Monday, August 18, 2025

It is the 18th of August 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A happy Monday- as is our custom here, you write me emails at danv@1517.org and I try to respond to them on the Monday show. Two notes: in a few weeks, we will have a mailbag week of shows, so I’m taking in as many as I can now. Also, the “why do we/they do that in worship?” The show is on the calendar, so if you’ve got any of those questions, I will take them too.

Got an email from Vianey- she and her husband have sent in many good questions through the years- they are in Katy near Houston, but I believe they are from El Paso… home of the El Paso Chihuahua’s- AAA squad for the Padres and the home of the legendary Guerrero family immortalized in the Mountain Goats song “the legend of Chavo Guerrero”.

Having heard part 1 of the Really Bad Ideas show, she wondered about Donatism (that is, the sacrament depending on the holiness of the priest) rearing its head in a recent story she sent me. A Catholic priest in Arizona resigned after it was discovered he baptized people, saying “We baptize you” instead of “I baptize you,” and the church had to seek out those who had been baptized to tell them that their baptisms were invalid. That’s the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which isn’t Donatism, which says it’s the holiness of the priest or pastor that makes “the thing work”. They have gone the other direction, even, saying it’s not the worthiness or even the recipient that makes the sacrament valid.

The Catholic Church teaches that to have a valid sacrament, the right minister must have the right intention, the right words, the right physical matter, and the right liturgical context.

The conclusion to the news story is: without the right words- even with the right everything else- the sacrament is invalid.

The rubric of “right minister, words, right matter, right liturgical context” might seem extreme but that does help answer questions that range from sincere to absurd, like the question about the surely hypothetical question about a priest breaking into a bakery and blessing all the loaves into Christ’s body so the church had to buy all the loaves etc… etc… no. It’s not magic. In that case, there is no right liturgical context, and we’d all wonder if that priest was right in the head.

So the Catholic Church teaches that the sacrament is valid if there is that quartet of right minister, words, matter, and liturgical context.

The fancy phrase that gets bandied about- and it can be helpful- is ex opere operato, which can be translated “by the performance of the action." The right performance of it makes it valid, not the worthiness of the minister or of the recipient.

On the Protestant side, you could have a spectrum from Lutheran (closest to Catholic) and Anglican to generally Reformed (Calvinists, Presbyterians) and then a general gradation towards the most Radical. If you’re Protestant, you’re somewhere in here.

If the radicals have sacraments, they might call them ordinances, and the emphasis is on the making of a public profession or memorial. This corresponds to baptism as a profession of faith and the Lord’s Supper as done primarily in remembrance.

I could play “fill in all the places in between,” but that would be an overload, I’m afraid. Don’t be shocked, but I have my shows planned out [except mailbag type stuff] through the end of October, and if the Lord doesn’t tarry or I don’t change my mind, I have three shows that tell various reformation stories with an eye towards seeing where everyone comes from. 

Thank you, as always, Vianey for the question and the story, which I have linked in the unofficial rough transcript on the 1517.org site. Here's the story: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080829813/priest-resigns-baptisms.

The Last word for today comes from 1 John 4:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 18th of August 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who has one naughty parishioner who takes too many pastries on Sunday morning- a case of Donut-ism he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose team could lose 156 games, but beat the Dodgers all 6 times and I’m good… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.