Priest fired for saying the wrong magic words?

I wrote this post on Facebook last night and maybe it’s worth expanding here…

Earlier, Josh asked me to explain the definition of satire…

Funny how difficult it is (for me anyway) without looking it up. I explained it as using humour to criticize something, to mock it, and often using parody for the mocking part, which creates an equal but absurd criticism of the thing. So it uses humour but is really serious.

My example was telling him about that priest who was forced to resign because of 20 years of botched baptisms, because he said “WE baptize you in the name of Jesus” instead of “I baptize you…”, and that my parody of it was to write a status on here suggesting he botched the baptisms because he forgot to say “abracadabra”.

But it’s a great example, isn’t it? I mean, the more I think about it, the more similar it is. He didn’t say the right magic words in a meaningless ritual, and absurdly, the church now claims all those baptisms “don’t count”. It’s so fucking stupid, it almost parodies itself.

Imagine believing in such absolute fucking hogwash.

Here’s an article about that priest. The story is legit.

It’s even been commented on by Father Nathan Monk here… He’s a former priest but now atheist and writer as well as social media personality – one who often triggers angry Christians because he still uses the Father moniker. The thing is, he’s a qualified Catholic priest, so he an use that if he wants to. Anyway, his point is that the church isn’t playing by its own rules here… They allow any baptized person to perform a baptism in certain contexts, and accept baptisms from Christian converts of other Christian religions. So why be so hard on this priest? It’s fucking goofy.