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To Choose Ye this Day:

I will state up front that I am Catholic and also this post may be long. However, this sound-bite mentality that is part of current American Culture is just not me (I have to deal with it with my students). With that, I would like to address the reference the Jesuit Scholar Fortman. First, a Jesuit Scholar does not confirm what Catholic Orthodoxy is. I would conjecture that Fortman relied only on the “historical critical” method of scripture exegesis. While this method has given the Church better insights into the means of Sacred Scripture, as Pope Benedict stated in his excellent book “Jesus of Nazareth”, this method has its limitations.

So the Sacred Scriptures do teach the Holy Trinity. From the Catholic Churches view, the Sacred Scriptures “teach firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided in the Sacred Scriptures” (Catechism of the Catholic Church par. 107). However, Catholic hermeneutic principles include three main criteria of interpretation Sacred Scripture in accordance with the Holy Spirit who inspired it. 1) Be especially attentive to the content and unity of the whole Scripture, 2) Read the Scriptures within the living Tradition of the whole Church and 3) Be Attentive to the analogy of faith, i.e. the coherence of the truths among themselves in the whole plan of salvation.

Thus, reflecting on the Sacred Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition of the Church (i.e. expressed in the Liturgy of the Church, Consensus of the Early Church Fathers). The Church in the Four Great Early Councils (Nicea 325, Constantinople 381, Ephesus 431, and Chalcedon 451) formally defined the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity and developed its Christological formulations regarding Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity.

So from the Catholic perspective, what makes one a Christian is Baptism in the Holy Trinity, which also requires, as some of the other posters stated, a belief in the Divinity of Christ and his Passion, Death and Resurrection. The Sacrament of Baptism and the underlying Theology behind it is critical, from the Catholic Theological view, of who is a Christian.

As someone who works with RCIA (assisting those who are seeking to become Catholic) I can state the following 1) While Mormons may use the Trinitarian Formula to Baptize, the underlying Theology of Mormonism is not consistent with how the Catholic Church understands the Trinity (Eastern Orthodox and Traditional Confessional Protestants share the same belief about the Trinity). Therefore, Mormons who enter the Catholic Church are “Unconditionally Baptized”. 2) While the Protestant Traditions do not agree with the Catholic Churches Doctrine on some issues (and this is ok), among the Doctrines we do share is belief in the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Christ and therefore persons from the Traditional Protestant Confessions (Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, Methodists, and Baptists) are “not rebaptized”

Pax Domine