Praytell has an article on the invalid formula for baptisms by certain priests and deacons. You can read it here, but here are some interesting comments that might get deleted soon, so I post them. The 4th one I think is in greatest peril of deletion because it makes so much sense and conveys the truth of Church teaching that baptism is necessary for salvation.
However, in the case of these invalid baptisms by certain renegade clerics, I am sure the theology of Baptism of Desire applies to these souls invalidly baptized through no fault of their own.
But here are the comments:
We Catholic ecumenists and bridge-crossers already have a lurking worry that our Church will reject the baptismal validity of Christians who have been baptized “in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer” or similar ways of naming the Holy Trinity in non-gendered ways.
Erm, the Church has already said (in 2008) that attempting to confer baptisms with that formula is invalid!
Goes back even further than that. Boston’s Paulist Center’s use of that formula roughly 30 years ago was determined to be invalid. This is old news. It appears to have been forgotten.
In light of Matthew’s Hazell’s comment, I wonder if it would not now be wise to return to conditionally baptizing all protestants who wish to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church. When conditional baptism was dropped as a requirement, one could be morally certain that a Presbyterian’s whose denomination decreed a particular baptismal formula would have been baptized with that formula. Now, I am not so sure. Also if a Catholic minister is now routinely conditional baptizing due to potential defects, perhaps he (or she) would be less likely to stray from the formula.
The other view of the controversy is this: A priest (in this case) decided, on his own and in contravention of church law, to change the clear wording of the formula used to baptize his parishioners.
It is a commentary on our age that the outrage is directed at the church authority rather than the priest who potentially imperiled the eternal souls of his parishioners by his unnecessary unilateral action.