Opinion | Baptism scandal points to something very wrong in the Catholic Church

I've been following this story since it was first reported to the press. A Priest utters one wrong word during 100s of baptisms and now the RC Church invalidates the baptisms! Really?!?! God will invalidate 100s of sacraments because of a human error? Me thinks not. Would God create man as an imperfect being and then punish the faithful for one word spoken mistakingly? Again, I think not. This is the perfect example of religion versus faith. Man making rules that don't support the Word as written or intended. Punishing others because a priest in good faith made a minor error in a ritual written by other men., Will Christ void all the other sacraments where an err occurred. I cant believe that. I wont believe that. My prayers to the Priest and those "unbaptised" going through a crisis.

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."What massive malfeasance had taken place? Was it a case of child abuse or corruption? Hardly. At issue was a pronoun malfunction. For more than 20 years — ever since he had been ordained — the Rev. Andres Arango had been saying “We baptize you” instead of “I baptize you” in performing the sacrament of baptism.

This is hardly a world-shattering act. In fact, several priests and congregations had adopted this formulation over the years. But the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose origins date to the Inquisition and which in 2012 scolded U.S. Roman Catholic nuns for their “radical feminist” views, took this language alteration seriously. So seriously that in 2020 it issued a “doctrinal note” finding that priests who altered the text were breaking church law, and that baptisms they had performed were not valid.

This started a domino effect that resulted in Arango’s resignation and continues to take down the faithful. Since baptism is believers’ ticket into the church — with its promise of eternal salvation — and makes them eligible to receive the other sacraments, the only solution the church is sanctioning is for parishioners to go through the ritual again. In some dioceses where the wrong wording was used, people need to get remarried or reordained after they’re rebaptized, since they weren’t Catholic when they received these sacraments the first time.


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Arango, who appears to have been loved by his parishioners, indicated in his letter of apology that he had no idea he was violating church law. He didn’t explain why he altered the baptismal prayer, but it’s likely that’s how he was instructed to say it because at the time, the change in pronouns was not considered to be a serious breach of the rules.

Arango has voluntarily given up his work as a pastor so he can find and ensure that all the people affected by his mistake are rebaptized. That includes not only Catholics in Phoenix but also in California and Brazil where he also served. (According to the Phoenix diocese, Arango remains a priest in good standing.)

The Vatican’s ruling has been controversial since the 2020 decision, and the recent fallout from the Phoenix baptisms has proven critics right.

“Baptismal formulae have changed over centuries,” noted feminist theologian Mary E. Hunt in an email response to my questions. “No one knows what some priests said 500 years ago. But the intention of people to be baptized and to have their children baptized remains fairly constant – to give public expression to their welcome, membership, and responsibility in a faith community. The words are decidedly secondary to the actions of using water, blessing and welcome as visible signs of the grace of belonging.”

In the “restricted view” of the baptismal rite adopted by the Vatican, Hunt added, the “I” represents Jesus himself doing the baptizing, with the priest fulfilling the role of Christ. “Now people think of it as a communal action, hence the ‘We,’” she said of the change in wording.

Of course, that’s exactly what miffed the Vatican’s doctrinal police. The Vatican’s assessment of the pronoun substitution charges that the change was meant “to avoid the idea of a concentration of a sacred power in the priest to the detriment of the parents and the community.”

If I may submit for your information the term Baptism of Desire.
In A.D. 256, Cyprian of Carthage stated of catechumens who are martyred before baptism, “They certainly are not deprived of the sacrament of baptism who are baptized with the most glorious and greatest baptism of blood, concerning which the Lord also said that he had ‘another baptism to be baptized with’ (Luke 12:50)” (Letters 72 [73]:22).
That is taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1259 and 1281
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsFbqk6Fx7U