Sacraments: Baptism of Fire

When Luci Baines Johnson celebrated her 18th birthday by entering the Roman Catholic Church a fortnight ago, Father James Montgomery capped the ceremony by pouring water on her forehead and saying: “If you have not been baptized, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Luci’s conversion turned out to be a baptism of fire as well as of water. Almost immediately, there were angry murmurs of discontent from Episcopal churchmen—not because Luci had left their church,* but because she had been baptized as a baby according to Episcopal rites. And it is firm teaching of both faiths that baptism is a sacrament that once validly given cannot and should not be repeated.

Angriest of all was California’s Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who was himself baptized and brought up as a Roman Catholic—and was never rebaptized when he became an Episcopalian. Pike denounced the rebaptism as “sacrilegious” and a “direct slap at our church.” The Right Rev. Donald Hallock, Episcopal Bishop of Milwaukee, admitted that he too had a “feeling of disappointment.”

Clear Evidence. Roman Catholic churchmen, who seldom share Pike’s pique, agreed that this time he had a point. There was no question that Luci had been validly baptized at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin when she was five months old. Moreover, the church has always declared that any baptism following the right form, even if performed by an atheist, is good once and for all.

As early as the 3rd century, Pope Stephen I condemned the practice of rebaptizing converted Donatist heretics in North Africa. Despite its attack on Reformation doctrines, the 16th century Council of Trent formally acknowledged the validity of Protestant baptisms. Time and again since then, the Holy Office, the Vatican’s guardian of faith and morals, has ruled that converts should not even be “conditionally” baptized unless there is clear evidence that the form of the first christening was defective.

Just to Make Sure. Nonetheless, many U.S. priests still find it simpler to conditionally baptize converts rather than undertake a lengthy check of how they were originally christened. In defense of his action, Father Montgomery argued: “I did what thousands of other priests would have done.” Luci, who called her rebaptism “a personal matter,” suggested that she had wanted the ceremony, to make sure that she was fulfilling the requirements of her new church. Later, Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle of Washington explained that she had merely followed Montgomery’s advice, “trusting his judgment and guidance.”

Catholic requirements would have been fulfilled by nothing more than a formal profession of faith in the church’s teachings, and Vatican spokesmen were quick to regret the unnecessary christening. Such unwarranted rebaptisms are clearly on the way out. Last month an Ecumenical Commission of Roman Catholic bishops and theologians, at a historic dialogue with Episcopal clergy in Washington, agreed that conditional baptism should be discouraged. If nothing else, the furor over Luci’s rebaptism ought to help the word get around. By spotlighting the fact that “baptism is the one sacrament that unites all Christians,” said Episcopal Dean Francis B. Sayre of the Washington Cathedral, “Luci innocently made a contribution to the ecumenical movement.”

*To which her mother and sister Lynda Bird belong; Daddy, however, is a member of the Disciples of Christ.