The "formula error on baptism" controversy in the Catholic Church highlights and underscores why there is a disconnect between a large percentage of Catholic faithful and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. This controversy involves that some deacons and priests when baptizing a person into the Catholic Church used the wrong words, the minister is supposed to use the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" while pouring or the like water on the person being baptized. The error made by the minister in the respective cases is he used the word "We baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit"; to reiterate the minister used the words "we" instead of "I". The hierarchy of the Catholic Church ruled that all those baptisms where the wrong word was used are invalid meaning that the person has to be re-baptized to be a legitimate member of the Catholic Church. For one deacon that made this word error he conducted around eight hundred baptisms so all these people need to get rebaptized. It even gets crazier one priest who was wrongly baptized when he was a baby not only had to be rebaptized but he also had to re-receive the sacrament of Holy Orders (reordained a priest) plus all the couple this priest married had to re-receive the sacrament of marriage. It is really silly here because taking this to its logical conclusions the hierarchy of the Catholic Churches viewpoint means that for all the Masses that priest said where he was in a not actually in a baptized state all the communion wafers created during those Masses were not actually the body of Christ and it is even more serious for all the confessions that priest heard during his being in a invalid priestly state were not valid confessions meaning the penitents were not forgiven their sins, if they confessed mortal sins during their confession they still have those mortal sins on their soul. The essence of the problem here is that many of the hierarchy of the Catholic Faith don't know Jesus, to them following Jesus is all about signing onto his Churches dogma and following all his Churches rules. To a large percentage of Catholics that are turned off by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church knowing Jesus is the important thing that is the top priority not all their institutional theology and rules. To these regular people Catholics Jesus is a "good" person. A good person looks at an issue and ask what is this all about? Baptism is about admission of the person into the spiritual church of Jesus Christ where the person admitted then has the graces flowing from God available to him or her. It is not a lawyerlike endeavor where the words hold the importance, the reality of the admission holds the importance. So a good person would make the standard be as long as the person doing the baptizing; one, intended for there to be a baptism, two, took an action which conveyed that intent and third, the prior two factors were reasonable under the circumstances then you have a valid baptism. Furthermore, the orthodoxy zealots behind this harsh Church hierarchy decision probably have this decision not fully meshing with the entirety of the Catholic Churches theology because the Catholic Church recognizes the concept of Baptism of desire which a fair person would clearly have to say lies here because a priest before he becomes a priest spends six years in a seminary before being ordained clearly that type of commitment has to establish a baptism of desire, so therefore the candidate for priesthood meets the baptism requirement for ordination! The orthodoxy zealots screw up a lot of aspects of life of Catholics in the Catholic Church. It used to be widespread in the Catholic Church where parishes had perpetual adoration where parishes had a little Chapel in the parish that was open to the public 24 hrs per day/7 days per week where the eucharist was exposed in a monstrous so people could come in and visit Jesus in the eucharist and thereby receive the spiritual solace and grace from such a visit. Then around fifteen years ago the orthodoxy zealots began their clamoring that this is disrespectful and offensive to Jesus because having the eucharist exposed like this out in public view for this length of time of 24/7 results in long periods of time where no person is present in the Chapel to adore the eucharistic Jesus so it is offensive and disrespectful to the second person God, Jesus Christ. As a result many parishes permanently closed their eucharistic adoration chapel, some parishes only have eucharistic adoration one day a week with limited hours and some parishes have no eucharistic adoration now! These orthodoxy zealots don't really know Jesus or they never would have killed this channel for Jesus to connect and enter into a greater relationship with people. Regular people know that Jesus is a reasonable person that understands that people in a parish have a multitude of responsibilities and so often cannot visit the adoration chapel but Jesus like any good person wouldn't mind waiting for a friend. Many Catholics wonder and fret why membership in the Catholic Church is down and dwindling; one clear reason is that the Catholic Church lets the orthodoxy zealots control everything in the Church!
