Judge Bork, baptized at 76

U.S. News & World Report ^ | 7/22/03 | Paul Bedard With David LaGesse

[nickcarraway]

It may be a little late to start for most, but Robert Bork, the former Supreme Court nominee who has written books decrying the decline of Western culture, has just been baptized. Rev. C. John McCloskey, who represents the conservative and activist Opus Dei arm of the Roman Catholic Church and oversaw the baptism, said, "I can confirm that he was received in the Catholic Church." Bork, a scholar with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was raised a Protestant and had called himself a "generic Protestant." He was known more for his conservative legal views, which some Democrats used to shoot down his court nomination during the Reagan administration.

In a brief interview, he said that years of "conversations and reading" led him to baptism at McCloskey's small Catholic Information Center chapel on K Street near the White House. "There's more to talk about than you can put in a brief story." He called himself a regular Catholic who attends Sunday mass, not an Opus Dei member.

He said talks with and recommendations from the priest, as well as attending church with his wife, Mary Ellen Bork, a former nun, helped pave the way to the ceremony.

Bork's sponsors were Kate O'Beirne, a conservative media star, and John O'Sullivan, head of UPI.

Lots of other prominent Catholics were there, such as columnist and speechwriter Peggy Noonan, herself a convert.

McCloskey has made several other high-level conversions of conservatives, bringing into the Catholic Church conservative columnist Robert Novak and Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

The best part of getting baptized at 76, said Bork: "If you get baptized at my age, all of your sins are forgiven. And that's very helpful."

According to Archdiocese of Washington Communications Director Susan Gibbs, Msgr. William Awalt, the longtime pastor of the Borks, baptized the judge, confirmed him and gave him First Communion. Father McCloskey celebrated the Mass, along with Msgr. Peter Vaghi, pastor of St. Patrick's.

[BibChr]

Oh, that PaulZe and his hysterical anti-Christian vomit; he believes flies are spontaneously generated out of dead flesh.

Dan
Proverbs 25:6

[wideawake]

Doctrinal decision or personal decision?

[PaulZe]

hey you made it to BibChr's ignore list...congratulations....I'm on it too!! We should start a BibChr list ignore club. Anyone he can't answer he name calls and puts on ignore....its laughable.

[RnMomof7]

It was both .It was a 45 minute trip to the Nazarene church, plus the Pastor was having some personal problems that affected the entire church. There are very few 'reformed" churches in the area ,but there happened to be one near my home that was more doctrinally alined with my beliefs so I switched there.

[PaulZe]

I have been a Chirstian in the Catholic Church for 53 years and in no way hysterical...you are the hysterical one...or should i say obsessed with anti-catholic venum

[BibChr]

Didn't even look up the Bible verse, did you?

Figures. No need for you to. You're Roman Catholic.

Dan

[PaulZe]

Of course im Catholic and much more in the tradition of Jesus Christ than you will ever be.

[SkyPilot]

However baptism doesn't save you as the thief on the cross illustrates. It is faith in Jesus and faith alone that saves you.

Absolutely.

[irish_links]

"...Peggy Noonan was born to an Irish Catholic family in New York and presumably baptized as an infant...."

Thanks for confirming what I thought to be true. Since I did not provide much detail in my post I can understand thay you may have misinterpreted my comment. (Hence, "(w)e Catholics ...) I am a cradle catholic from an Irish/Polish family, as my nom de plume suggests. I had always assumed that Peggy shared a similar experience and was surprised to find that she was described as a convert to the faith. It shook me up in a profound way to think that I might have had a completely false impression of her background, that I had dreamed that she was an Irish Catholic girl from Brooklyn when she really a completely different history, perhaps born to a High Church Episcipalian family from Connecticut (thereby explaining her sometimes stilted accent and overly precise locution) who came to a devout Catholicism later in life.

Well, thanks again for setting things right. I can sleep in peace again.

Regards,

Irish_links

[irish_links]

"...Peggy Noonan was born to an Irish Catholic family in New York and presumably baptized as an infant...."

Thanks for confirming what I thought to be true. Since I did not provide much detail in my post I can understand thay you may have misinterpreted my comment. (Hence, "(w)e Catholics ...) I am a cradle catholic from an Irish/Polish family, as my nom de plume suggests. I had always assumed that Peggy shared a similar experience and was surprised to find that she was described as a convert to the faith. It shook me up in a profound way to think that I might have had a completely false impression of her background, that I had dreamed that she was an Irish Catholic girl from Brooklyn when she really has a completely different history, perhaps born to a High Church Episcipalian family from Connecticut (thereby explaining her sometimes stilted accent and overly precise locution) who came to a devout Catholicism later in life.

Well, thanks again for setting things right. I can sleep in peace again.

Regards,

Irish_links

[utahagen]

I'm not sure. I think the denomination's teaching about baptism and Christianity would be the deciding factor about when to rebaptize, rather than the actual words used. (Although, obviously, the words usually reflect the teaching.) I believe if a denomination's explicit teaching rejects the Trinity, as, for example, the Mormons do, the Catholic Church will rebaptize.

[BibChr]

Keep your eyes closed to the Bible, God's REAL word, and you'll imagine that until it's too late.

My heartfelt advice: don't.

Dan

[Aquinasfan]

but the statement You quoted of me was refering to those who never really assented to faith in their heart of hearts, who never let Christ baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire(Luke 3:16) The ritual becomes the saving instrument to these people, not the confession and consenting to the personal indwelling of Christ's spirit.

Sorry, I missed that. But I'm confused as to what you are referring here. Are you referring to people who go through with the ritual without the proper intention?

[PaulZe]

God's real word IS Jesus Christ ( "The word became flesh and dwelt among us" )

[BibChr]

<< God's real word IS Jesus Christ ( "The word became flesh and dwelt among us" ) >>

Jesus Christ? The one who told His Father, "Your Word is truth (reality)" in (and about) that Bible you don't give much evidence of having read much (John 17:17)?

Yeah; He's the one who taught me to heed the Word, and stay clear of the sort manmade, perverting traditions that the RCC glories in (Matthew 15:1ff.). He's the one who taught me that continuing in His Word is what marks me as a real disciple (John 8:31, 32).

If your view is otherwise, we're not talking about the same Jesus.

Dan

[BibChr]

<< God's real word IS Jesus Christ ( "The word became flesh and dwelt among us" ) >>

Jesus Christ? The one who told His Father, "Your Word is truth (reality)" in (and about) that Bible you don't give much evidence of having read much (John 17:17)?

Yeah; He's the one who taught me to heed the Word, and stay clear of the sort manmade, perverting traditions that the RCC glories in (Matthew 15:1ff.). He's the one who taught me that continuing in His Word is what marks me as a real disciple (John 8:31, 32).

If your view is otherwise, we're not talking about the same Jesus.

Dan

[BibChr]

Identical posts; no clue as to why.

[Thorondir]

Here you go, Dan:

Ever wonder who, where and when your religion came from?
HERE IS THE HISTORIC RECORD
--------- (according to a Jewish source and double-verified in unbiased historical reference books) ---------

If you are Jewish, your religion was founded by God through Abraham about 4,000 years ago.

If you are Hindu, your religion developed in India around 1500 B.C.

If you claim to be a Druid, your religion may have developed sometime around 900 B.C. in Celtic Europe, but was completely wiped out in about 500 A.D. by the Romans, leaving only Roman writings about it; for the Druids utterly disdained writing.

If you are Shintoist, your religion developed long ago and over an undetermined period of time from the primitive animist religions of Japan.

If you are Buddhist, your religion split from Hinduism, and was founded by Prince Siddhartha Gautama of India, about 500 B.C.

If you are Confuscianist, your religion (really a social philosophy based upon ancient Chinese feudal ritual) was founded on the teachings of K'ung Fu-Tzu in China in about 550 B.C.

If you are a Taoist, your religion (really a naturalistic, philosophic way of life) began with the teachings of Lao Tzu in about 550 B.C.

If you are Roman Catholic, your religion was founded by Jesus Christ in the year 33.

If you are Islamic, your religion was started by Mohammed in the area of what is now Saudi Arabia, about 600 A.D.

If you are Eastern Orthodox, your sect of the Catholic Church separated from Roman Catholicism around the year 1,000.

If you are Sikh, your religion was founded in the Punjab region of India by Guru Nanak in about 1500.

If you are a Lutheran, your religion was founded by Martin Luther, an excommunicated Catholic monk in 1517.

If you are Anglican, your religion was started by King Henry VIII in the year 1534 because the Pope would not grant him a divorce with the right to remarry.

If you are Presbyterian, your religion was founded when John Knox brought the teachings of John Calvin to Scotland in the year 1560.

If you are Unitarian, your religious group developed in Europe in the 1500s.

If you are a Congregationalist, your religion branched off from Puritanism in the early 1600s in England.

If you are a Baptist, your religion was founded by a man named John Smyth, in Amsterdam in 1607.

If you are a Methodist, your religion was founded by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1744.

If you are Episcopalian, your religion was founded by Samuel Seabury in America in 1789, when he broke from the Anglican church of England.

If you are a Mormon, your religion was founded by a man named Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York in 1830.

If you worship with the Salvation Army, your religion was started by a man named William Booth in London in 1865.

If you are a Jehova's Witness, your religion was founded by Charles Taze Russell in Pennsylvania in the 1870s.

If you are a Christian Scientist, your religion was founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879.

If you are Pentecostal, your religion started in the United States in 1901.

If you belong to any one of the countless other protestant denominations or "non-denominational" Christian churches, your sect probably began in this century or even this decade as an offshoot of one of the more mainstream Protestant denominations.

If you are an agnostic, you profess an uncertainty or skepticism about the existence of God, or any being higher than yourself.

If you are an Atheist, your religion denies the existence of any higher being and was later officially founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who, according to her son, disappeared with most of the organization's money and without a trace, years ago.

[mdmathis6]

"ritual without the proper intention?"


Yes, it happens...that's why Chewbacca got "chewed" when he asked if Judge Bork had actually "asked Christ into his heart". It's a problem for both Catholics and Protestants. Many do the ritual for a variety of reasons, family pressure, political, social, but the significance of what they are doing never really penetrates their heart. It a kind of social Christianity that is faithless and denies the power of the resurrection.

[Thorondir]

True, but everything we know about Judge Bork points away rom him being the kind of thoughtless reed in the wind who would do something like that. I was objecting to a poster's classic heretic knee-jerk reaction against anything Catholic.