The same words, another God.

Summary

Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Survey, published in 2008, counted “Mormons (1.7% of the adult population), Jehovah’s Witnesses (0.7%)” within American Christianity⁠.¹ The Catholic Church does not judge a body by its name or its love of Jesus. She asks whether its baptism is the baptism Christ instituted, given “with water and with a formula which clearly indicates that baptism is done in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”⁠,² by a minister who intends “to will to do what the Church does when she baptizes”⁠.³

The take: by that test, Protestant baptism is valid and Latter-day Saint baptism is not. In 2001 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of John Paul II, answered “Negative” to the question whether Latter-day Saint baptism is valid⁠.⁴ The reason was not the water. The words resemble the Catholic formula but name a different God: “The teaching of the Mormons has a completely different matrix”⁠.⁵ Jehovah’s Witnesses, who teach that there is “no Scriptural basis for the Trinity doctrine”⁠,⁶ stand outside the faith the Creed of Nicaea confesses, whatever name they use.

The Catholic test

The Code of Canon Law states that baptism “is validly conferred only by a washing of true water with the proper form of words”⁠.⁷ In the Latin Church the words are: “N., I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”⁠.⁸ In case of necessity anyone may baptize, if “the intention required is to will to do what the Church does when she baptizes, and to apply the Trinitarian baptismal formula”⁠.³

The test is generous. “Baptism by immersion, or by pouring, together with the Trinitarian formula is, of itself, valid,” and “The minister’s insufficient faith concerning baptism never of itself makes baptism invalid”⁠.² But changing the words changes the sacrament. In 2008 the Congregation answered “Negative” for baptisms given “in the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier”⁠.⁹

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

“Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unequivocally affirm themselves to be Christians”⁠.¹⁰ They also state that “Latter-day Saints do not accept the post-New Testament creeds”⁠,¹⁰ and that “each member of the Godhead is a separate being”⁠:¹¹ “The Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bones, and the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit”⁠.¹¹

In a response dated June 5, 2001, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith answered whether their baptism is valid: “Response: Negative”⁠.⁴ John Paul II “approved the present Response” and “ordered it published”⁠.⁴ Luis Ladaria, later prefect of the Congregation, explained the reasons in a commentary it published:

• The matter is not the problem: “On this point there is no problem. Water is used”⁠.⁵
• The words resemble the Catholic formula, “but in reality they are only apparent”⁠.⁵ In Latter-day Saint teaching the Father, Son and Holy Spirit “are not the three persons in which subsists the one Godhead, but three gods who form one divinity”⁠.⁵
• Even Arians, with a false understanding of the Trinity, were judged able to baptize validly⁠.⁵ This case is different: “The teaching of the Mormons has a completely different matrix”⁠.⁵
• So the difference in the notion of God “prevents the minister of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from having the intention of doing what the Catholic Church does”⁠.⁵

The ruling changed earlier practice: “this decision changes the past practice of not questioning the validity of such Baptism”⁠.⁵ A Latter-day Saint who becomes Catholic is baptized; “It is sufficient to determine with certitude that a Baptism was administered in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to consider it invalid in all of its effects without further investigation”⁠.¹² Ladaria added that the decision “obviously does not indicate a judgment on those who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”⁠.⁵

Other bodies often counted as Christian

The Holy See’s published judgment concerns the Latter-day Saints. For the bodies below, here is their own teaching, set beside the Church’s test.

Measured against the test: a rite in the name of Jesus alone lacks the Trinitarian formula⁠;³ a rite that is not a washing with water is not baptism⁠;⁷ and words spoken by a body that denies the one God in three persons raise the same question of meaning the Congregation answered in 2001⁠.⁵

Charity in the truth

None of this judges anyone’s sincerity or love of Jesus. The 2001 commentary takes care to say so⁠.⁵ The Catholic Church’s claim is narrower and older: that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God in three persons, and that baptism in that Name joins a person to Christ. Valid baptism, the Catechism teaches, “constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians”⁠.¹⁸