can even drive on bare wheel rims if you have to. (As to the early Anabaptists, or re-baptisers, what’s the problem?) Again, I guess that desire is pre-eminent in such things; physical events are physical; metaphysical events are, well, metaphysical, and physical correlates are physical.

I did some seminary courses and was practically thrown out of class once or twice—so don’t take my word for anything.

Just saying…

[RCL]

It's a pickle of a puzzle. For all practical purposes, I think he's fired. Yeah, Allen, I was in the back row. Long ago there seemed to be "citizens baptisms" and "citizens last rites," but who gives a rat's ass about the mucky myths that church is now.

[Ann Drysdale]

I was put in mind of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. And Sorrow.
.

[Julie Steiner]

I was put in mind of Matthew 23:24:

24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

And in Luke's version (11:52),

52 “Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.”

[Matt Q]

I imagine how it hard it must be to pass through the eye of a needle after you've swallowed a camel.