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Joe's avatar

Wow! With Ed's incredible knowledge of admiralty law, and with J.D. being an actual real-life admiral, maybe you guys should have named your site "The Anchor" instead of "The Pillar"!

Great reading this week. Keep up the good work, and God bless!

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DJ's avatar

Much respect to The Pillar for paying serious attention to the issues raised about pronoun usage in the sacrament of baptism, and the implications thereof. While Bishop McElroy's response left you wanting more, I think he chose the most prudent path he possibly could. I am still searching for answers to the key question this raises for me regarding the history of the church. Because if what Bishop McElroy said is not true, or overly simplistic, it seems to me the church has a giant problem on its hands. If we cannot count on "the bounty of God's grace," then it is probably that the sacramental chain is broken all over the place by invalid baptisms that would mean invalid ordinations that would mean invalid sacraments conferred on others (including subsequent ordinations), all throughout the history of the church. The CDF's mandate that people must be rebaptized with the correct formula is difficult enough for those who are still alive. What about a bishop who was baptized incorrectly 400 years ago, thus (unless I am happily mistaken) invalidating all of the subsequent sacraments that bishop received, including ordination, and furthermore then invalidating all the sacraments that bishop conferred. That's a lot of invalid communion, baptism, ordination, etc. If we say today that people must be rebaptized, it's no good saying "don't worry about it" about the past. So — does anybody have an answer for this?

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