A Catholic priest in Arizona resigned this week, after performing "invalid" baptisms for over two decades. I'll admit, when I saw the headline, I immediately wondered what this guy had been doing to make the baptisms "invalid"-- using wine instead of water? Dunking dogs, perhaps? Maybe he wasn't actually a priest and it was like Catch Me If You Can, the Sequel.
Nope. What a letdown. According to Newsweek, Father Andres Arango used the wrong pronoun while performing the sacrament. That is, instead of saying, "I baptize you..." he said, "We baptize you...." This man resigned "with a heavy heart" and the Diocese reported that they didn't have an exact number of invalid baptisms performed by Arango, but the estimate is "in the thousands" and that they were going to do all they could to correct the error.
Sigh. Where to start?
OK, first -- Pronouns. I fully agree that pronouns matter. If someone tells me they prefer I use the pronoun "they" when referring to them, I respect and honor that. In fact, as an English major and former English teacher, I land staunchly in the "words are important" camp. Ask anyone who has ever argued with me over the connotations that words carry -- I am a close reader and a close writer. So, "We" versus "I" makes a difference. Hold that thought. We'll come back to it.
Next -- Baptism. It's a big deal. I was raised Protestant, and I decided to be baptized when I was 12 or so. It was a huge deal. I went to one of those megachurches with removable steps that covered an actual pool that was used for baptisms. I wore a white robe with weights sewn along the bottom hem to avoid embarrassing floating issues. I waded into the water with my pastor and experienced "trine immersion," which is just a fancy way of saying I was dunked 3 times. My memory is blanking on whether I went face forward or backward. (That alone should bring my baptism into question, now that I think about it.)
Some churches go to actual bodies of water for baptism. Some just sprinkle some water in a symbolic way. Some -- like the Catholic church -- baptize infants by pouring water over their heads. That's how my three kids were baptized, after I converted to Catholicism.
(By the way, my Protestant baptism "counted" when I converted . . .because Catholics believe "in one baptism," according to the Nicene Creed.)
My children -- and presumably the thousands baptized by former-Father Andres -- were brought to the church by their parents and godparents for their sacramental bath. Unlike me, they had no say in the matter. Infant baptism is actually a promise made by the parents, the church, the families. In my children's baptism, WE came together to promise to raise our children in the faith, to help them grow in their relationship with God.
WE.
There's that word again. In infant baptism, the WE matters more than the I. Yes, there is a priest performing the sacrament, in persona Christe, or in the person of Christ. I don't diminish that at all: the priest takes on the role of Jesus, and that's important and special. But if "we are the body of Christ," then what's "invalid" about a well-intentioned priest saying, "we" instead of "I"?
I could see the church correcting the priest, making sure that he uses the correct wording moving forward, making some sort of statement, explaining the significance of the priest's role in sacraments. WE call these "teachable moments" in education.
But, to call these baptisms "invalid" seems extreme to me. After all, I've been to many, many masses and sacramental celebrations where the priest missed words or skipped whole paragraphs or added his own embellishment to the liturgy. I suppose all of those masses, funerals, weddings, baptisms, and penance services were "invalid," too.
(I kid you not -- one time, I read the words, "For those who love trampolines and other forms of outdoor recreation, we pray to the Lord" during the Prayer of the Faithful at a funeral mass. The priest always personalized the liturgy so as to help the family remember their loved one fondly in the midst of their grief.)
This is where I get so frustrated with the Catholic church. Yes, the tradition matters. But the people matter more. Do "thousands" of people need to be stressing over whether their baptisms were valid right now? Imagine the domino effect here. If you need to be baptized to be confirmed, and your baptism was "invalid," is your confirmation now "invalid" as well? What about the rest of their sacraments? Does a pronoun substitution that is more inclusive pose such a threat to the establishment? Did a priest need to resign over this? Come on.
The hair-splitting legalistic arguments over valid and invalid pronouns aside, here's what really bothers me: Does the church actually think that God is so small and so weak that an unintentional human error would invalidate the Holy Spirit? What kind of God is that? What happened to omnipotence? Are pronouns God's kryptonite? Baptism isn't a magic spell. It's not like that scene when Harry Potter says, "Diagonally" instead of "Diagon Alley" and ends up in the wrong place.
It's this sort of thing that sends people running from the pews. Think about it -- if a priest who gave his life to the service of God can have his work "invalidated" for not being perfect, where's the hope for the rest of us? What happened to forgiveness?
I don't get it. Maybe there is much more to this story, and I don't dare to speculate. But if it's really that this man used "we" instead of "I" in the Rite of Baptism, and that made thousands of baptisms "invalid," and he either had to or felt compelled to resign over it, then I just don't know what to think anymore.
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