20 years worth of baptisms invalidated (1 Viewer)

God bless organized religion.
 
My God is a kinder gentler God except when it comes to pronouns. He will smite thee for misuse. And he goes out of his way to make it more difficult. He sets himself up as The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit and then insists that you use pronoun as if he is not all 3.
 
good article on this
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From the beginning of his priesthood in 1995, the Rev. Andres Arango performed the sacred ritual of baptism.

Or so he believed.

For a quarter-century, Father Arango baptized thousands of children and adults in Catholic churches using this phrasing: “We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

It’s his use of the word “we” that is at the heart of the church’s latest crisis of its own making.

The Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has declared that every one of Rev. Arango’s baptisms – through June 17, 2021 – is now null and void because he used the word “we” instead of “I.” Father Arango has resigned.

I say this as a person of faith: My God, the harm we inflict in service to a religion.

My first impulse was to make light of this news. I imagined Jesus the grammarian spending his days editing the texts of religious leaders who dare speak for him. As a practicing Christian – emphasis on practicing – this is a gratifying image as I think of all those right-wing extremists wielding God as a weapon. Every time they use their words to corrupt my faith steeped in teachings of love and inclusion, there’s Jesus at the keyboard: “Delete, delete, delete.”

So much for that.

This is where I ask those who delight in mocking all religious beliefs to try, just this once, to dial back the language of superiority. For most of us, a belief in God seldom has anything to do with unicorns and bearded cloud hoppers. You are free to think God does not exist, but let’s acknowledge that yours is also a belief. We’re all running on a faith.

Someone in Father Arango’s parish, perhaps several there, decided to rat on him. In an attempt to explain this latest infliction of harm on an unsuspecting flock, the Phoenix diocese published an online Q&A.

An excerpt: “It is not the community that baptizes a person and incorporates them into the Church of Christ; rather, it is Christ, and Christ alone, who presides at all sacraments; therefore, it is Christ who baptizes. The Baptismal Formula (the words used in the Rite) has always been guarded for this reason: so it is clear that we receive our baptism through Jesus and not the community.

“If you were baptized using the wrong words, that means your baptism is invalid, and you are not baptized. You will need to be baptized.”

Far down the list, Question #18: “Can I (or my child) continue to receive Communion?”

The diocese’s answer: “Only the baptized may receive the Eucharist.” Added, in boldface: “Please do not take Communion until you have been validly baptized.”.......

 
You know, I probably overreacted to this. If the Church believes this is important for the doctrine, we accept it and move on.

Now, let's get back to the decades of knowingly protecting countless recidivist child molesters, shall we?
 
You know, I probably overreacted to this. If the Church believes this is important for the doctrine, we accept it and move on.

Now, let's get back to the decades of knowingly protecting countless recidivist child molesters, shall we?

Is it more of a problem to be baptized by a child molester or a guy who says "we"? Because I think it should be.
 
On a tangent......I was born Catholic, raised Catholic, and still practice the religion to this day. I've passed on the same to my two kids and hope they follow the faith. But, for some reason, whether its age or something else.....I'm kinda not buying the afterlife thing in my scientific brain. I know this is blasphemy. But I can't help think that after you die, that's it. Anybody else go through this?
 
On a tangent......I was born Catholic, raised Catholic, and still practice the religion to this day. I've passed on the same to my two kids and hope they follow the faith. But, for some reason, whether its age or something else.....I'm kinda not buying the afterlife thing in my scientific brain. I know this is blasphemy. But I can't help think that after you die, that's it. Anybody else go through this?
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed
 
On a tangent......I was born Catholic, raised Catholic, and still practice the religion to this day. I've passed on the same to my two kids and hope they follow the faith. But, for some reason, whether its age or something else.....I'm kinda not buying the afterlife thing in my scientific brain. I know this is blasphemy. But I can't help think that after you die, that's it. Anybody else go through this?
Cradle Catholic here but mostly stopped believing when I was about 22. I don’t see how you get around that the promise of eternal life being a central tenet of all of Christianity given Jesus words in all of the gospels as well as bodily resurrection, on top of that you have Paul mentioning it quite often in his epistles … then you have the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. If you don’t care about the afterlife so much, might want to look into Judaism who have differing views on the subject depending on their flavor and individual perspective.
 
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there are easier ways to get SystemShock to join a thread
Yeah... :hihi:

I read the article with amusement.; humans, their rites, and their belief that the ancient deities from foreign lands spoke their language.

But I think the Catholic church has the solution for their self-created problem... as the article says,

"The issue with using 'We' is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Him alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes,"

Catholics invented the holy trinity, so seems to me Jesus could use either "I" or "we" interchangeably, no?
 
You are free to think God does not exist, but let’s acknowledge that yours is also a belief. We’re all running on a faith

No, we are not, no matter how many times they repeat it.
 

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