This came in handy on the Catholic Answers Forums the other day regarding a question about whether water had to be poured over the head in baptism.

Tractatus Canonico-Moralis de Sacramentis by Felix Cappello (Vol. 1, Fourth edition, p. 105) says this:

1 Aqua immediate tangere debet corpus baptizandi. Id ex ipso conceptu et fine ablutionis liquet. Nomine capitis intelligitur frons, vertex, visus.

Invalidus est Baptismus, si, prole nondum in lucem edita, matris corpus abluatur; item, si aqua tangat solum vestes baptizandi; validus, contra, est Baptismus, si aqua effundatur super caput crusta ulcerosa opertum aut sordibus ante lotionem adhuc obductum, quia corpus vere tangitur.

Dubius est Baptismus collatus super secundinam, i.e., super membranam qua usque ad partum infantis corpus involvitur.

Baptismus collatus super crines validus est, quia crines revera ad corpus pertinent ideoque, dum ipsi abluuntur, caput vere proprieque abluitur. Contraria opinio quavis caret solida probabilitate; quare attendenda non est.

2 Aqua super caput effundi debet. Id affirmatur, ut certa omnino sit validitas Baptismi. Probabilissime est validus Baptismus, speculative loquendo, si in alia notabili corporis parte, ex. gr., in pectore, vel scapulis, puer ablatus fuerit. Tamen certum omnino est, Baptismum in casu habendum esse practice ut dubium, et consequenter sub conditione postea repetendum.

My translation:

1 The water should directly touch the body of the person to be baptized. This is proved from the concept and purpose of washing. By the name head is understood the forehead, the crown, it seems.

Baptism is invalid, if, while the child has not yet been drawn into the light [read "born"], the body of the mother is washed; likewise, if the water only touches the clothes of the person to be baptized; Baptism is valid, on the other hand, if the water is poured over the head covered over by scabs or drawn out [read "delivered"] still covered in filth before being washed, because the body is truly touched.

Baptism is doubtful if conferred over the amniotic sac, i.e., over the membrane in which the body of an infant is wrapped up even till birth.

Baptism conferred over the hair is valid, because the hair in fact pertains to the body therefore, when it is washed, the head is truly and properly washed. Whatever opinion there is to the contrary lacks solid probability; therefore it should not be regarded.

2 The water should be poured over the head. This is affirmed, so that there might be the altogether certain validity of Baptism. Baptism is very probably valid, speculatively speaking, if the child is washed on other notable body parts, e.g., on the chest or shoulders. Nevertheless it is altogether certain, that Baptism in that case should be regarded practically as doubtful, and consequently should afterward be repeated under condition.

Nick Winker wrote an hilarious (fictitious) interview with Archbishop Lefebvre in the context of the Church as a software project. It’s very well written. Actually it reminds me of when X.org was formed from XFree86, only kind of backwards.

No, it’s not the latest Harry Potter book, it’s the age-old question posed by devout Catholics to priests and seminarians.

What if a person confesses that he’s poisoned the wine in the chalice before Mass?

Well, I was reading today a certain book by your friend and mine (ICEL translation: “our friend”^*), one Felix Cappello, whom I’ve quoted before and I came across this example. Now, I never did end up mentioning that I did get a copy of some of his books for a very reasonable price (ten dollars per volume). My gamble also paid off, they’re not in French (as the description indicated) but in Latin as I had thought that they would be. Anyway, Volume II, De Poenitentia, was mis-bound such that the tops of many pages were not separated. So, today I finally decided to go through and cut the pages apart in the sections I wanted to read.

From Tractatus Canonico-Moralis de Sacramentis by Felix M. Cappello:

Item quaeritur de sacerdote, qui ex confessione noverit insidias sibi parari, aut venenum esse in vino quo debet Missam celebrare, etc., utrum possit vitare insidias sibi paratas aut Missam omittere.

Lugo ita respondet: << Non est dubium, quando illa actio vel omissio (scil. fugere insidias sibi paratas, vel omittere Missam propter notitiam veneni) non ostenderet aliis notitiam peccati nec ullum damnum poenitenti affert, quod confessionem redderet odiosam ac gravem, tunc utique posse alio praetextu fugere vel Sacrum omittere >>

At quaestio gravior est, an liceat id ipsum si, deficiente alio praetextu, ex fuga vel omissione alii, qui sunt conscii criminis, coniicerent poenitentem esse confessum illud peccatum, ita ut indirecta sigilli revelatio haberetur.

Quidam concedunt, confessarium posse nihilominus fugere vel Missam omittere.

Alii negant, ob indirectam revelationem. Quae sententia, si revera adsit revelatio indirecta, certa omnino est.

My translation:

Likewise one might ask about the priest, who knows from confession that an attack is planned against him, or that there is poison in the wine with which he should celebrate the Mass, etc. whether he can avoid the attack planned against him or omit the Mass.

Lugo responds thus: “There is not a doubt, when that action or omission (namely to flee the attack planned against oneself, or to omit the Mass on account of knowledge of poison) would not show to others knowledge of the sin nor cause some other injury to the penitent, which would render confession hateful and burdensome, that he can certainly, therefore, on another pretext flee or to omit the Sacred.”

But the more serious question is whether it is permitted if, lacking another pretext, those who are conscious of the crime would infer from flight or from the omission of something that the penitent confessed that sin, such that this would be held to be an indirect revelation of the seal.

Some concede that the confessor can nevertheless flee or omit the Mass.

Others deny this, on account of the indirect revelation. This opinion, if in reality indirect revelation is present, is altogether certain.

* The current ICEL translation of “sacrificium meum ac vestrum” (my sacrifice and yours) is “our sacrifice” which does not accurately represent the different modes of offering the sacrifice which the priest and the faithful have. See also, for example, Christ’s repeated references in the Gospel to “my Father and yours” indicating the difference in the type of sonship (e.g., John 20:17).

It’s been a good summer for documents, so far. We’ve had: the pope’s letter to Chinese Catholics, Summorum Pontificum, and Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church.

Of course, the media have gotten things just as confused as they always do about these sorts of things. It seems like we’ve been hearing about “the Latin Mass” and “the Tridentine Rite” for ages now. I hope that people know what is meant by these terms, but we still must be careful to use proper terminology in order to avoid misrepresenting the truth.

For instance, where use is made of the provisions outlined in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, I wonder whether people will begin to refer to “the Latin Mass” (as if the current Missal is not in Latin). Who knows what they would call the ordinary form of the Roman Rite (especially when celebrated in Latin) in such places? “No, not the Latin Mass … the Old Latin Mass … you know what I mean.”

Regarding the document on the Church, there have already been several documents since the Council which have clarified the proper terminology for referring to particular churches not in full communion with the Church or for referring to Christian ecclesial communities. The media, of course, is treating this document as if this is all news that is radically different from what the Church has previously taught.

My good friend Nick Winker recently pointed out to me an article in the St. Louis Review which states:

Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, which already requires the study of the Latin language, will provide seminarians with the liturgical formation required to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass.

This could be interesting. I hope it’s not too confusing to learn two uses of the same Rite.

You may remember how in a previous post I described the practice of spiritually adopting a child in danger of abortion. You may also recall how the first time I began this practice, without realizing it I began on a day that meant I would complete the devotion nine months later–on my own birthday.

Well, God’s Providence is still working because after I completed my previous spiritual adoption, I was about to begin anew with a different child, but for some reason I would often miss days and have to start over. Well, it wasn’t too long before I practically forgot about it.

Last night, though, it suddenly came to me while I was praying that I had been neglecting this practice for a long time and needed to start again. So, I decided that I would begin the practice again seriously last night.

Last night was July 2. Nine months later is April 2–my own birthday. It happened again!

I am firmly convinced that God is trying not only to teach me to pray for those children in danger of abortion but to teach me to have a close relationship with them.

I recently read a petition for the General Intercessions at Mass that asked God for openness to “Church vocations.” Is there such a thing as a non-Church vocation? The only way in which I could see this making sense is if it is speaking of a “Church vocation” vis-a-vis a “secular vocation,” e.g., “married life” as opposed to “carpentry” (although St. Joseph seemed to reconcile these without a problem).

I certainly hope that “Church vocation” was not meant to be synonymous with “priesthood or religious life.”

Many will say that Vatican II brought the idea of the “universal call to holiness.” Of course, the universal call to holiness is not new: it is written on human nature and made explicit by our Lord himself, who said “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The Vatican II Council, however, beautifully re-emphasized against certain errors the dignity of the lay vocation.

There had been and is still a dangerous tendency in the Church to speak of a “vocation” only to the priesthood or religious life. What a pity! It’s as if God only has a plan for certain of his children, and the others belong to a catch-all category of “lay people.” How far from the truth!

There is an unfortunate coincidence from the beginning with the word ‘lay,’ which means in a secular sense “someone who is not an expert,” but it is not used this way by the Church. Lay people must be experts in holiness.

A lay person is someone who fulfills the call of his baptism by sanctifying the temporal order. Christifideles Laici says, “The vocation of the lay faithful to holiness implies that life according to the Spirit expresses itself in a particular way in their involvement in temporal affairs and in their participation in earthly activities” (17).

The laity can help evangelize the world in a way that priests and religious cannot do.

In fact, given that the New Evangelization recognizes that the Church herself is the first object of evangelization, that is, that the Church herself must always grow more faithful to Christ even as she preaches him to others, it might be appropriate to express the complementarity of the priesthood, religious life, and lay state in terms of evangelization. The priesthood exists to support the lay state through: teaching, the sacraments, and shepherding. The religious life provides an example of radically living the Beatitudes. These two vocations evangelize, by all means, but they express in a certain way the eternal order. This is why celibacy is very fitting for the priesthood and religious life: they witness before the Church and the world the reality of Heaven “where they neither marry nor are given in marriage.”

The lay state, on the other hand, can sanctify the temporal order of the world. I imagine that it says something about the difficulty of this task that God gives more people the lay vocation than any other vocation.

There are a few tendencies, which exist today, that undermine the dignity of the lay state. Christifideles Laici points out two, especially: the tendency to be over-involved in “Church work” and the tendency to separate faith and everyday life (CL, 2).

We all see these tendencies crop up in various ways.

For example, I read the other day in a vocations discernment guide, the following statement, “Some [vocations] are more important for the work of the Church, but all lead to personal sanctity.” The work of the Church is sanctity, the “salvation of souls” (Code of Canon Law, 1752).

Another example. I was talking with a priest awhile ago. The subject of the purification of sacred vessels at Mass came up since this was not too long after many parishes had begun to have only priests, deacons, and acolytes purify the vessels after Holy Communion. He explained to me the difficulty in implementing this particular change at his parish, telling me that it hurt people’s feelings because they felt like Rome was telling them that they were not holy enough to touch the vessels.

How sad! I wonder whether the people at that parish are ever told about the purpose of the lay vocation? It’s a tragedy that people think that holiness comes from doing the things that priests do. For priests it does, but not for others. What an insult to the faithful, to let them think that they’re not participating at Mass or that they’re not active in the Church if they don’t perform a specific function like proclaiming the readings or acting as an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.

Especially in certain liturgical matters, such as when extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion are needlessly multiplied–as if this is a way to participate more at Mass–the universal call to holiness is being presented as a “universal call to priestly ministry.”

Redemptionis Sacramentum says:

[12.] On the contrary, it is the right of all of Christ’s faithful that the Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of Holy Mass, should truly be as the Church wishes, according to her stipulations as prescribed in the liturgical books and in the other laws and norms. Likewise, the Catholic people have the right that the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass should be celebrated for them in an integral manner, according to the entire doctrine of the Church’s Magisterium. Finally, it is the Catholic community’s right that the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist should be carried out for it in such a manner that it truly stands out as a sacrament of unity, to the exclusion of all blemishes and actions that might engender divisions and factions in the Church.

Personally, although I do not believe that I have the lay vocation, at this time in my life I am in the lay state, and I find it insulting when lay people are treated as second-class members of the Church, when their rights are trampled on by priests who refuse to celebrate the liturgy according to the liturgical norms. Priests are supposed to support the lay faithful, exercising Christ’s priestly office in the celebration of the liturgy. Is it any wonder that there is such a crisis of family life, then? The vocations of the Church are complementary. There is, indeed, a “vocations crisis,” not only a crisis of vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

God became man.

When we think of the Incarnation, believe it or not, some of us–at least me–have a tendency to minimize it. What I mean is that we treat it as an event that is too localized in both space and time. The Incarnation, of course, is by definition an historical event because we human beings exist in history.

The Incarnation, however, changed everything. When Christ became a man, nothing created could stay the same and especially nothing human. Man’s relationship with God can never be the same as it was before because the perfect relationship between God and man, between the uncreated and the created, between the purely spiritual and the spiritual-material exists in the Person of Christ himself. He is our relationship with God, the perfect Mediator since he is Son of God and Son of man.

Now, we literally see God face-to-face and live. God loves us with a human heart. God was born of a woman in time. God died on the cross to save us.

The material, the contingent, the human is exalted now in dignity. All creation was made for Christ (Colossians 1:16). In the Incarnation, the gift of creation is not removed from him but he is the center of all creation and all history. Even our system of keeping time is measured in relation to this singular event.

God became man to redeem the whole man–body and soul. Christ desires a bodily encounter with each of us. That’s why he established the Church. If Christ had become man and then left man after the Ascension with only the Bible or only an invisible, spiritual Church, then what a pity it would have been. If that had been true, then those who saw Christ while he was on earth would have been the only ones to have a full man-to-man encounter with Christ, the only ones to receive grace from him in a bodily way through his touch or his words.

But not so! Christ gave us the sacraments, matter and actions that bring about grace, the Eucharist–his real bodily Presence, and the Church as his visible presence in the world and the guardian of the sacraments. Matter has been so exalted that it is now a means of grace. The power of the Incarnation continues through the sacraments. Those who were born after the Ascension lack nothing from Christ because he has honored his promise: “I am with you until the end of the age.”

From the Incarnation ripple wonderful effects throughout material creation: the Eucharist chiefly, the other sacraments, the Church, the sacramentals (especially statues, icons, etc.). None of these things were possible before Christ became man, but his Incarnation changed everything for us.

Perhaps you are familiar with this scene from The Little Prince:

“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”

“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”

“I am a fox,” the fox said.

“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”

“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”

“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

“What does that mean–’tame’?”

“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”

“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–’tame’?”

“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–’tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”

“‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”

“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”

“Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

“On another planet?”

“Yes.”

“Are there hunters on that planet?”

“No.”

“Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”

“No.”

“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

“Please–tame me!” he said.

“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”

“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”

The next day the little prince came back.

“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”

“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.

“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:

“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

The point which the story makes about ‘rites’ is interesting to me, but up until recently I’ve fallen into the usual trap we human beings fall into of getting things entirely backwards. You see, I had–like many others and often unconsciously–been thinking of ‘rites’ and as a consequence of the whole spiritual life as an effort by men to put themselves in a relationship with God.

What foolishness of mine!

How could I have been thinking that I was pursuing God when in fact all along he has doggedly and eagerly pursued me? Perhaps the best metaphor for the relationship that God wants to have with us is marriage. Christ is the bridegroom and we are his bride. He loves us and pursues a permanent relationship with us. The relationship between God and man is, of course, summed up and exists perfectly in the Person of Christ himself: two natures, united as closely as possible in him, one Person, our Lord Jesus Christ.

I think it is also possible to express the spiritual life in terms of God’s taming of man. Look at Genesis. We begin before the Fall, in the Garden. Man was domesticated, that is, “at home” with God as God was at home in his soul before he sinned. Once man had sinned, what is the first thing he did? He hid from God: he became for the first time afraid of God with a disordered and servile fear (1 John 4:18). Man was no longer fit for the Garden but had to live “in the wilderness.”

Through the history of the human race and in the history of each individual life, God acts constantly to tame our wild hearts. We must learn slowly to love him and not to be afraid of him. The often repeated exhortation of the angels to man: “Do not be afraid” bears remembering for us. God wants us to love him which requires obedience–being tamed (2 John 1:6). But, again, Christ was perfectly obedient “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

How does God tame us? There are at least two important ways: rites and silence.

The key to avoiding pelagianism regarding rites is to recognize that the rites of the Church are given by God to us. God establishes the rites by which he tames our wild hearts. Just as if I wanted to tame a timid wild animal, I would establish a rite where, for example, I would put out food at the same time each day, God himself has told us what rites we are to follow in worshiping him. This is the liturgy of the Church because the core of the liturgy is revealed by Christ and the Church through the authority given to her by Christ has embellished her public worship in certain ways.

We also may contribute to the rites by which God tames us. The habits of prayer and devotion that are peculiar to us or to some of us can be our way of making ourselves available to God’s work of teaching us to love him. These private devotions are very necessary since they support the liturgy–the rites establised by God.

Besides rites, silence is very necessary. Our hearts are too timid and wild to stay close to God if we do not stay quiet for a long time with him. This process is very slow, but it teaches us not to be afraid of him and to love him. There will be many times where we will sense that he has gotten closer and will try to flee from his presence out of fear only to let him approach us again very carefully.

You seduced me, O Lord, and I let myself be seduced.