Vatican Word Games

When you're playing with magic, words become very important. If you don't say "Shazaam!" in just the right manner, the magic won't happen and you'll have to start all over again. It's hard and it's time-consuming so you want to try diligently to get it right the first time.

The Vatican knows all about this as it deals in magic much of the time. The National Catholic Reporter notes that on February 29 of this year the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a declaration which said that baptisms which used "gender-neutral" language were null and void.

Some Christian churches have gone "modern" and have tried to conduct their business in language that people can understand or makes sense. So, they have changed the traditional trinitarian formula from "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" to "In the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer and of the Sanctifier," or "In the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator and of the Sustainer."

Those are no-nos says the Vatican. And if you were baptized with one of those new-fangled formulas, you are not a Christian. But this is where it really gets hairy: If you were baptized with the more contemporary verbiage, and then were married, the marriage is also null and void - "no sacrament [of marriage] exists if both spouses had been baptized with an invalid formula."

Capuchin Fr. Tom Weinandy, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Doctrine, said that "'If you are not validly baptized,' and thus not validly married, 'a person needs to get rebaptized and remarried.'"

You may wonder what is the big deal! Well, "Revising the formula for baptism can 'undermine' faith in the Trinity." The Congregation says you must use the traditional wording for it is an "adequate expression of Trinitarian faith" and by using it one is following the command of Christ. "Approximate formulae are unacceptable."

Sheesh. For one thing, the only place we have this formula is in the Gospel of Matthew, the 19th verse of the 28th and last chapter. Jesus is giving his final commands to the eleven disciples and tells them to "Go forth therefore and make all nations my disciples; baptize men everywhere in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit...."

Secondly, this section of Matthew is widely disputed among New Testament scholars and many are convinced that particular phrase was added long after Jesus had departed the earth for it does not reflect a Jewish understanding of the world, but rather the theology of a well-developed church.

Thirdly, one can't be sure what the original wording was in any of the gospels, for we have no original manuscripts. The earliest manuscripts come many years after the Jesus event, and those show evidence that they have been re-written and reworked many times; passages have been changed; words, phrases, and verses have been both eliminated and occasionally added to the manuscripts.

If you want to be a Roman Catholic, you must follow the rules (or at least some of them). But to consider a sacrament valid or invalid based upon the incantation of exact and proper wording is paganism at its finest.

What's especially sad is that some people are going to have to be rebaptized and maybe even remarried, because the church insists the wrong words (although there's no difference in meaning) were intoned at their ceremonies.

Frankly, I think no sacrament should be considered valid unless the rite is conducted in Latin and the priest is wearing exactly the same kind of robe that Jesus wore. Wait! We don't know what kind of robe Jesus wore! That's right! And we don't know what words were used either, for the particular incident never took place. Indeed, the so-called "Great Commission" was added by the church many years after the Jesus of the gospels had disappeared.