{"id":57641,"date":"2022-02-17T11:15:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=57641"},"modified":"2022-02-17T11:15:38","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:15:38","slug":"the-inquisitions-here-and-its-here-to-staaaaay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/02\/17\/the-inquisitions-here-and-its-here-to-staaaaay\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inquisition’s here and it’s here … to … staaaaay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

(Re-upping last night\u2019s fundraising post here for morning readers<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Inquisition is back in the news.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t call themselves that anymore, of course \u2014 centuries of error and terror made a name change necessary for the most infamous organization in Catholicism. So the Inquisition rebranded as the \u201cCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.\u201d It\u2019s still the same organization, same office, same address. And it still plays the same role it always has, defending \u201ccorrect\u201d doctrine from error by punishing error.<\/p>\n

\"\"
New name. Same nonsense.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So it\u2019s never good news when the Inquisition \u2014 sorry, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith \u2014 is in the news. Despite the name-change, it\u2019s still the same cruel clown-show it has always been, trampling on orthopraxy in the name of defending orthodoxy, punishing theoretical error by trumpeting errors of its own. Same as it ever was.<\/p>\n

The C of the D of the F is once again spreading cruel chaos in the name of defending doctrine. And it is, as ever, wrong about doctrine. Here\u2019s the latest story: \u201cAn Arizona priest used one wrong word in baptisms for decades. They\u2019re all invalid<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Catholic priest in Arizona has resigned after he was found to have performed baptisms incorrectly throughout his career, rendering the rite invalid for thousands of people.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Diocese of Phoenix\u00a0announced on its website\u00a0that it determined after careful study that the Rev. Andres Arango had used the wrong wording in baptisms performed up until June 17, 2021. He had been off by a single word.<\/p>\n

During baptisms in both English and Spanish, Arango used the phrase \u201cwe baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.\u201d He should have said \u201cI baptize,\u201d the diocese explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not the community that baptizes a person and incorporates them into the Church of Christ; rather, it is Christ, and Christ alone, who presides at all sacraments; therefore, it is Christ who baptizes,\u201d it said. \u201cIf you were baptized using the wrong words, that means your baptism is invalid, and you are not baptized.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If this sounds familiar, that\u2019s because the Inquisition has been scurrying around invalidating baptisms (and, therefore, ordinations and marriages too) for this reason for a couple of years now. We discussed this here back in 2020, \u201cReligion is not spell-casting<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of that discussion involves my very Baptist<\/em> objections to the Inquisition\u2019s arrogant foolishness about control of the sacraments. But the problem here is not that Catholics aren\u2019t Baptist. The problem here is that the Inquisition isn\u2019t very good at being Catholic either. Its stance here unsettles some much older teaching about the sacraments that predates the unfortunate creation of the Inquisition itself.<\/p>\n

This is, again, quid-mus-sumit?<\/em> stuff. That\u2019s Latin for \u201cWhat does the mouse eat?\u201d \u2014 a reference to earlier teaching about the sacraments that says intent is more important than formality. This is why, as we noted, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder could not have been accidentally married<\/a> while filming Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula,<\/em> even though \u2014 unlike Fr. Arango in Phoenix \u2014 both actors and the actual priest filmed in that scene all stuck to the exact and correct words of the sacramental liturgy. They were actors reciting their lines and the non-actor priest Coppola brought in to film that scene was aware that he was performing a fictional wedding and not the actual sacrament of marriage. The formula was perfect, but it was neither performed nor received with sacramental intent<\/em>, and Catholic doctrine holds that intent trumps formula.<\/p>\n

The Inquisition agrees with that. They agree that Keanu and Winona could not get accidentally<\/em> married. But they still hold that hundreds of Catholics in the diocese of Phoenix could, in fact, have been accidentally not<\/em> married, despite the sacramental intent they and their priests all brought to their wedding ceremonies and despite all of their weddings having been performed with perfectly correct verbatim recitations of all the proper words.<\/p>\n

Because baptism is the \u201csacrament that grants access to all the others,\u201d a botched baptism could invalidate any subsequent sacraments, including confirmation, marriage and holy orders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this means for you is, if your baptism was invalid and you\u2019ve received other sacraments, you may need to repeat some or all of those sacraments after you are validly baptized as well,\u201d the diocese said.<\/p>\n

Arango \u2014 who first joined St. Gregory Parish in 2015 after decades of religious service in Brazil, California and Arizona \u2014 apologized for the inconvenience his actions had caused and told the community that he resigned as pastor effective Feb. 1.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cInconvenience\u201d is an inadequate word for what the Inquisition asserts are the consequences of Arango\u2019s botched spell-casting. The accidentally un-baptized and therefore accidentally un-married faithful Catholics of Phoenix have, the Inquisition says, been living in sin all these years. In unconfessed mortal<\/em> sin. So, like the thousands of their fellow faithful who\u2019ve been walking around obliviously un-baptized all these years, they\u2019ve wrongly believed themselves to be in a state of grace while they\u2019re actually in a state of damnation.<\/p>\n

If any of these Arizona Catholics have died since the beginning of Arango\u2019s reign of error in 1995, they died unbaptized and in sin. So they\u2019re in Hell now and there\u2019s nothing that God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit can do about that because, after all, Fr. Andres said \u201cwe\u201d instead of \u201cI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, my Baptist impulse is to howl Baptist objections to this absurd spell-casting nonsense. My evangelical instinct is to scream chapter-and-verse objections to the Inquisition\u2019s mangling of the Great Commission and to the unanimous biblical witness that says we<\/em> are charged with baptism \u2014 with an emphatic plural. I feel an urge \u2014 despite everything I\u2019ve written here about clobber verses \u2014 to clobber these arrogant fools with John 4:2. (\u201cit was not Jesus himself, but his disciples who baptized\u201d).<\/p>\n

But set aside all of those Baptist and Protestant objections. The problem here is what the problem has always been with the Inquisition, that it punitively enforces a strained formulation of the very worst of Catholicism while trampling on and disregarding other, greater, more essential aspects of Catholic doctrine. And that it does so, as it always has, in the interest of wielding spiritual power in order to exercise temporal power and control over others.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s no way to defend or ensure correct doctrine. It won\u2019t even allow<\/em> for it.<\/p>\n

The biggest step the Catholic church could take to defend the doctrine of the faith would be to abolish the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Shut it down and salt the earth.<\/p>\n