My letter is simply to ask about baptisms (infant or otherwise), done outside of the Catholic church. Could you point me to writings that you, or others, have prepared on the topic? My questions are pretty simple…an infant baptism (say, in a Lutheran or Presbyterian church) or an adult baptism (say, in a Baptist church)…are these "valid" baptisms? You have written much about the glorious things that happen in baptism (and I have no argument with what you have written), I am just curious as to your thoughts on how much, or how little of these things occur when the baptism takes place outside of the Catholic Church.
t's quite simple actually. Anyone (even an atheist!) can validly baptize someone. You need three things:
#1 –
Proper Form: "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
#2 –
Proper Matter: Water being poured, sprinkled or immersed.
#3 –
Correct Intention: You must intend to do as the Church does when you are baptizing. A general intention suffices i.e. you don't need to really know what everything means i.e. the baptismal formula above or knowledge of the Trinity.
All of these things must be present at the same time........And you cannot "self-baptize".
The Catholic Church usually will recognize certain denomination's baptisms (I think we recognize 4 or 5 Protestant denominations' baptisms at the current time) if a certificate can be produced showing what words were used, i.e. Anglicans, Orthdox, even Lutherans. Where there is some doubt, the Church performs a "conditional baptism". Since it is a mortal sin and an insult to the Holy Spirit to re-baptize someone, those cases where there is some uncertainty regarding the validity of the baptism, the baptismal ceremony is performed again but a conditional phrase is inserted: "If John has not been baptized, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
John Pacheco
March 6, 2003
