Detroit man thought he was a priest. He wasn’t even a baptized Catholic

By JD Flynn

Denver Newsroom, Aug 22, 2020 / 02:10 pm (CNA).- If you think you’re a priest, and you really aren’t, you have a problem. So do a lot of other people. The baptisms you performed are valid baptisms. But the confirmations? No. The Masses you celebrated were not valid. Nor the absolutions or anointings. And the marriages? Well…it’s complicated. Some yes, some no. It depends on the paperwork, believe it or not.

Father Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit learned all this the hard way.

He thought he’d been ordained a priest back in 2017. He’d been doing priestly ministry since then.

And then this summer, he learned he wasn’t a priest at all. In fact, he learned he wasn’t even baptized.

If you want to become a priest, you must first become a deacon. If you want to become a deacon, you must first be baptized. If you’re not baptized, you can’t become a deacon, and you can’t become a priest.

Of course, Fr. Hood thought he had been baptized as a baby. But this month, he read a note issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The note said that changing the words of baptism in certain ways make it invalid. That if the person doing the baptizing says “We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” instead of “I baptize you…” the baptism is not valid.

He remembered a video he’d watched of his own baptism ceremony. And he remembered that the deacon said “We baptize you….”

His baptism wasn’t valid.

Father Hood called his archdiocese. He needed to be ordained. But first, after three years of acting like a priest, living like a priest, and feeling like a priest, he needed to become a Catholic. He needed to be baptized.

In short order, he was baptized, confirmed, and received the Eucharist. He made a retreat. He was ordained a deacon. And on Aug. 17, Matthew Hood finally became a priest. For real.

The Archdiocese of Detroit announced this unusual circumstance in a letter released Aug. 22.

The letter explained that after he realized what had happened, Fr. Hood “was recently validly baptized. Furthermore, since other sacraments cannot be validly received in the soul without valid baptism, Father Hood also was recently validly confirmed and validly ordained a transitional deacon and then a priest.”

“Let us give thanks and praise to God for blessing us with Father Hood’s ministry.”

The archdiocese released a guide, explaining that people whose marriages were celebrated by Fr. Hood should contact their parish, and that the archdiocese was making its own efforts to contact those people.

The archdiocese also said it was making efforts to contact other people who had been baptized by Deacon Mark Springer, the deacon who invalidly baptized Hood, and is believed to have invalidly baptized others, during 14 years at St. Anastasia Parish in Troy, Michigan, using the same invalid formula, a deviation from the rite clerics are required to use when performing baptisms.

The guide clarified that while absolutions performed by Fr. Hood before his valid ordination were not themselves valid, “we can be assured that all those who approached Father Hood, in good faith, to make a confession did not walk away without some measure of grace and forgiveness from God.”

“That said, if you recall any grave (mortal) sins that you would have confessed to Father Hood before he was validly ordained and you have not yet been to a subsequent confession, you must bring them to your next confession explaining to any priest what has happened. If you cannot remember if you confessed any grave sins, you should bring that fact to your next confession as well. A subsequent absolution will include those sins and will give you peace of mind,” the guide said.

The archdiocese also answered a question it expects many Catholics will be asking: “Isn’t it legalistic to say that, even though there was an intention to confer a sacrament, there was no sacrament because different words were used? Won’t God just take care of it?”

“Theology is a science that studies what God has told us and, when it comes to sacraments, there must not only be the right intention by the minister but also the right ‘matter’ (material) and the right ‘form’ (words/gestures – such as a triple pouring or immersion of water by the one saying the words). If one of those elements is missing, the sacrament is not valid,” the archdiocese explained.

“As far as God ‘taking care of it,’ we can trust that God will assist those whose hearts are open to Him. However, we can have a much greater degree of confidence by strengthening ourselves with the sacraments He has entrusted to us.”

“According to the ordinary plan God has established, the Sacraments are necessary for salvation: baptism brings about adoption into the family of God and places sanctifying grace in the soul, since we are not born with it, and the soul needs to have sanctifying grace when it departs from the body in order to spend eternity in heaven,” the archdiocese added.

The archdiocese said it first became aware that Deacon Springer was using an unauthorized formula for baptism in 1999. The deacon was instructed to stop deviating from liturgical texts at that time. The archdiocese said that, though illicit, it had believed the baptisms Springer had performed to be valid until the Vatican’s clarification this summer.

The deacon is now retired “and no longer in active ministry,” the archdiocese added.

No other Detroit priests are believed to be invalidly baptized, the archdiocese said.

And Fr. Hood, newly baptized and newly ordained? After an ordeal that began with a deacon’s liturgical “innovation,” Fr. Hood is now serving at a parish named for a deacon saint. He’s the new pastor at St. Lawrence Parish in Utica, Michigan.


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8 Comments

  1. What was done about Deacon Mark Springer? Were his actions malicious or uninformed? What other problems might he have caused???

  2. Really makes one wonder. I was baptized in 1970, at the height of all sorts of liturgical nonsense, so it’s quite possible that although I was “baptized” in a Catholic Church, I am not actually baptized, have never received a sacramental absolution, and am not married sacramentally (I wonder if my Catholic wedding would even be considered valid if I were not baptized but didn’t know it? Probably?). I’m very happily married, though, so not going to bother trying to figure it all out, as it is apparent God has given us extraordinary graces with or without valid sacraments. I wonder how much this will make others wonder whether they have ever had any sacrament conferred upon them, too, though? This could be very disturbing for many Catholics and make them question the very necessity of them in their lives.

  3. God writes straight on crooked lines. NOTHING is impossible for God so believing and trusting sincerely in God’s Authority is what really matters. +

    • Legalism based on man’s tradition and not based on God’s word. No one in the bible was baptized as an infant. So anyone who was only baptized as a baby has not been truly baptized into Christ. Read the bible people and come to know the one true God.

      • “And when she was baptized, with her household…” (Act 16:15)

        “And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, with all his family.” (Acts 16:33)

        Apparently families back then didn’t have children! Go figure.

        And what about Peter?

        And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.” (Acts 2:38-39; emphasis added)

        Hmmm. Sounds to me like you are foisting your man-made traditions upon a Catholic book.

        Here is more about what Scripture and the early Christians believed about baptism.

        • I agree with you Carl, one hundred percent.
          In Chapter 31, Jeremiah gave us these words delivered to him by the Lord (33-34): “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord: I will give my law in their bowels, and I will write it in their heart: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people … all shall know me from the least of them even to the greatest, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
          Yes, in this New Covenant, there is this unique family we call Church, into which we are baptized (reborn) and sin is forgiven and remembered no more. Let us not forget that ORIGINAL SIN that caused our separation from God. It was to counter this separation and to reconcile the human soul with God. This applies to adults as well as to children.
          The Gospel writers were addressing adults and so told them that they should repent and be baptized. But baptism – and only baptism – brings people, including children, into the Church.

  4. Suppose you were a visitor from another area and, as you were traveling through, you confessed a mortal sin to this priest who was not a priest. It may well be you never hear of this story. After all, it’s not a tenet of our faith that we have to read Catholic news publications. I can’t believe God is going to send someone to Hell because he went to a confession he had no way of knowing was not “real,” and in fact, never found out.

6 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. Detroit man thought he was a priest. He wasn’t even a baptized Catholic - Catholic Mass Search
  2. Why intention is not everything – Catholic World Report
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  5. Why intention is not everything – On God's Payroll
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