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]

No lie, it's un-Biblical!

The thought that an external ritual would wash away sins, when what is needed is regeneration by the grace of God alone, resulting in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and dependence on His grace alone!

How evil must a sect be, that would encourage an old man to take that to the grave as his trust!

Glad you've come around.

Dan
What Is Biblical Christianity?

[Tax-chick]

Good for Judge Bork, good for the Church. I hope he has a great time, and many years, being a Catholic.

[k omalley]

"Is baptism required for salvation? Or is salvation required for baptism?"

Interesting question. The two go hand in hand. In the Catholic faith infants are baptized. Of course they are unable to have faith in Jesus at that stage of life so the godparents promise to make sure that the child is raised to believe in Jesus and follow the faith, so in that case the child is saved.

For an adult, belief in Jesus as saviour must come first and then the baptism. If for some reason the new believer dies before he is baptized, he is saved through what Catholics call "baptism of desire".

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Reformed Christians believe in infant baptism.

It is a sign of the parent's and church community's adoption of the child into the faith.

The child is a member of the Body of Christ, not as an individual, but as a participant in the community of the Redeemed.

[LivingNet]

If water Baptism saved then the repentant thief on the cross could not have been saved.

Wrong...see my #67 post above.

[Ann Archy]

I LOVE Sen. Brownback. Amazing that so many older men are becoming Catholic....and there's NOTHING sexier than a man of religious convictions!!

[ggekko]

Father McCloskey is a former Wall Street gold trader and a Catholic priest.

[nickcarraway]

It's still the faith that saves,

No, God saves. Without God, nothing you do will save you.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Heaven resists the complications men would ascribe to her!

Amen.

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, lest any man should boast" - Ephesians 2:8.

God willing, we are all the thief on the Cross.

[Tax-chick]

No, God saves.

"For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." 1 Tim. 4:10

God saves whom He will.

[klute]

The believing thief on the cross was not Baptized...he was saved by his faith...by his request that Christ remember him when Christ should "come into his kingdom".

This is exactly the point that I make whenever some hateful individual wants to make hay over theological points like the eternal virginity of Mary, speaking in tongues, or interpretations of minor aspects of the Bible. The one person named in scriptures as being in Heaven was oblivious to all of that. He just had faith. And that was good enough.

[Campion]

No lie, it's un-Biblical!

I was referring to your reaction.

The thought that an external ritual would wash away sins

So, Dan, was Ananias lying when he told Paul that baptism would wash away his sins? Ananias, a man "devout before the Law," a man sent by God himself? Was Ananias speaking falsely, or are you?

Because both of you can't be right.

By the way, how do you reconcile your neo-Platonism with the objective fact that the Crucifixion was an "external ritual"? After all, if all "external rituals" are useless, then the Crucifixion is useless, as well. After all, if God can't save through the pouring of water, he can't save through nails and wood.

Unless, that is, you let him out of the little box your theology has trapped him in.

when what is needed is regeneration by the grace of God alone

Nothing in Scripture says that regeneration is "by the grace of God alone," Dan, if by that you mean to insist that grace isn't mediated through creation. In fact, Titus 3:5 calls baptism the "washing of regeneration".

resulting in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and dependence on His grace alone!

If you don't listen to him, are you really "depending on His grace alone," or just following your own itching ears?

What is needed is the "obedience of faith" (Romans 1), including the obedience to the commandment "be baptized, every one of you, for the remission of sins" (Acts 2).

[Campion]

If water Baptism saved then the repentant thief on the cross could not have been saved.

Sorry, but that's a logical fallacy. It's exactly like saying, "If a Ford could drive to Cleveland, then my uncle, who owns a Plymouth, could never have driven to Cleveland, as I know he did."

If only water baptism ever saved, without exception or qualification, then you would be right.

But that isn't what the Catholic Church teaches. What she says is that water baptism is the normative means of conferring justification, not the only one.

The accepted process back then was to acknowledge Christm ask for his forgiveness for your sins, ask him in to your life and then get water baptzed.

Which is precisely the process followed by adult Catholic converts today. Why do you object to it?

[ex-snook]

Now it's clear why he never made the Supreme Court.

[BibChr]

Oh, you expressed yourself poorly.

So you're still an enabler of the damnation of men's souls through dependence on manmade traditions and ritual.

Genuinely tragic.

Dan

[mdmathis6]

I read your post at 67 and it's more of straining at gnats and swallowing camels. The thief was saved by his faith and by God's sovereign mercy and grace. The blood that Christ was pouring out beside that thief was for the sins of all men who would simply believe that Jesus was the son of God. You complicate that which is is really quite simple.

Abraham "saw Christ's day and was glad" according to Christ, yet how could that be since God hadn't even given the Mosaic LAW yet...? Could it be that the Church is a transtemporal reality that exists across the centuries forward and backward?

What-ever the Times and Dispensations, it has and always shall remain that a man is justified by faith in God thru the death and Resurrection by his son Jesus Christ. The thief knew this when he rebuked the other thief..."we have done wrong but this man has not...LORD, REMEMBER ME WHEN YOU COME INTO YOUR KINGDOM!"

The thief acknowledged Christ as LORD...he acknowledged him as having A KINGDOM...he doesn't even ask Christ to save him...just that he would "REMEMBER" him. It was his faith that saved him, his acknowledgement of Christ as LORD and Saviour, just as are all men who acknowledge Him as Saviour! Christ...the new reality..pronounced this man saved...saved by his own blood!

[Campion]

So you're still an enabler of the damnation of men's souls through dependence on manmade traditions and ritual.

No, I don't follow the manmade tradition of sola Scriptura, nor the empty ritual of mindlessly objecting to everything Rome does, simply because it is Rome that does it.

May God in his mercy preserve me, and you, eternally from both of those follies.

But you didn't answer my question. Did Ananias lie to Paul?

[mdmathis6]

"Heaven resists the complications men would ascribe to her!"


I made that statement up out of frustration after reading all the complicated gobbledy gooky theories about this sacrament and that dispensation...yada...yada and that reformation and that one chuch Vaticanized yada...yada!. God wants all men to know him...Christ knew the way would be hard because the reality is so simple, ...you have to learn to be a child again.

You know the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts...should put all of us to shame. For a eunuch...he sure had a "brass pair" in terms of child like faith!

[Mannaggia l'America]

If so, does the Catholic Church not recognize the legitimacy of his prior baptism?

Yes, it is recognized.

My wife is in the process of converting, and I had expected that she would be baptized in the Church, but she was told that they do not baptize if you were baptized in another Christian denomination (she was baptized Lutheran). Her first sacrements will be Penance and Communion.

From what I understand, it is not done again because it would seem to say that your first baptism as a Christian was "not valid".

[Militiaman7]

It is never too late to think about where you will spend eternity.

God Bless you Judge Bork.