Robert Bork converts to Catholicism!greenspun.com : LUSENET : Catholic : One Thread |
A bit of cheery news from the Washington Post:• Republican judicial martyr Robert Bork has converted to Catholicism, according to U.S. News & World Report's Paul Bedard. The foiled Supreme Court nominee, now 76 and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was baptized a Catholic by a conservative priest and Opus Dei member, C. John McCloskey, at the Catholic Information Center chapel on K Street. The former Protestant's sponsors were National Review pundit Kate O'Beirne and United Press International chief John O'Sullivan. "If you get baptized at my age, all of your sins are forgiven. And that's very helpful," Bork said.
I believe he wrote a book entitled "Slouching toward Gomorrah" several years back that was excellent. Now he's a Christian!! Cool.
Gail
P.S. BTW, I just found out recently that "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade converted to Catholocism. Way cool!!!
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), July 24, 2003
Gail,This is wonderful news.
Funny how Roe links these two very diverse individuals! Even more awesome, how Christ links them--and us!
Last I knew, Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) had been "saved" in a fundamentalist denomination.
Where's the report on her conversion to Catholicism?
Pax Christi. <><
-- Anna <>< (flower@youknow.com), July 24, 2003.
Norma McCorvey first found Christ in a non-denominational fundamentalist church, and subsequently came fully to Christ by converting to Catholicism in 1998. She has also become a spokesperson for the national Pro-Life movement, having spoken at a number of pro-life conferences. She testified on the Pro-Life side during hearings in Maine concerning the banning of partial birth abortion.
-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), July 24, 2003.
Here's a link for further articles on Norma McCorveyhttp://www.priestsforlife.org/testimony/normamaster.htm
Gail
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), July 24, 2003.
I'm a little confused on why Robert Bork was baptized? Does anyone know what branch of Protestantism he was before converting? I understood that the Catholic Church accepted baptisms from any Protestant branch that baptized in the name of the Trinity.
-- Glenn (glenn@nospam.com), July 24, 2003.
Gail that is awesome. I sure would like to see THAT in the papers. But never-the-less a VICTORY for Christ! Glenn, what difference does it make?.. the point is she's come into the fullness of the Catholic faith. T
-- Theresa Huether (Rodntee4Jesus@aol.com), July 24, 2003.
On baptism, many protestants don't bother because they are not baptized as infants, and it isn't considered a necessity but only a show of faith or obedience. I was baptized as an adult on entering the Church.
-- Marcia (m@m.com), July 24, 2003.
Here's an interview with Bork. This is soooo cool!US CATHOLIC NEWS The National Catholic Register
Judge Bork Converts to the Catholic Faith by Tim Drake
The would-be Supreme Court Justice has converted to the Catholic faith. July 24, 2003 / Former circuit judge, U.S. solicitor general and 1987 Supreme Court judicial nominee Judge Robert Bork entered the Catholic Church on July 21 at age 76.
A senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, he researches constitutional law, antitrust law and cultural issues. He spoke with Register features correspondent Tim Drake about his conversion and his forthcoming book, Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges.
Was faith important to your family growing up? In which denomination did you grow up?
Up until age 17, I was in Pittsburgh. I have no siblings. My mother was a schoolteacher up until she got married because at that time you couldn’t be married and teach. My father was in charge of purchasing for one area of a large steel company.
Until age 12, I was going to United Presbyterian Church. My mother and father belonged to two different Presbyterian denominations. Our faith wasn’t terribly important growing up. My mother was interested in spiritual matters, but she was somewhat eclectic about it.
What led you to pursue law?
It was either that or journalism. I would have been a journalist by first choice, but I had the wrong idea that you had to get a graduate degree to pursue journalism. I didn’t know any journalists or lawyers.
When I was about to graduate from the University of Chicago I wrote to the Columbia School of Journalism. However, because of the debate between John Dewey and University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins over the nature of education, Columbia wouldn’t accept a degree from the University of Chicago. They told me that if I would first go elsewhere for two years, then they would accept me. In a fit of pique I decided to go to law school and graduated from Chicago School of Law in 1953.
When were you married?
I was married in 1952. My wife died on Dec. 8, 1980. I remarried on Oct. 30, 1982. I was introduced to the Catholic faith through my second wife, Mary Ellen. She had been a nun for 15 years. I didn’t know any priests or nuns. Although I had many Catholic friends, we never discussed religion. I had been to a Catholic Mass a couple of times with friends when I was in my teens and early 20s, but I hadn’t been to any church for years and years until I began going to Sunday Mass with my Mary Ellen.
What sparked your interest in the Catholic Church? After I wrote Slouching Toward Gomorrah the priest at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., Msgr. William Awalt, told me that my views on matters seemed to be very close to those of the Catholic views, which was true. Not being religious, the fact that our views corresponded wasn’t enough to bring me into the Church, so it took me a while before I was ready to enter.
I had a number of conversations with Father C.J. McCloskey. He gave me some readings and he would drop by on his way home and we would talk for an hour to an hour and a half in my office. The one I liked best was Ronald Knox’s The Beliefs of Catholics. I’ve taught classes, but I didn’t feel like being taught a class. I wasn’t eager to be a student. Our time together was informative and highly informal.
Were there any misconceptions that you had to overcome?
When I was between 15 and 16, I was taught that the Catholic Church was highly authoritarian and that the priests had strict control over your thoughts and ideas. By the time it came to convert I had been around the world a while, so I no longer had those ideas. I knew too many Catholics to believe that.
Does it seem to make a difference converting at age 76 rather than when you were younger?
I don’t know that it has any effect. My mother is going to be 105 this fall. I don’t feel old compared to her. I haven’t spoken to her about it yet, but I assume she’ll take it well.
There is an advantage in waiting until you’re 76 to be baptized, because you’re forgiven all of your prior sins. Plus, at that age you’re not likely to commit any really interesting or serious sins.
Was there anything in particular that pulled you toward the Church? I found the evidence of the existence of God highly persuasive, as well as the arguments from design both at the macro level of the universe and the micro level of the cell. I found the evidence of design overwhelming, and also the number of witnesses to the Resurrection compelling. The Resurrection is established as a solid historical fact.
Plus, there was the fact that the Church is the Church that Christ established, and while it’s always in trouble, despite its modern troubles it has stayed more orthodox than almost any church I know of. The mainline Protestant churches are having much more difficulty.
Did your wife play a significant role in your decision?
Yes, although she never proselytized outright. She discussed things with me, but it was more her example than anything else. I don’t know whether it’s her faith or something else, but she is an extraordinarily fine woman. We received a note from Father Richard John Neuhaus saying that now all of the saints could get some rest from Mary Ellen’s importuning.
Where was the ceremony held? Since I decided I wanted only a small group of people present, the ceremony was held at the Catholic Information Center chapel in Washington. There were three priests at the baptism. Msgr. Awalt did the baptism. Father McCloskey gave the homily and Msgr. Peter Vaghi, pastor of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, also participated. I didn’t talk about it to anyone beforehand.
My three children were as surprised about it as anyone. I told the sponsors, Kate O’Beirne and John O’Sullivan, only a couple of weeks before. I don’t know how surprised they were. I never discussed it with them, but they probably expected that I wasn’t far off.
In 1996, you published Slouching Toward Gomorrah. In light of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down Texas’ anti-sodomy law, do you think we are still slouching or are we already there?
Yes, we are slouching toward it if we haven’t passed the city limits already. I’m afraid that the Supreme Court is playing a large role in moving the culture in that direction.
The book is going to be reissued with a new chapter that will discuss the recent Lawrence decision, the affirmative-action cases and the decision regarding computer-simulated pornography.
That is the subject of your forthcoming book, Coercing Virtue, isn’t it?
Yes. It’s a slimmer book based on the Barbara Frum Lecture that I delivered at the University of Toronto. Its theme is that all of the Western world’s judges are taking issues of politics and morality away from legislatures. This can be seen not just in the United States but in Canada, Europe and Israel. It’s now making its appearance in international law.
In the United States we tend to think that what is happening is the result of a couple of bad appointments, but this is an international phenomenon. The cultural war is an international phenomenon and the courts have the power of judicial review to strike down statues or accept them. They have taken one side in the culture war — the side of the intellectual elite, or a term I like, the Olympians. They are those people who think they have a superior attitude in life and that those of us lower down the courts should be coerced into accepting their views.
What do you have planned next?
I’m going to edit a book with the Hoover Institution about courts and their effects on American values. I have five other authors that will be writing chapters. I have also promised to do a book on the freedoms´ paper trail examining the documents leading up to and including the Constitution.
After that I’m free to write what I want. I may write one on liberalism or I may write one on martinis.
Tim Drake is the managing editor of Catholic.net and the author of "There We Stood, Here We Stand: 11 Lutherans Rediscover their Catholic Roots." He writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Reprinted with permission from the National Catholic Register. All rights reserved.
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), July 24, 2003.
God is Good! I hope he writes a book about his conversion. What an intellect this man has!
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), July 24, 2003.
Good news!
-- Withheld 2 (withheld@yahoo.com), July 25, 2003.
Thank you for this contribution Gail. This man is refreshing to read, at age 76 what an inspiration. T
-- Theresa Huether (Rodntee4Jesus@aol.com), July 28, 2003.
Perhaps we will get to hear his testimony on Journey Home!!! I love that show!Have a GREAT DAY!
Gail
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), July 29, 2003.
Since he may follow his mother in living to be over 105, I'd like to see President Bush nominate him for the Supreme Court when the first opening occurs. He'll have 30 solid years of jurisprudence to go.
-- Art (ars@gratia.artis), July 29, 2003.
That would truly be wonderful!
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), July 29, 2003.
It seems that Bork himself is "slouching toward Gomorrah." After all, his current wife entered a convent in 1966 and left later because the Catholic Faith had become a kind of Counterfeit Church, founded in the Hippie Culture of the 1960s.One only has to see these silly things that pass for "Masses" these days: clowns, mariachis, puppets, and all the rest. The "New Theology" is little more than the psychobabble of a "love child." St. Thomas Aquinas must be turning over in his grave -- and Bork should have more intellectual mettle than to fall for it.
There are, fortunately, may Roman Catholic (as opposed to New Order) Masses around, which evidence the heights of culture and religion. I guess Bork just didn't look hard enough. He missed Sodom, but he was trapped by Gomorrah.
-- Mark Norris (mark21128@netscape.net), August 01, 2003.
Oh brother . . . .
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), August 01, 2003.
I have participated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at more than fifteen different parishes in the past year. I haven't seen a single clown. Not a single puppet. And no mariachis - unless that comment was intended as a racial slur aimed at the spirited music which characterizes the Holy Liturgy in the Hispanic Catholic culture.Catholic theology today - as taught by the Magisterium of Holy Mother Church, not as demolished by modernist theologians - is exactly what it always has been - the fullness of revealed Christian truth. Jesus Christ personally guaranteed that it would be so, and the Holy Spirit continues to ensure that His promise is realized.
Yes, there are still a few indult Masses floating around; but anyone whose theology and spirituality are dependent on circumstances permissible only by indult is in a precarious situation indeed, for indults are temporary. The liturgical externals of yesteryear are still allowed, for now, and subject to the strict conditions of the indult, but not for long. Sooner or later its proponents will have to choose between Catholicism - real Catholicism, wherein one submits to the divinely bestowed authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the Holy Magisterium - or something even farther removed from real Catholicism than the nostalgic fantasy in which they are entrapped today.
-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), August 01, 2003.
...but anyone whose theology and spirituality are dependent on circumstances permissible only by indult is in a precarious situation indeed, for indults are temporary.You forgot to mention that they aren't necessary. These people you mention, of which I am one, do not espouse a theology and spirituality that are dependent upon circumstances that are permissible, but theologies and spiritualities that are ancient and are truth, both of which are not "permitted" but are required and necessary.
"The liturgical externals of yesteryear are still allowed, for now, and subject to the strict conditions of the indult, but not for long."
They aren't liturgical externals. They are doctrines and the liturgies that accurately reflect those doctrines. It is the post conciliar Church that is burdened down with endless legalism and having not the spirit, and it is traditional Catholicism that is the romantic Faith having the spirit.
"Sooner or later its proponents will have to choose between Catholicism - real Catholicism, wherein one submits to the divinely bestowed authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the Holy Magisterium - or something even farther removed from real Catholicism than the nostalgic fantasy in which they are entrapped today"
What will you do then? To whom shall you turn?
Get ready to become a traditionalist.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 01, 2003.
"...or something even farther removed from real Catholicism than the nostalgic fantasy in which they are entrapped today."Nostalgic. Yeah, I was born in 1966. I was born into the groove of new Catholicism and later came to an understanding that I have been ripped off royally, and every Saint I read and every document of the Church I look at is proof over and over.
Pardon me if I get more and more pointed. This is complete garbage, and it's a disparagement of the Mass of Trent and authentic orthodoxy. It's modernist propaganda through and through.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 01, 2003.
There is no Mass of Trent. There is only the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The externals of the Tridentine Mass are as different from those of its predecessors as the current Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is different from the outmoded Tridentine format. But each was and is the Mass, pure, entire, and miraculous. No-one who claims otherwise should describe himself as Catholic. To deny the authority of the Church to provide us with the current rite is to deny the same authority which gave us the Tridentine rite. If one is valid, they both must be. If one is invalid, then there is no reason to believe that either of them is valid, or that the Mass of the Last Supper was valid for that matter.
-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), August 01, 2003.
Disparaging the Tridentine Mass would be in the same category as disparaging the Novus Ordo Mass, or the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, or the Anaphora of St. James, or the Mozarabic rite, or ... basically it amounts to attacking the Mass.
However, I do not think Paul's post shows any disrespect to the Mass of Trent. He is simply sharply defending the Pauline Mass against a nasty and slanderous attack. Again, this is simply an attack on the Mass and the Church that authorizes and celebrates it.
-- __ (__@__.__), August 02, 2003.
Blindness.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 02, 2003.
Loaded with lack of knowledge and completely devoid of understanding, and completely uneducated.There is no Mass of Trent.
There is a Mass of Trent.
"There is only the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."
Glad to hear you call it what it is instead of a celebration. It's good to hear this admission.
"The externals of the Tridentine Mass are as different from those of its predecessors as the current Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is different from the outmoded Tridentine format."
Not true.
"No-one who claims otherwise should describe himself as Catholic."
You talking to me? Learn something first.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 02, 2003.
"However, I do not think Paul's post shows any disrespect to the Mass of Trent.""The liturgical externals of yesteryear..."
"...or something even farther removed from real Catholicism than the nostalgic fantasy..."
"...outmoded Tridentine format..."
If I had said anything like this about the Novus Ordo, I would be deemed extra ecclesiam.
Yes it is disparagement of the Mass of Trent, because what Paul calls externals are actually prayers that contain doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. To call them obsolete is a dangerous trajectory towards denying the Faith.
And how have I disparaged the Novus Ordo? I haven't said anything about it; I've just upheld the Mass of Trent.
Apparently if one does this, they can't call themselves Catholic. The hidden implication that I anywhere said that Christ is not present in the Blessed Sacrament in the Novus Ordo is also false.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 02, 2003.
The attack on the Pauline Mass was Mark Norris's post. It deserved a strong response and received one.I agree however that the Tridentine liturgy can never be "outmoded". Neither for example could the ancient canon of St. Hyginius ever be outmoded, which is now Eucharistic Prayer II.
-- __ (__@__.__), August 02, 2003.
Alright. I rarely ever feel angry about these discussion, but Paul's got me ticked off reducing a loyalty to the Mass of Trent down to silly observances of externals. To me it's just a display of a hidden arrogance; somehow Paul's take on things is some sort of etherial higher understanding.I guess for now I'll just have to sock it in; there's no other option. What am I supposed to do, change his mind?
Pope John Paul II:
"Moreover, respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, by a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by the Apostolic See for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962."
I see violation of this locally in this forum, and worldwide in that the bishops think they are holier than the Pope and don't need to do what he says.
This time I really am ticked off. Please quit calling the Catholic Faith anti-Catholic.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 02, 2003.
"Neither for example could the ancient canon of St. Hyginius ever be outmoded, which is now Eucharistic Prayer II."Canon of St. Hippolytus, not Hyginius, sorry.
-- __ (__@__.__), August 02, 2003.
How in the world did a thread on Robert Bork get turned into yet another argument about you-know-what?This is a waste of time, fellas!!
Gail
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), August 02, 2003.
gail, sorry hun but i have to join in too...This time I really am ticked off. Please quit calling the Catholic Faith anti-Catholic.
what is anti catholic about you is not the fact that you go to the tridentine mass, or the fact that you prefer that particular form. both of those PREFERENCES are acceptable as according to the vatican.
what is anti catholic about you, the thing that pumps schismatic blood through your veins, is the fact that you consider the novus ordo mass an abomination to the old rite. these were your words:
I was born into the groove of new Catholicism and later came to an understanding that I have been ripped off royally
This is complete garbage
It's a disparagement of the Mass of Trent and authentic orthodoxy.
It's modernist propaganda through and through.
these points i would like to address. your first statement clearly shows that you think that there is a lacking of Holy Presence in the new mass, or you would not feel ripped off by the rite of mass. how can you say you dont disrespect the new rite, when you call it cheap?
then you go on to call the new mass GARBAGE. how can you claim you are catholic when you call the mass, the celebration of Catholic faith before God, garbage?
as if that werent enough you then deem the mass to be a disparagement of the old mass. what gives YOU the right to declare the whole vatican as wrong? how are you so wise that YOU know what forms of mass constitute a disparagement while the vatican is proclaiming all forms to date as valid (although some outdated).
finally, you claim that the novus ordo is a propaganda movement of modernism through the vatican. just how can you claim that 'your' church leadership is under the influence of a vile movement and still have the gall to call yourself a loyal catholic. you hold the pope as being WRONG. you are no catholic.
-- paul (dontsendmemail@notanaddress.com), August 02, 2003.
I did not say that loyalty to the Mass comes down to a silly observances of externals. I said that loyalty to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass must be based on recognition of the never-changing essence of the Mass, not on personal preferences for the mere externals which distinguishes one historical rite of the Mass from another. What distinguishes the Tridentine form of the Mass from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as celebrated in the Church today - or from the many different forms of the Mass that preceded the Tridentine (and presumably should therefore take precedence over it, by "traditionalist" standards) - is entirely a matter of externals, in spite of the relentless efforts of self-styled "traditionalists" to create the illusion that it is more than that. The Mass is the Mass is the Mass, and rejection of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ because the celebrants are not running up and down the stairs in lace surplices, bowing to everything that moves, is not just ludicrous - it is sacrilegeous.
-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), August 02, 2003.
Gail,I love your responses!
I think that if I posted that the quality of pizza and pasta in Italy had gotten worse, someone here would blame the changes made in Vatican II for the lowering of quality. The pizza's just not as cheesy...those darn neos!
God bless everyone!
Mateo
-- (MattElFeo@netscape.net), August 02, 2003.
So that's the reason for uncheesy pizza!!! LOL!Gail
-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), August 02, 2003.
Nice hatchet job on what I said, paul. So much so it isn't even worth commenting on.Paul tries a little harder:
"The Mass is the Mass is the Mass, and rejection of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ because the celebrants are not running up and down the stairs in lace surplices, bowing to everything that moves, is not just ludicrous - it is sacrilegeous."
...again, inserting a claim that was not there in anything I said, which is that he assumes I reject the Body and Blood of Christ based upon a show of reverence. Clearly Paul, you can do better than to twist my words to mean something that I didn't.
Mateo dodges the issue quite nicely.
*golf clap*
Send me the invoice. =)
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 02, 2003.
Are all of you involved in the charismatic movement?
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 02, 2003.
Nice hatchet job on what I said, paul. So much so it isn't even worth commenting on.honestly emerald, what did i 'hatchet' that you didnt say?
-- paul (dontsendmemail@notanaddress.com), August 02, 2003.
"Mateo dodges the issue quite nicely."OK, if you insist that I comment on the issue, I will:
I'm happy that Robert Bork has converted.
There. I said it.
Enjoy! ;-)
Mateo
PS--My new traditionalist pizza-based theology: sola caseus.
-- (MattElFeo@netscape.net), August 02, 2003.
If you insist, paul.What you've got going on here is that you desperately would like to think I am not a Catholic. In order to come to this conclusion, what you then have to do is attempt to make the facts fit the theory.
Unfortunately, you got it all wrong. Here's how:
"...what is anti catholic about you is..."
Ooops; my bad. That's the conclusion; sorry. Ok, here:
"Your first statement (this one: "I was born into the groove of new Catholicism and later came to an understanding that I have been ripped off royally...") clearly shows that you think that there is a lacking of Holy Presence in the new mass..."
Assuming by Holy Presence you mean the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Novus Ordo Mass, and that I think it isn't there, I'm sorry but I don't think that; never said it, never implied it. You did; you put words in my mouth.
Here's what I meant about being ripped off: the deprivation of, or the obscuring of, key Catholic understandings vital to and directly related the salvation of the individual soul. Understandings about the true gravity of the fallen condition of man; about the real crisis of Original Sin and how we deserve nothing but for the Mercy of God; the awareness that we wage battle against demonic entities; the true necessity of the Sacraments; the littleness and helplessness of man before God; and above all this: the absolute need to reject the ways of this world, and the absolute necessity of penance.
No one can convince me of the opposite of what my years of experience consist of. It might help to know that I once looked down upon traditionalists and made the same sorts of goofy accusations and assumptions about them myself. Funny thing is, this was at a time when I cared more about the ways of the world.
Here's a doozy:
"...then you go on to call the new mass GARBAGE."
Did not. By "garbage" I was refering to Paul's contention that the old liturgy is outdated. I hold to this opinion of what he said because the old liturgy consists of prayers that accurately express Catholic doctrine, which cannot be considered in any respect outmoded. You got this one completely wrong.
"...is the fact that you consider the novus ordo mass an abomination to the old rite".
Did I now? I never said this. The implication is that anything I think is "lessor" about the Novus Ordo is slyly pushed into the arena of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, isn't it... as if to say that I think this Presence is lessor than that Presence? Clearly I would not think this. I think that the liturgy of the Novus Ordo omits key doctrinal understandings; and it does.
Furthermore, I have never, ever said anything close to "the new Mass is an abomination". Others who have said such things have had people willfully misconstrue what they were attempting to saying, but hell, I never even said it in the first place.
See, you want to able to arrive at this conclusion:
"You are no catholic."
...but you completely goofed on everything I said, taking it to means things a world apart from anything I said, putting words in my mouth, and rendering a conclusion which is not only wrong but one which you have not the position or place to render.
Paul does something a bit different:
"The Mass is the Mass is the Mass, and rejection of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ because the celebrants are not running up and down the stairs in lace surplices, bowing to everything that moves, is not just ludicrous - it is sacrilegeous."
He cooks up a hypothetical situation and then condemns it. It fails because it does not express anything I am even remotely familiar with in traditional Catholicism.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 03, 2003.
And yes I'm happy Bork became a Catholic.
-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), August 03, 2003.
I came across this site yesterday and, although the topics I read about seem a bit esoteric and trivial, the thing I read that I have been thinking about all day is the rather dismissive comment Theresa Huether made on 24 July when someone raised the issue of a convert to Roman Catholocism being baptized, though he had formerly been baptized in another Church.I became a Christian twelve years ago through the ministry of an Episcopal priest. The options I was offered for baptism were in the Episcopal Church (by ‘sprinkling’) or in the local Baptist Church, or in the local swimming pool. I opted for the Baptist Church and they graciously accomodated me and the Episcopal priest a few weeks later, when they were holding a service of believers’ baptism. The Baptist minister baptized his people and the priest baptized me.
In the weeks before the baptism, I attended the baptismal preparation classes at the Baptist Church (out of curiosity – the priest himself was preparing me separately). An older woman who wanted to join the Baptist Church was also attending. She had been baptized as an infant and the Baptist Church insisted she should be re-baptized as a believer if she wanted to join. She attended the classes but in the end concluded that it would be wrong to be re-baptized.
At the time, I didn’t really understand the issues at all, but over the last few years I have come to appreciate her dilemma.
The issue that was so peremptorily dismissed by one of your correspondents as being unimportant – rebaptism - is exactly the issue that inhibits me from considering converting to Roman Catholicism.
-- Elizabeth (stpaulprisonministry@yahoo.co.uk), September 10, 2003.
Elizabeth,After reading your post, I am still not quite sure what your issue is - being required to be re-baptized? Or NOT being allowed to be re-baptized? The Catholic Church would NOT require you to be re-baptized after being baptized by an Episcopal priest, or even by a Baptist minister. This is because of the 2,000 year old Christian truth, held by all Christians prior to the 16th century, and still held by the Church Christ founded, that Baptism permanently changes a person, just as being ordained a priest permanently changes a person. It would be meaningless for a priest to be "re-ordained", or for a baptized Christian to be "re-baptized". Once you are ordained, you cannot become "unordained". And once you are validly baptized, you cannot become "unbaptized". Baptism is the spiritual analog to birth. You can only enter physical life once, and you can only enter spiritual life once. Once you do so, you are a baptized person, who is forever spiritually different from an unbaptized person, and nothing can possibly change that.
The difficulty of course arises from the novel 16th century notion that baptism is merely something WE do, as a sign of our faith. That is profoundly inaccurate, as every pre-16th century Christian knew. Baptism is a sacrament of Christ's Church. As such, it is something GOD does TO us, not something WE do for Him. Once He brings about this spiritual change in us, it is DONE. Thereafter, there cannot be any reason or purpose, or in fact any possibility of His doing it again.
The only reasons the Catholic Church would require a convert to be baptized would be: (1) The convert was never previously baptized; (2) It is uncertain whether the convert was previously baptized, in which case he/she would be baptized "conditionally"; or (3) if the previous "baptism" was not carried out in accord with the minimum requirements for valid baptism, namely the use of water, and the Trinitarian formula. Both Episcopalians and Baptists meet these standards, so your baptism would be recognized as valid - and therefore eternal - by the Catholic Church.
So you see, the Catholic position is not that "rebaptism" is "unimportant", but rather that Baptism itself is infinitely more important than is recognized in the Protestant tradition.
-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), September 10, 2003.