Traditional Baptism
Dear brothers and sisters!
Today, the Catholic Church once again opened the baptistery, once again opened the gates of holy baptism for the salvation of souls. Through the cleansing bath, the infants Gregory-Clement-Isaac Rosenblum and Manuela-Bachita Walter were delivered from original sin and accepted into the Catholic Church. Our community, committed to the traditional form of liturgy, is glad that both children are now brought to Christ. Their parents wished that their children were baptized according to the traditional rite, and this request our chaplain, Fr. Augustine Zenzel SDB, happily fulfilled.
Let us briefly describe the main distinguishing features of this rite. The 1960 Rituale Romanum provides for the baptismal order a special exorcism - an important detail, unfortunately, almost absent in the new rite. In both forms of the rite, the parents of the baptized person are asked what they are asking the Church for. However, the answers are strikingly different. In addition, the idea of the parents representing the child’s faith has undergone significant changes.
Joseph Ratzinger observes in The Doctrine of Theological Principles (1982):
“It seems regrettable to me that in the new rite of baptism, instead of this deep petition, where the baptismal candidate asks the Church for faith and, as a gift, eternal life, there is a banal answer - the candidate asks for baptism. Due to the change from fidem to baptismum, the transcendence of the process was excluded from the rite; action becomes only the empirical act of baptism. "
(Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Theologische Prinzipienlehre, Muenchen 1982, 108 Anm. 8)
“In the new Baptismal rite, the idea of representation is poorly expressed, and this is very significant, since parents are no longer allowed to prejudice the faith of the child, but they are called to confess the Creed in remembrance of their own baptism. This changed the meaning of the process with the formulas remaining unchanged: answers, understood as a memory, they are in no way connected with the child’s baptism at the moment. "
(Kardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Theologische Prinzipienlehre, Muenchen 1982, 44 Anm. 13).
Laudetur Jesus Christus!