Faced with ever-more harrowing revelations of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergymen, Belgians are turning in record numbers to apostasy ”” formally breaking with their religion through a process of “de-baptism.”
“It has increased enormously since the cases of child abuse. It keeps going up,” said Bjorn Siffer, deputy director of Flemish Humanist-Secular Society. “We know from the bishops’ secretaries that they can’t cope with all the requests they are getting for de-baptism.”
I’m very dubious that the church would actually mark anyone as not having been baptized.
I certainly would go to the Flemish Humanist-Secular Society for accurate information on the state of the Catholic Church in Belgian and the number of people apostizing from her.
There is no doubt in my mind that allies of Lucifer will always be highly placed in the Catholic Church. We are seeing the outfall from this. The damage evil men did to the innocent was not just the result of sinful men acting upon corrupt lusts. It was the result of spiritual battle being waged within the Church.
This defense against this battle was weakened by the likes of Belgian Cardinal Daneels (sp) who encouraged abandoment of orthodox teachings. A Cardinal who was the darling of the world for his views.
I believe though that seeing so many of the wounded on the battle field has given many a very needed trumpet call. With the Cross before us we need fear no temporal or spiritual foe. But if we leave the Cross behind we will be bested.
Thank goodnees none of these sorts of things go on in the Episcopal Church. I would be embarrassed if someone had been hurt, led astray or taken advantage of by an Episcopal bishop, priest or lay leader. We continue to grow by leaps and bounds because of our on-going committment to Biblical orthodoxy and traditional sexual morality.
On a factual note, I don’t quite understand exactly what the humanists think is happening. You cannot, of course, reverse baptism. I have sometimes had Jehovah’s Witnesses write (usually angrily) asking that they be removed from the baptism register. I have replied (courteously) that I cannot do that, but that I can put a note in the baptism register signifying that they have been requested no longer to be considered Catholic. In some countries like Germany, there is a church tax paid by both Protestants and Catholics through the state, and this kind of request removes you from the church registers and from the right to its ministrations, as well as relieving you of the tax burden. I did not think there was a church tax in Belgium and would be interested to hear from those who know the situation there.
On a broader note, the article is depressing. I wonder about the wider cultural context. In his book Icons Rowan Williams says that we are more sensitive than any previous generation to protecting the innocence of childhood precisely because we are subconsciously aware of how our commercial culture has done so much to erode childhood innocence.
So the Belgians are going to save themselves from the Church. Now who will save the Belgians, dying out as they are as a people, soon to leave behind a picturesque land of crumbling, stately buildings people by Muslims.
Paula – you are very correct about the source of this.
In the early Church, no renunciation of one’s baptism was accepted as valid, ever (since it’s indelible), except for a single exception: if a person went through the Mithraic Taurobolium in that case only was the person considered ‘de-baptized’. I have that from the lips of the late Dr. Massy Hamilton Shepherd himself.
They must think baptism does something–makes an organic change of some sort–in a person to believe it’s necessary to undo it!
Dear Senior Priest,
With all due respect to the late Rev. Dr. Shepherd, you will have a hard time finding that observation backed up in ecclesiastical legislation, available here:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.html
considering especially here Apostolic Canon 47. Apostates who were once baptized, (of any form of apostasy) are not received back, (if they are received back), by a second baptism: no exceptions. I wonder if he was referring to a notion that might have been current in certain times and places, that certain apostates were not eligible for repentance, and reception back into the Church.
Fr Yousuf Rassam
Obviously MHS was referring to the pre-Conciliar period Abouna. As we both know, the Mithraic religion was pretty much gone by the time of the Seven Councils. As one of the then preeminent Patristics scholars, I prefer Shepherd’s judgement to my own wading through the Apostolic, Nicene, and Post Nicene Fathers, all of which volumes I own in the hardbound codex version. 🙂
9, I really need to read that some day. 🙂
The late Dr. Massy Hamilton Shepherd, of blessed memory– I was fortunate to attend his lectures at CDSP—whose Commentaries of the BCP I collect like some folks collect postage stamps—I believe was considered a great liturgical scholar by the Romans as well, and was highly visible at Vatican II, and other high level gatherings…I would trust his authority. However, it sounds as if you are talking of various periods of the Earth’s formation, or dinosaurs….So, when exactly was “de” baptism accepted as legit? I suppose if you can “de” priest in Rome, you can “de” anything, other than “de” mand justice for the abused…
Oh tut tut tut, David Keller, ha ha ha ha ha. Larry
Dear Senior Priest,
It is difficult to refer to your hardbound set online!
The “Apostolic Canons” like “The Apostles Creed” does refer to pre-nicean arrangements. Canon 47 is one of the foundational texts for the un-repeatability of baptism, properly performed. It also assumes a negative stance towards heretical baptisms, a vexed question, then as now:
“Let a bishop or presbyter who shall baptize again one who has rightly received baptism, or who shall not baptize one who has been polluted by the ungodly, be deposed, as despising the cross and death of the Lord, and not making a distinction between the true priests and the false.”
I have not written to impugn Dr Shepherd as a scholar, but to point out that whatever he was referring to, and it is difficult to know just what he was referring to by way of anecdote, it did not mean that the baptism was so effaced as to render the person involved eligible for re-baptism. If that was what he referred to, it must be seen as highly unusual. I recall reading that on at least one occasion in antiquity, a bishop (was it a pope?) signed an anathema using the Precious Blood from the Chalice rather than ink! Not common, and certainly not “precedent”.
I still suspect it was a reference that some considered those who had defiled their Christian baptism by the taurobolium were inelligible for repentance.
Fr Yousuf
Pre-Conciliar canons, subsequently adopted by the whole Church. are not an exhaustive record of the Church’s life by any means.
Now, this IS an enjoyable thread. Thank you all for the insights and the discussion.