Blessing a river to baptize large groups

[FrDavid96]

My question was not so much historical, such that video footage miraculously taken at the time could answer the question, but hypothetical: Would such baptisms as described be valid, whether those descriptions are strictly accurate or completely fabricated. Or would they be valid only under certain conditions?

What we need to say is “the usual conditions.”

Most of those conditions, let’s just accept as a given, for purposes of this thread. Let’s assume that the Trinitarian formula was used, let’s assume the intent to baptize, etc.

Then let’s move to the specific question: what happened to each person? I don’t know exactly. I know that iconography of these events usually has at least one person (bishop, priest, missionary) pouring water on each person’s head—at least this is represented artistically.

For the baptisms to have been valid, each person had to be immersed or water poured, or water sprinkled (enough to be actual water, not just a mist). This is where all I can say is that I just don’t know. I can say that if it happened, it was valid.

You already addressed one of my specific concerns, that pouring is not required for validity.

If pouring is not required, must the minister even be in the immediate vicinity (say a foot or two) of the convert, or can he give his blessing from the shore 40 feet away as the current carries the convert to another spot before making landfall?

The minister of baptism must pour (dunk or sprinkle) actively, so no, baptism from a distance is not possible. However, it would be entirely acceptable if the bishop stands on the shore, but one or several others do the actual pouring. That would make the one-who-pours the minister.

The other specific concern I mentioned in the OP was whether there is any problem with validity in baptizing multiple people at once.

That’s easy. There’s no problem with multiple baptisms happening at the same time. There’s ample scriptural, historic, and liturgical precedent for this, so much so that it’s a non-issue. The current baptism rite even includes a specific text for baptizing multiple people at once. It happens all the time at Easter Vigil Masses. So this is a complete non-issue.

The Church certainly values a distinction between that which is holy water, and that which is not. You have helped explain some of the finer points of this in previous threads.

If blessing the river does indeed create holy water, the next time I witness a group river baptism maybe I’ll fill a bottle for my own use, or dip my fingers in to bless myself before entering the riverside chapel where they’ve filled the holy water fonts with sand.

And of course there are more persnickety questions that beg to be asked if holy water is confected (is that the right word?) upon blessing a river, such as

1. 
   *]Is it just the water in the immediate vicinity that is blessed? In which case I assume the holy water flows rapidly downstream.
   *]Or is it the water in a specific segment of the river that is blessed, in which case the water that enters that segment immediately becomes holy water, while that which exits the segment ceases to be holy water - this seems the least likely to me.
   *]Perhaps the entire length of the river is instantly filled with holy water - but for how long?
   *]Perhaps the priest’s intent is the determining factor, just as it is with what bread and wine are transsubstantiated during mass.

1. 
   I just don’t see it as an important issue. If someone is baptized in a river and someone wants to keep some of that water as blessed water, then fine. I would personally say that the water in that vicinity is blessed. I don’t think any theologian would say that the water 100 miles up or downstream was blessed. Where to draw that line? Again, I would just shrug my shoulders and say “I don’t know.”

 

[babochka]

I just don’t see it as an important issue. If someone is baptized in a river and someone wants to keep some of that water as blessed water, then fine. I would personally say that the water in that vicinity is blessed. I don’t think any theologian would say that the water 100 miles up or downstream was blessed. Where to draw that line? Again, I would just shrug my shoulders and say “I don’t know.”

Following up on this thread, I asked my pastor about this a few days ago. His reaction was similar to yours: He shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” Then he suggested that I should ask a Thomist.

 

[rowlands]

Multiple baptisms in the sea in Montenegro, 2016 (Orthodox).

youtu.be/fFwKCDJsBC8?t=220

 

[27lw]

Well, if you read about the “Northern Crusades”, it seems possible that these people didn’t really want to be baptized anyway.
As wikipedia says:
“The Northern Crusades[1] or Baltic Crusades[2] were religious wars undertaken by Catholic Christian military orders and kingdoms, primarily against the pagan Baltic, Finnic and Western Slavic peoples around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, and to a lesser extent also against Orthodox Christian Slavs (East Slavs). The crusades took place mostly in the 12th and 13th centuries and resulted in the subjugation and forced baptism of indigenous peoples.”