Denzinger-Hünermannn 2566-2570
Brief Singulari nobis to Cardinal Henry, Duke of York, 9th February 1749
§12. … When a heretic baptizes someone, provided he uses the legitimate form and matter,… the latter is marked with the baptismal character….
§13. Next, it was also found that someone who has received valid baptism from a heretic is made a member of the Catholic Church by virtue of that [baptism]; for the personal error of the one baptizing cannot deprive him of his happiness, provided the baptizer provides the sacrament in the faith of the true Church and observes her provisions in what relates to the validity of baptism. Suarez affirms this admirably in his Fidei catholicae defensio contra errores sectae Anglicanae, book 1, chapter 24, where he proves that the person baptized becomes a member of the Catholic Church, also adding this, that if the heretic, as often happens, christens an infant unable to make an act of faith, this is no obstacle to his receiving the habit of faith at baptism.
§14. Lastly, we have established that, if they reach the age at which they can distinguish right from wrong for themselves and then adhere to the errors of the one who baptized them, persons who were baptized by heretics are rejected from the unity of the Church and are deprived of all those benefits that those remaining in the unity of the Church enjoy, but they are not freed from her authority and laws, as Gonzales wisely explains in the section ‘Sicut’, no. 12, concerning heretics.
§15. We see this in the case of fugitives and traitors whom the civil laws completely exclude from the privileges of faithful subjects. Similarly, the laws of the Church do not grant clerical privileges to those clerics who disobey the commandments of the sacred canons. But nobody thinks that traitors or clerics who violate the sacred canons are not subject to the authority of their princes or prelates.
§16. These example too, unless we are mistaken, are relevant to the question; for just like them, so too heretics are subject to the Church and are bound by the ecclesiastical laws.
Laodicea 
March 22, 2013 at 10:36 am
Thanks, I didn’t know about this. But are sacred cannons things only to be used in holy wars…?
March 22, 2013 at 11:41 am
Whoops
March 22, 2013 at 1:25 pm
But do we need baptism in the eyes of our new pontiff? Aparently, all we need to is be friends, help the poor and protect the enviroment:
“As you know, there are various reasons why I chose the name of Francis of Assisi, a familiar figure far beyond the borders of Italy and Europe, even among those who do not profess the Catholic faith. One of the first reasons was Francis’ love for the poor. How many poor people there still are in the world! And what great suffering they have to endure! After the example of Francis of Assisi, the Church in every corner of the globe has always tried to care for and look after those who suffer from want, and I think that in many of your countries you can attest to the generous activity of Christians who dedicate themselves to helping the sick, orphans, the homeless and all the marginalized, thus striving to make society more humane and more just.
But there is another form of poverty!
It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the “tyranny of relativism”, which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples. And that brings me to a second reason for my name. Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace. But there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.
One of the titles of the Bishop of Rome is Pontiff, that is, a builder of bridges with God and between people. My wish is that the dialogue between us should help to build bridges connecting all people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an enemy, not a rival, but a brother or sister to be welcomed and embraced! My own origins impel me to work for the building of bridges. As you know, my family is of Italian origin; and so this dialogue between places and cultures a great distance apart matters greatly to me, this dialogue between one end of the world and the other, which today are growing ever closer, more interdependent, more in need of opportunities to meet and to create real spaces of authentic fraternity.
In this work, the role of religion is fundamental. It is not possible to build bridges between people while forgetting God. But the converse is also true: it is not possible to establish true links with God, while ignoring other people. Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam. At the Mass marking the beginning of my ministry, I greatly appreciated the presence of so many civil and religious leaders from the Islamic world. And it is also important to intensify outreach to non-believers, so that the differences which divide and hurt us may never prevail, but rather the desire to build true links of friendship between all peoples, despite their diversity.
Fighting poverty, both material and spiritual, building peace and constructing bridges: these, as it were, are the reference points for a journey that I want to invite each of the countries here represented to take up. But it is a difficult journey, if we do not learn to grow in love for this world of ours. Here too, it helps me to think of the name of Francis, who teaches us profound respect for the whole of creation and the protection of our environment, which all too often, instead of using for the good, we exploit greedily, to one another’s detriment.”
Franciscus
Address to the Diplomatic Corps
March 22, 2013
March 22, 2013 at 2:27 pm
The Holy Father nowhere seems to assert that “all we need is to be friends, help the poor and protect the enviroment” only that we need to is be friends, help the poor and protect the enviroment. Not an unreasonable point to make to the Diplomatic Corps.
March 22, 2013 at 3:24 pm
So how do you understand this passage?:
“But the converse is also true: it is not possible to establish true links with God, while ignoring other people. Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam. At the Mass marking the beginning of my ministry, I greatly appreciated the presence of so many civil and religious leaders from the Islamic world. And it is also important to intensify outreach to non-believers, so that the differences which divide and hurt us may never prevail, but rather the desire to build true links of friendship between all peoples, despite their diversity.”
March 22, 2013 at 6:32 pm
There can be no union of all men without religious truth but we desire to bring others to the faith because of the love of neigbour that God demands of us not because we desire to triumph over them still less because we hate them. We wish to speak freely with others because of a respect for truth not in an atmosphere of animosity or fear.
February 23, 2017 at 2:44 pm
[…] We observe, in passing, one bit in particular from Walther’s essay: the music at the Ash Wednesday Mass he attended was in Latin. And his is not the only story we have read in which the majesty of the Church’s liturgical tradition has drawn Catholics back to the Church or made converts of non-Catholics. (If anyone validly baptized can be said to be a non-Catholic.) […]