The cairo-baptism

COLUMN “LETTER TO THE EDITOR” 

from “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno” of april, 2 1998

Dear Editor,

the letter of mister Enzo Dell’Andro, published in the “Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno” of thursday 26th, march, is the most evident example of catholic (with the small letter “c”) fundamentalism. It is acid, toxic, hysteric, authoritative, sectarian, a sufferer from sex phobia, misogynist, deliberately distorting and theologically defamatory, without subjects. He gives a fundamentalist vision of the same Second Vatican Council ( a “Pentecostal” Council, according to the bright definition of p. Riccardo Lombardi). The Council of the 60 becomes the opposite of itself: a gag-piece that prevents from understanding and treating today’s problems, of the end of the millennium.

In my previous letter I explained the historic and pastoral reasons, which presses for cairo-battesimo (baptism in adult age) instead of child baptism.

With regard to this I want to report the evidence of p. Raniero Cantalamessa, who, during Saturday night TV programme “A Sua immagine” (at His image), of january 10, on the eve of the “baptism of Jesus Christ”, said that : “Only the baptism of adults expresses the intensity of the baptism”. In other words: even if child baptism is a Sacrament, it doesn’t have the sacramental intensity of the other sacraments. Therefore baptism becomes a less important sacrament, like cinderella: the Quasimodo of the famous disney cartoon, the”creature” of the famous novel by Victor Hugo, “The hunchback of Notre Dame”. The anabaptistes, dear Dell’Andro, deny any value to child baptism. This isn’t my position or that of p. Cantalamessa. I am not a chatarist (“pure”), who proclaims the Roman Church impure, indeed diabolic, or founds a new Church. The Church has never been pure, neither at the origin, nor will it ever be, but it will always need to be purified as recently cardinal Angelo Sodano, the state secretary,declared.

Dear Dell’Andro, exactly with your mentality and spirit, with your historic and theological distortions, some cardinals and bishops, resented towards the new, idolaters of patriarchality and middle age, defined Pope John as Antichrist and, with more laical words, as Mason.

The chimerial guilt of the good Pope: he wanted a Council for the updating of the Church.

“Updating”:a word which reveals the high diplomatic ability of that Pope to make the more fundamentalistic and ultraconservative fields of the Church accept the paradigm of modernity and democracy, even if with the due reserves.

Coming back to the subject baptism: the Church uses the Confirmation to confirm the baptism (indeed it is defined as fortification).

Here there is a seriuos theological and pastoral problem, which for its solution needs mental and effective “conversion”. Indeed in the first centuries confirmation was absent: it was baptism that gave the Holy Spirit. The highest spititual conscience of baptism, present at the origin, has been lost. This is a very serious but not irreparable fact.

My proposal? Cairo-baptism should absorb confirmation: let’s go back to the old simplicity. The adult in baptism receives the Holy Spirit. Confirmation is in the adult baptism.

Dell’Andro defines me “Prophet”. So I am forced to say the truth on me: Jesus, The Saviour, personally and directly consacrated me prophet for the Reform of the catholic Church. On condition that “Prophet” is understood in the most rigorous way, not the inactive seer, but the intellectual, lighted by the Spirit and urged by the Spirit to “Talk” in very critical situations (and potentially creative) fot the institution.

In order to devote myself, without obstacles, to the office of the “Word”, I freely left, even if with suffering, the official ecclesiastic enviroment. Renouncing any economic certainty and trusting in God. The MO.CO.VA. (Second Vatican Council Movement) was born from this existential climate, in which the most open catholics recognize themselves.

Thank you mister Dell’Andro for the precise definitions to which you forced me; Sincerely yours

Priest Dr. Franco Ratti

This article is available in Italian too