ChatGPT as a liturgical development tool

[The Liturgist]

Don't all of you PM me at once with your writing concerns , but ever since I started my current job back in December with an education company that focuses on helping K-12 students with their English and composition work, I've really grown to hate ChatGPT and similar AI. For now, it exists in that uncomfortable 'uncanny valley' of linguistic technology, where you can tell (especially by the time you're a few hundred essays in) that the writing you're looking at was probably at least aided by some type of program, and yet we are actually barred from treating it accordingly, since the technology on the 'other side' has yet to catch up so as to provide a commercially available detection software that passes the necessary threshold to be considered accurate enough to use.

So yeah, it's neat and all, but it's basically just a multi-million-dollar cheating machine.

If used incorrectly, sure.

However, I would argue that ChatGPT is like many tools. When I was in Cub Scouts (in my childhood, many decades before the BSA decided to throw away 120 years of excellent community service in order to be “woke”), the master of my den, who for my first year was a deputy sheriff, a very nice man with a beautiful basso profoundo voice which endeared him to the boys, and who helped me build my pinewood derby car (which scored third place because it was suggested I study and apply Bernoulli’s Principle, which worked), showed us a pocket knife and explained at length how if used correctly, a knife is a tool which can be used in carving, hunting, fishing and many other useful applications, and only when used incorrectly and abused is a weapon.

I would argue it is the same with ChatGPT and other large language models. If used correctly, they are powerful tools, which allow people to easily do large scale text processing that previously could only be accomplished on a UNIX command line using grep, sed, awk and other UNIX text processing tools, or the equivalent libraries for regular expressions, macro expansion, etc, in certain scripting languages such as Perl, Python and Ruby. Not only that, but chatGPT also can greatly outdo Google Translate or any other existing software when it comes to automatic translation. And it offers the potential to rip facts out of various online encyclopedia, allowing us to ask questions that the existing search engines could not readily answer (which was the early promise of Ask Jeeves, but Ask Jeeves could never answer as users expected, since it was really nothing but a glorified search engine).

 

[dzheremi]

If used incorrectly, sure.

Yes, which is exactly how the students in the schools we work with use it -- or I suppose I should say appear to use it.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Well therein lies the essence of the Turing Test. However one way you could tell if you were talking to ChatGPT would be to give it an input string known to cause what the AI alignment (safety) community calls “hallucination.”

One hallucination I have found is that the software can confuse the retirement dates of the Boeing 727-100 and Boeing 727-200, erroneously asserting that Delta last operated the 727-100 in 2003, when in fact the -100 had been gone for well over a decade by that point. As an aside, I greatly miss the 727.

I’m sure that by now that particular factoid is now all straightened out in most AI programming. I think for practical purposes a Turing Test done by a layman couldn’t tell the difference. And might fool some of the tech clergy too. It disquiets me.

 

[The Liturgist]

Yes, which is exactly how the students in the schools we work with use it -- or I suppose I should say appear to use it.

There has been a proposed “fingerprinting” technique for chatGPT output which would stop this problem, which would be for the AI to use the second most likely output say every 10 words, provided that the alternate output was synonymous, but I personally am against this, because this would degrade the overall output quality even if done in a subtle manner. It would also outright break code generated by the AI, and its ability to generate working, compiler-ready code in an arbitrary language from psuedocode (english language description of what a section of code should do) or a more high level description is one of its chief uses.

I would also note that many of the classic UNIX command line utilities are designed to ease the implementation of micro-languages for computer programming; microlanguages are ubiquitous in UNIX and are used for a huge range of applications, for example, controlling the vi editor, the awk text manipulation tool, the m4 macroprocessor, etc, and these are often Turing-complete (meaning they support branching and gotos, which is the basis for the familiar if else statements and loop structures, like for var in vars; if var == somevalue; someFunction(); else someOtherFunction();end

One interesting set of programs relative to chatGPT is yacc and lex, which generates tokens for input into a compiler and then compile that compiler. ChatGPT itself works by tokenizing the user input and acting on these tokens; even using yacc and lex tokenizing and then writing parsers is still quite fiddly by hand and one can easily fall into the trap of writing a giant if/elsif loop (a mistake I myself am guilty of). The ability of chatGPT to ease the process of writting a parser for a computer language is a specific use case which is extremely valuable, and its also the sort of thing that any kind of cheat-identification code that modified the output text of chatgpt would break.

Conversely, if chstGPT implemented its own formatting or style conventions to try and make code it generated recognizable, say for copyright reasons, the traditional UNIX utilities themselves should be able to compensate for that, provided the code output was consistent.

I am of the view that any attempt to mess with the output text of chatGPT will negate much of its usefulness as a product, and insofar as it is at risk of being abused by students, teachers and professors themselves should develop new approaches to address that problem, such as more lab work and less reliance on papers. Look at how one gets a CCIE as an example for an exam where you really can’t cheat (the CCIE, RHCE and some other certifications have no written tests at all, but rather involve someone being taken to a broken network, or a broken Linux server, and being told “here, fix this. You have two hours.”

 

[The Liturgist]

I’m sure that by now that particular factoid is now all straightened out in most AI programming. I think for practical purposes a Turing Test done by a layman couldn’t tell the difference. And might fool some of the tech clergy too. It disquiets me.

Its not. I tested it again last night, and frankly it drives me crazy, given how petite the 727-100 is compared to the longer, sleeker and more elegant 727-200. Curiously, despite being theoretically faster due to their small size, in my experience pilots generally did not inherently prefer the -100, but rather tended to love all 727s. This is in contrast to the 737-800 and Max8 and larger; pilots who have flown the 737-200 find it much more like a sportscar than the superstretched 737s of today. Likewise the 757 despite its great length is much loved by pilots as it is not by any means underpowered.

 

[zippy2006]

Philosophically, I struggle with things like ChatGPT because words require a speaker, and in this case we have words without a speaker (and therefore in a philosophical sense we do not have words at all). One effect of this is that people are coming to assume that words do not require a speaker, or else that AI is itself a speaker, and this is creating a great deal of confusion.

Specifically, a word is something spoken which entails intent, and AI is not capable of such things. Collecting words and arranging them according to conventions is not speech, and is also not ultimately and rigorously intelligible. Of course, another difficulty is that a great deal of what humans produce is also not speech - it is also some variety of mere mimicry. Still, there is a vast difference between intentional speech and the arranging of symbols according to preset algorithms.

 

[The Liturgist]

Philosophically, I struggle with things like ChatGPT because words require a speaker, and in this case we have words without a speaker (and therefore in a philosophical sense we do not have words at all). One effect of this is that people are coming to assume that words do not require a speaker, or else that AI is itself a speaker, and this is creating a great deal of confusion.

Specifically, a word is something spoken which entails intent, and AI is not capable of such things. Collecting words and arranging them according to conventions is not speech, and is also not ultimately and rigorously intelligible. Of course, another difficulty is that a great deal of what humans produce is also not speech - it is also some variety of mere mimicry. Still, there is a vast difference between intentional speech and the arranging of symbols according to preset algorithms.

Actually, I believe the philosophical argument you are making in this case is in error, in that AI models, or even conventional computer programs, do have intent derived from the programmer, to the extent that software errors are defined as software deviating from its intended function. In the specific case of neural networks like ChatGPT, which are self-programmed using training models, the programmer is the program, so ChatGPT can be said to have intent, even though it is not conscious. But it is possible that conscience is an emergent property of complex neural networks, and the possibility does exist that we will produce artificial general intelligence which is self-aware.

This takes us to something which actually worries me about the field of AI research, that being the relatively high ratio of atheists and believers in new religious movements that characterizes the entire hacker* community, of whom AI researchers are a subset. I can think of only a few high profile hackers who are Christians, for example, the Linux filesystem developer Theodore T’so, who authored the popular ext4 filesystem, and Donald Knuth, a Lutheran who is the author of The Art of Computer Programming (although one could make a case that Knuth is a Real Programmer; see below). It is my firm opinion that substantial efforts need to be made to evangelize the Hacker community, in part to increase the likelihood that Artificial General Intelligences will be given training datasets that will incline them towards a positive view of the Christian religion (just as we raise our children to have a positive view of Christianity).

Now I am not saying that we have the ability to create machines with souls or with true self-awareness, but I also do not know that we do not have such an ability. I will say that my theologoumemnon (theological opinion) is that if we create a machine that appears to be conscious, like a human, we should treat it in accordance with the Golden Rule. By the way, I should also state, just to be clear, that i would not say that programming such a machine is by any means a good idea; I think anyone who has seen films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Colossus: The Forbin Project has seen an adequete depiction of AI safety issues, and there already exists a booming field of AI safety, known as “Alignment.” Which takes us back to my concern, that the alignment and AI safety community is not at present engaging in any kind of large scale effort to impart Christian values or specifically Christian morality to AI software, even in this early stage where the systems we have, although intelligent and capable of limited intent are not capable of any kind of conscious response, due to various limitations, such as the fact that they are trained and then put into service, as opposed to training themselves continually like a real person; they have only minimal working memory and their long term recall is inherently read-only. But even here, there is scope for injecting Christian values into the software, for example, through the inclusion of substantial amounts of material favorable to Christianity in the training data used by systems like ChatGPT, and also through the use of Christian principles when it comes to the various techniques used to ensure alignment (the same systems that, for example, will prevent ChatGPT from advising you on how to do something illegal, or from generating sexually explicit content).


*Within the IT industry, the term “Hacker” refers to advanced programmers starting with the second generation of computer programmers who implemented interactive timesharing operating systems on minicomputers starting in the late 1960s; they succeeded an earlier group of generally more talented programmers known affectionately as the Real Programmers, who developed the first programming languages and the first operating systems and did much of their work on bare metal, manually setting the registers using toggle switches, etc, men for whom a punchcard was a luxury and a megabyte a vast amount of memory. The popular use of the word Hacker to refer to criminals who violate computer systems is not known within the IT industry, rather, such individuals are referred to as Crackers, meaning Criminal Hackers.

 

[zippy2006]

Actually, I believe the philosophical argument you are making in this case is in error, in that AI models, or even conventional computer programs, do have intent derived from the programmer, to the extent that software errors are defined as software deviating from its intended function. In the specific case of neural networks like ChatGPT, which are self-programmed using training models, the programmer is the program, so ChatGPT can be said to have intent, even though it is not conscious. But it is possible that conscience is an emergent property of complex neural networks, and the possibility does exist that we will produce artificial general intelligence which is self-aware...

A short reply...

Sure, you could say that AI has derived and remote intent, from its creator; but it has no intent in itself. It has no intent which is not derived/participatory. Specifically regarding my argument, derived intent is not sufficient for speech. Speech requires autonomous intent.

As to your claim that AI could have conscience, consciousness, and self-awareness (to the same extent that humans do), I disagree. I believe this to be the first confusion I noted, "that AI is itself a speaker" (or a potential speaker). But this is a big question which probably deserves its own thread and more time than I can give it! If we have the discussion it will probably need to be in a time-condensed format.

 

[The Liturgist]

As to your claim that AI could have conscience, consciousness, and self-awareness (to the same extent that humans do), I disagree.

I should stress my claim is more qualified, in that I don’t know that AI could be programmed with such functionality or develop it as an emergent characteristic of the nature of the system, the latter case being potentially hazardous if unanticipated, but I also do not know that we can’t. The field of AI safety and alignment in my opinion does its best work when it assumes what is actually a worst-case scenario, that being that humans could produce hyperintelligent AIs capable of autonomous decision making, which are extremely dangerous.


But that issue aside, the main point of my post is an argument for the importance of evangelizing the IT industry and particular, those computer scientists involved in AI alignment and AI safety, because if we do produce artificial general intelligence, something which one could reasonably believe and hope is impossible, but which I think we have to admit has a non-zero probability of happening to at least some degree, we would want it to have Christian values. And in an ideal state, which is one where we continue to manufacture AIs which are not capable of self-awareness pr doing much more than chatGPT or the image generating AIs we presently have, but are unable to make the sort of terrifyingly autonomous AIs such as HAL-9000 or Colossus and Guardian from the film Colossus: The Forbin Project, it would still be of great benefit to everyone, not the least to the computer scientists and IT professionals themselves, if we converted more of them to Christianity and helped the hacker community (by which I mean the cutting edge programmers who have a certain culture who developed UNIX, Linux, Windows, the Mac and the Internet, and wrote the software enabling converged devices like the iPhone and Androi, as opposed to criminal hackers who break into people’s networks for fun and profit) understand the danger of certain occult religions like Wicca, Satanism and so on that several personal friends of mine in that industry have allowed themselves to be drawn into. Also Mormonism, which took over the life of my friend Adam, who used to be creative and interesting and is now enslaved by that church (they got to him as he was a fan of Battlestar Galactica, the original version of which was written by Glen Larson, a hardcore Mormon, and has been accurately described as “Mormons In Space:, for example, the Lost Planet of the Gods is named Kobol, an obvious riff on Kolob, the planet where in the more esoteric depths of Mormon madness, they believe God the Father used to live as a man before being deified).

And if as we hope strong AI is impossible, well, still, imagine how much more pleasant computer software might be if more programmers had the conscientious ethics imparted by Christianity. One at present is lucky to have a Buddhist, which alas is still less desirable than a Christian; also I would note that most Hindu programmers work for outsourcing firms in India and are notoriously poorly trained. They are competent in that they can write whatever you want, but their poor training means the results often tend to be implemented in massive amounts of inefficient Java (the preferred language of Indian outsourcing firms). This is not a criticism of Indian programmers, some of whom have made huge contributions to the computer industry and some of whom are Christian, but rather, to the IT outsourcing companies that train and employ so many of them. In that case I daresay things would be better if the owners of those companies were converted to Christianity. Of course India right now is run by a Hindu nationalist president who has in some cases encouraged attacks on Christians and in other cases failed to adequately respond to atrocities such as the assault on an elderly Catholic nun in New Delhi, but that is a matter for another thread.

At any rate, I hope you can see my argument is not that strong AI is definitely possible if not inevitable, but rather, since it might happen, and also for other reasons, such as the Great Commission, we really ought to work on evangelizing the IT industry.

 

[zippy2006]

At any rate, I hope you can see my argument is not that strong AI is definitely possible if not inevitable, but rather, since it might happen, and also for other reasons, such as the Great Commission, we really ought to work on evangelizing the IT industry.

Okay thanks, that clarifies a few things for me. I could run with this in all sorts of different directions, but I will keep it simple and just say that one danger of such a project is the way that it tends to pragmatize and instrumentalize Christianity. It's the idea that we need to convert computer programmers so their programs will be more ethical and our world will be safer from destructive AI. In that sense it is conversion (and Christianity) used as a means to an end. Even if it is true, that is the concern I would have with it.

Also, we are probably up against a lot more than Hinduism when it comes to young, tech-savvy programmers embracing Christianity. I'm not sure that any religion plays a large role in such people's lives. Actually, the weird technocratic thinking found among that demographic is oddly reminiscent of C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength!

 

[zippy2006]

We’ve learned to make “machines that can mindlessly generate text,” Bender told me when we met this winter. “But we haven’t learned how to stop imagining the mind behind it.”

-"You are not a Parrot," New York Magazine (!langauge!)

 

[The Liturgist]

Okay thanks, that clarifies a few things for me. I could run with this in all sorts of different directions, but I will keep it simple and just say that one danger of such a project is the way that it tends to pragmatize and instrumentalize Christianity. It's the idea that we need to convert computer programmers so their programs will be more ethical and our world will be safer from destructive AI. In that sense it is conversion (and Christianity) used as a means to an end. Even if it is true, that is the concern I would have with it.

Also, we are probably up against a lot more than Hinduism when it comes to young, tech-savvy programmers embracing Christianity. I'm not sure that any religion plays a large role in such people's lives. Actually, the weird technocratic thinking found among that demographic is oddly reminiscent of C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength!

Indeed, although I would note it didn’t used to be evocative of That Hideous Strength. On the contrary open source software development in the late 2000s felt like a force for good, creating superior free software so that people wouldn’t have to spend thousands on bloated dysfunctional programs from Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Autodesk and other notorious purveyors of overpriced expensive proprietary software, or be locked into proprietary systems like the Mac. And there was more diversity. You had more people working on the BSDs, on OpenSolaris, and on new operating systems like Haiku, which briefly had a fully functional WebKit browser which could render nearly all websites except those using Adobe Flash or other proprietary nastiness. Then websites became infinitely more demanding of system resources breaking Haiku and dashing the hopes of other experimental OS development projects to have functional browsers, and the ecosystem coalesced around Linux, and some Linux implementations like Android have become increasingly locked down and proprietary, which ought to be impossible, due to the open source licensing, but its happening. And the previously open source MongoDB switched to a proprietary license and got away with it, whereas when Oracle acquired MySQL a fork happened called MariaDB driven by fears that Oracle might try to make it proprietary (they didn’t, although they did kill OpenSolaris, which was forked as Illumos, but fewer people are working on it). Also Google and other companies exploit open source software, and while Google gives a lot back to the community, others are less generous. The NetBSD operating system was nearly killed when its development team was briefly hijacked by Wasabi, which used a proprietary derivative of it on their Storage Area Network arrays, which were unsuccessful and Wasabi folded; it is something of a minor miracle NetBSD survived and recovered from that. Increasingly however, newer hackers lack the ethics that characterized their predecessors.

Now, to be clear, I don’t want to convert hackers because it would result in better software and more safety, although this is an expected secondary effect. The main reason to convert them is because I know and love many of them, and I desire that their mortal souls be saved, and they experience the love of Christ and salvation through faith In Him and in the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit, as these are people I work with and care about. It is the day job that lets me be a minister on the weekend. Right now their souls are imperiled and they are at risk for demonic possession, due to an excess of involvement in and fascination with the occult, which may have happened to a friend of mine who either has a demon or has lost his mind; his behavior became erratic and he actually attacked me on three occasions, leading to his arrest in the third case (in the first case, I stopped the prosecution), and the incident continues to deeply disturb me. After the first incident, he stopped seeing his psychologist, and then went crazy and attacked me, and then lost his job, attacked me again and got arrested. His house had a horrifying infestation of bed bugs that was like something from a horror film. It was the stuff of nightmares. Unfortunately without extensive psychiatric screening it is impossible to know if he might be possessed, as it is necessary to rule out mental illness, and even if he is there is nothing that I could do about it, since one has to agree to be exorcised in order for it to happen; contrary to what the famous horror film suggests, you can’t just tie someone to their bed and start reading the exorcism prayers of the Roman Rite or of St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil.

 

[zippy2006]

Indeed, although I would note it didn’t used to be evocative of That Hideous Strength. On the contrary open source software development in the late 2000s felt like a force for good, creating superior free software so that people wouldn’t have to spend thousands on bloated dysfunctional programs from Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Autodesk and other notorious purveyors of overpriced expensive proprietary software, or be locked into proprietary systems like the Mac. And there was more diversity. You had more people working on the BSDs, on OpenSolaris, and on new operating systems like Haiku, which briefly had a fully functional WebKit browser which could render nearly all websites except those using Adobe Flash or other proprietary nastiness. Then websites became infinitely more demanding of system resources breaking Haiku and dashing the hopes of other experimental OS development projects to have functional browsers, and the ecosystem coalesced around Linux, and some Linux implementations like Android have become increasingly locked down and proprietary, which ought to be impossible, due to the open source licensing, but its happening. And the previously open source MongoDB switched to a proprietary license and got away with it, whereas when Oracle acquired MySQL a fork happened called MariaDB driven by fears that Oracle might try to make it proprietary (they didn’t, although they did kill OpenSolaris, which was forked as Illumos, but fewer people are working on it). Also Google and other companies exploit open source software, and while Google gives a lot back to the community, others are less generous. The NetBSD operating system was nearly killed when its development team was briefly hijacked by Wasabi, which used a proprietary derivative of it on their Storage Area Network arrays, which were unsuccessful and Wasabi folded; it is something of a minor miracle NetBSD survived and recovered from that. Increasingly however, newer hackers lack the ethics that characterized their predecessors.

Interesting. I expect the battle between open source and proprietary to rage on in spite of wins and losses. The fact that the majority of web servers run on Linux systems is a strong card in the open source hand.

Now, to be clear, I don’t want to convert hackers because it would result in better software and more safety, although this is an expected secondary effect. The main reason to convert them is because I know and love many of them, and I desire that their mortal souls be saved, and they experience the love of Christ and salvation through faith In Him and in the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit, as these are people I work with and care about. It is the day job that lets me be a minister on the weekend. Right now their souls are imperiled and they are at risk for demonic possession, due to an excess of involvement in and fascination with the occult, which may have happened to a friend of mine who either has a demon or has lost his mind; his behavior became erratic and he actually attacked me on three occasions, leading to his arrest in the third case (in the first case, I stopped the prosecution), and the incident continues to deeply disturb me. After the first incident, he stopped seeing his psychologist, and then went crazy and attacked me, and then lost his job, attacked me again and got arrested. His house had a horrifying infestation of bed bugs that was like something from a horror film. It was the stuff of nightmares. Unfortunately without extensive psychiatric screening it is impossible to know if he might be possessed, as it is necessary to rule out mental illness, and even if he is there is nothing that I could do about it, since one has to agree to be exorcised in order for it to happen; contrary to what the famous horror film suggests, you can’t just tie someone to their bed and start reading the exorcism prayers of the Roman Rite or of St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil.

Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. I will say a prayer for him. Yes - if the primary motivation is concern for the person themselves then I think the case is much stronger.

 

[The Liturgist]

Interesting. I expect the battle between open source and proprietary to rage on in spite of wins and losses. The fact that the majority of web servers run on Linux systems is a strong card in the open source hand.


Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. I will say a prayer for him. Yes - if the primary motivation is concern for the person themselves then I think the case is much stronger.

Indeed, that is the primary motivation. That it might result in better software is trivial in comparison, a bonus, but frankly I would rather all programmers were Christian even if they wrote inferior software. Indeed even if we all were forced to revert to Windows 95 on dialup I would make that sacrifice.

Actually I was happier with Microsoft in 2009 than I am now; Windows 7 was lovely and the MS all you could eat subscription services such as Technet, MSDN, BizSpark, StudentSpark and the Action Packs were brilliant and reduced software piracy, and also provided access to a range of versions of Windows and other software for development. In many respects I think the IT industry has made a series of wrong turns since 2010.

 

[Andrewn]

Actually I was happier with Microsoft in 2009 than I am now; Windows 7 was lovely and the MS all you could eat subscription services such as Technet, MSDN, BizSpark, StudentSpark and the Action Packs were brilliant and reduced software piracy, and also provided access to a range of versions of Windows and other software for development. In many respects I think the IT industry has made a series of wrong turns since 2010.

I agree. In comparison, is ChatGPT safe to use? Is it possible that it can read files on your PC?

 

[The Liturgist]

I agree. In comparison, is ChatGPT safe to use? Is it possible that it can read files on your PC?

At present, ChatGPT cannot read files on your PC or do any external I/O at all. It is not even aware of current events, unlike Bing’s AI, since it is running on training data from 2021. Whether or not it’s safe is really use-case dependent and is also open to interpretation. Since it is proprietary code, and since even open source AIs are something of a black box, since the neural networks they use are opaque, unlike conventional computer programming, which can be easily understood once one understands a few basic principles (for instance, that any Turing-complete languages needs branching and a goto instruction, and high level languages prefer to implement these with conditionals like the if statement and so forth and various types of loops, and also of course the layout of a Von Neumann architecture system, where programs and data share the same memory and thus a program can be used as data, and one can implement a programming language of the sort LISP pioneered where one can pass a function as a variable to another function allowing functions to be called recursively, and recursion functions as an alternative to loops, one can read a computer program, but a large language model like ChatGPT or other OpenAI implementations, while the means in which it operates can be understood, the specifics of how it has been trained are by nature opaque).

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Out of curiosity I tried Microsoft Edge's copilot with this request
"write a Catholic formal liturgy with rubrics for adult baptism."
It replied

---

Here is a possible Catholic formal liturgy with rubrics for adult baptism, based on the sources I found:
Celebration of the Sacrament of Baptism
Reception of the Candidate
The priest or deacon welcomes the candidate and the godparents at the door of the church and asks the preliminary questions:
Priest: What is your name? Candidate: … Priest: What do you ask of God’s Church? Candidate: Baptism. Priest: What does Baptism offer you? Candidate: Faith in Jesus Christ and eternal life.
The priest or deacon then traces the sign of the cross on the forehead of the candidate and invites the godparents to do the same. He leads them to their place in the church.
Liturgy of the Word
The readings from Scripture are proclaimed, followed by a homily. The readings may be chosen from those suggested in the Roman Missal or the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults1. The homily should explain the meaning and effects of Baptism.
Celebration of Baptism
The priest or deacon addresses the congregation:
Dearly beloved, with one heart and one soul, let us by our prayers come to the aid of this our brother/sister in his/her blessed hope, so that, as he/she approaches the font of rebirth, the almighty Father may bestow on him/her all his merciful help.
He then invites them to pray in silence for a moment and then to join him in singing or saying the Litany of Saints2.
After the litany, he says a prayer over the water, asking God to sanctify it and make it a source of new life. He may also touch the water with his hand or breathe over it as a sign of invoking the Holy Spirit.
He then questions the candidate about his/her renunciation of sin and profession of faith, using one of the following formularies:
Form A Do you renounce Satan? I do. And all his works? I do. And all his empty show? I do.
Form B Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children? I do. Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin? I do. Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness? I do.
Form C Do you renounce sin, so as to live in God’s love? I do. Do you renounce evil, so as to walk in God’s ways? I do. Do you renounce Satan, who is a liar and an enemy of God? I do.
After each renunciation, the congregation may respond: Amen.
The priest or deacon then asks:
Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth? I do. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered death and was buried, rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father? I do. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting? I do.
After each profession of faith, the congregation may respond: Amen.
The priest or deacon then says:
This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The congregation responds: Amen.
Baptism
The priest or deacon invites the candidate to come to the baptismal font. He may also ask him/her to repeat his/her baptismal name. He then baptizes him/her by pouring water over his/her head three times or by immersing him/her three times in water, saying:
N., I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
He may also make a sign of cross on his/her forehead with water. The congregation may respond: Amen.
Anointing with Chrism
The priest or deacon anoints the newly baptized on the crown of his/her head with sacred chrism (perfumed oil), saying:
God, our Father, has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with chrism, the oil that consecrates priests, prophets and kings. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.
The congregation may respond: Amen.
Clothing with White Garment
The newly baptized is clothed with a white garment (a stole or a robe), symbolizing his/her new dignity as a Christian. The priest or deacon says:
N., you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity. With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.
The congregation may respond: Amen.
Lighted Candle
The newly baptized is given a lighted candle, which is lit from the paschal candle (a large candle that represents the risen Christ). The priest or deacon says:
Receive the light of Christ. This light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly. You have been enlightened by Christ. Walk always as a child of the light and keep the flame of faith alive in your heart. When the Lord comes, may you go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.
The congregation may respond: Amen.
Ephphetha or Prayer over Ears and Mouth
The priest or deacon touches the ears and mouth of the newly baptized with his thumb, saying:
The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the mute speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.
The congregation may respond: Amen.
Conclusion of the Rite
The priest or deacon concludes the rite by saying:
Dearly beloved, this brother/sister has been reborn in baptism. He/she is now called a child of God, for so indeed he/she is. In confirmation he/she will receive the fullness of God’s Spirit. In holy communion he/she will share the banquet of Christ’s sacrifice, calling God his/her Father in the midst of the Church. In the name of this Church, our mother, I present him/her to you and ask you to accept him/her as a new member of Christ’s faithful people.
The congregation responds: Thanks be to God.
The priest or deacon then leads the newly baptized and the godparents to their place in the church. He may also introduce him/her to the congregation and invite them to welcome him/her with applause. He then continues with the liturgy of the Eucharist, in which the newly baptized participates for the first time. He/she may also present the gifts of bread and wine at the offertory. He/she receives communion under both kinds, bread and wine. After communion, he/she may also receive a special blessing from the priest or deacon.