Dear Apologist, What does the Church teach about being "born again"?
By Steven O'Keefe, CAA Staff Apologist
As Catholics we place a high value on acknowledging our need for salvation and having powerful experiences of divine consolation.  However, this is not the traditional Christian usage of the term “born again”.  That term has always been connected to Paul’s descriptions of dying and rising in Baptism found in Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12. He says, “We have been buried with Him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

This is why the earliest Christian writings which mention Baptism identify it as the way we are “born again”.  In 152AD, Saint Justin Martyr wrote the following: “[Converts] are brought by us to where there is water, and they are regenerated in the same manner in which we ourselves were regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, ‘Unless you be born again, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’”

So the Catholic Church teaches the original understanding of what it means to be “born again”;  It happens in Baptism when we are made members of Christ.   The powerful spiritual experiences which others mistakenly identify as being “born again” – while laudable – are not what the term means.