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Response to a Dubium
Abstract: Vatican issues warning on baptisms with the wrong words.
On Feb 29, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a terse response to questions (dubia) about the validity of baptisms using alternative formulas. Inquiring minds (whose we don't know) wondered if it was okay to be baptized in the name of "the Creator, and of the Redeemer and of the Sanctifier" or perhaps in the name of "the Creator and of the Liberator and of the Sustainer".
The CDF, with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, declared that no, such baptisms were not valid, and anyone baptized with those formulas must be baptized using the forma absoluta.
If either dubious formula (apparently initiated in North America to avoid referring to the Trinity with masculine names) was used, the person is not yet formally a Christian and any subsequent sacraments the person received also are invalid, said Cardinal Urbano Navarrete in a commentary commissioned by the doctrinal congregation.
"Persons who were baptized or will be baptized in the future with the formulas in question in reality are not baptized," said Cardinal Navarrete. If such people are now adults and want to be baptized, they must receive the instruction prescribed for all preparing for baptism and they should receive baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist during the same Mass, he said. The most serious practical consequences, he said, are likely to be seen in the area of marriage where no sacrament exists if both spouses had been baptized with an invalid formula. Obviously, he added, the sacraments of confirmation and of holy orders also are invalid when conferred on people baptized with an invalid formula.
Another commentator Msgr. Antonio Miralles (a consultant to the CDF and a professor at the Pontifical Holy Cross University in Rome noted that the use of the alternative formulas could have a negative impact on ecumenism, because a common baptism is essential for Christian unity:
"All of us Christians are called to remain solidly faithful to the unity well expressed in the Letter to the Ephesians," which calls for a common profession of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all," he said.
