Tim Staples answers a caller who wonders whether a baptized Catholic who falls away and gets baptized in another church thereby blasphemes against the Holy Spirit.
Transcript:
Host: Danny in Boston listening on the Station of the Cross, your question for Tim staples.
Caller: Oh hi, thanks for taking my call. Let’s say someone was baptized in the Catholic Church, was confirmed, and received all the Sacraments, and later on in life decided to go to another denomination–Protestant denomination–and decide to baptize again. My question is this: is this considered a sin or a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit according to Matthew 12:31? It says that “Therefore I say unto you, everything of blasphemy shall be forgiven to man, but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.” So that’s my question. Would that be a sin or–
Tim: Yeah, the answer–yeah, the answer is no. In our tradition, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit–in fact, the Catechism of Catholic Church teaches that the core of what it means is final impenitence. So as long as someone is breathing they have, as a rule of thumb, not committed the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven, because you can always be forgiven if you turn to God.
Now there is in our tradition those who who have taught and posited the possibility that you can have someone–in fact they’ll use the book of Jude, for example, that talks about those who are twice dead plucked up by the roots, right, they have rejected God and become, you know, the Adolf Hitlers of the world and that sort of thing. I argue that, as the Catechism says, as long as they’re breathing they have the possibility of repentance. Now, could it be that you have people that have just so rejected God that they’re in that state where you know there’s just nothing you can say or do? I–alright, that’s possible. But from our–God alone knows that. God alone knows the the state of anybody’s soul. We always hold out hope for anybody who’s breathing of the possibility of salvation.
So I love the way the Catechism says that, that Matthew 12:31 and 32 represent those who, you know, the–they say the only sin that can’t be forgiven is final impenitence. So someone who leaves the Church, goes out and gets baptized into another community, all they’re getting is wet, as you know. That’s not a valid baptism, they are already baptized, we need to evangelize them and bring them back to the fullness of faith that we alone possess as Catholics. Objectively speaking, what they’re doing is grave sin, objectively. Now we can’t judge their souls because, you know, I always say to folks that, you you don’t know, I mean, they may have been presented with the Catholic faith in a distorted way, to where the the Catholic faith that they’re rejecting isn’t Catholicism at all, and let me tell you, brother, I have met hundreds if not thousands of people over the years that have left the Catholic faith and when you talk to them and you come to discover what they thought the Catholic Church thought, I would have left it too! You know? I mean, oh my goodness, you say, “Who in the world taught you that?” right?
I mean–oh anyway, I could go on and on about that, but the bottom line is, my friend, we don’t judge the soul of anyone. Every person that’s walking is a candidate for repentance, and that’s the way we need to treat it. So don’t fall into that trap, my brother, of saying, “Hey, that person left the Catholic Church and they got baptized in a Baptist Church so they’re going to Hell!” No. That would be a grave sin on our part because we do not–1 Corinthians chapter 4:3 through 6, St. Paul says “Judge not until such time when the Lord comes, then the hidden motives of the hearts will be manifest and then each man shall have his reward from God.” Paul says, “I can’t even judge my own self.” You know, much less can we judge anyone else.
Host: Daniel, okay?
Caller: Thank you.