AS EVER...:

The fundamental problem the Church must confront is that, like any organisation, it needs rules of process to function and yet also faces an eternal gap between what rules say and the expectations people have of them. It needs capacity to transcend its own protocols in favour of wider considerations such as popular perceptions or the need to provide mercy to souls.

The risk of simply deferring to a theological logic, as the ecclesiastical authorities appear to have done in Father Arango's case, is that the conclusions themselves only invite fresh doubts. Can changing one's pronouns really be enough to invalidate the liturgy? That's not very "twenty-first-century". And what of the fact that the Church itself has revised its liturgies regularly over the years? If certain words were good enough at one historical moment, why aren't they in another now? Do any changes in canonical formulations have implications for Christian souls who received the sacrament under previous, now defunct, ones?

In the past theologians were very good at incorporating people's concerns about rules into their understandings of God and his works. Hence both Purgatory and Limbo emerged as concepts which grappled with the ethical problem of what to do with those for whom a theological fate of being condemned to Hell seemed manifestly unjust.

We live in a new age of legalism in the Western World in which process rules -- such as those surrounding the baptismal formula -- sometimes have seemed to acquire a new theological importance far beyond their value as means to ends. But the Church, as an aspirant to higher truths, surely also needs to exercise compassion in how it applies its rules.

Perhaps tellingly, the Church still has no official doctrine on Limbo for infants so it may be wishful thinking to hope for full satisfaction for Father Arango's disenchanted parishioners. And yet they have praised him for his gentleness and diligence even as they accept that, in resigning, he has taken the right course.

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