The authors begin by asking the readers of the book a question forcefully presented as a back cover blurb. It states:
Mutual recognition of baptism has grounded ecumenical efforts, but does contemporary Roman Catholic pastoral practice reflect these ecumenical theologies?

They do not look to peoples’ opinion, whether lay or ordained, to answer it. Instead, they seek contemporary and ancient authorized texts to provide an explanation of the tradition of what an appropriate response should be. That response is found in six chapters and an appendix.

Chapter One, Ecumenism and the Reception of Christians from other Churches,  provides us with the shared hermeneutic for reading these texts: the Roman Catholicism of the authors, receptive ecumenism as a necessary pedagogy for developing a theology of baptism, the obvious contradictions between official documents and what actually happens in the borderlands outside the large powerful political institutions, studying the rituals associated with baptism as  providing us with who and why some people are seen within the church and others outside it, and, finally, they affirm the  essential social dimension of the ecclesial community as a necessary frame of reference for interpreting the use and understanding of baptism.

Chapter Two, Historical Foundations, takes us back to the third century debate between Cyprian and Stephen about how to understand the baptisms of those outside the Catholic church of the time. As an indicator of the controversy, it is important to note that the tradition of Rome and Norh Africa was to admit heretics, schismatics, and apostates into the church by the imposition of hands. Also, the official practice was that someone already baptized using the Tridentine formula would not be rebaptized. At the same time, it is clear from the official documents that the official theologies and practices were not necessarily continued outside the dominant cities and that other rites associated with water baptism and the tridentine formula, such as anointing and laying on of hands, were being abandoned during the first eight centuries of the church.

Chapter Three, Clarifying the Debate, affirms the gradual acceptance of trinitarian baptism as the ritual of belonging and, at the same time, the rituals of laying on of hands, penance, verbal, or written, renunciation (anathema), anointing with oil, and profession of faith were being used for acceptance of those already baptized in another church.

Chapter Four, Rebaptism and Canonical Reinterpretation, takes us into the Middle Ages and the intense centralization of the Roman Catholic Church through its bureaucratic rulemaking. The already reviewed diversification in ritual and interpretation of reentry into the Church is dealt with in more detail, especially as it occurs on the edge of the Holy Roman Empire. While one rite dealing with Arians, heretics and apostates may be found in the official liturgical books of these times it is noteworthy that there was no ritual in these books for the reception of Eastern Christians. As the years pasted both East and West began to adapt the rituals that developed on the periphery of their empires into the liturgical book of the more powerful authorities. These rites, in words of the authors, “” …seem to blur he boundaries between reception to the church, reconciliation with the church, and confirmation.”

Chapter Five, Settling into the Schisms, and Six, Ecumenical Revisions, brings us to the present by showing how the diversity of rituals provided by the past become present in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) used in today’s Catholic Church. The review of the five schemata that resulted in the OCIA are a wonderful conclusion to the history of the dilemma first demonstrated in Chapter One and the concluding Appendix A Proposed Order of Reception into the Full Communion of the Catholic Church of Those Already Validly Baptized.

Hopefully I have provided you, the reader, with enough information to see how the authors answered the proposed question. You alone know if you have both the curiosity and the pastoral experience to read more deeply into this book’s answer, I would moreover like to leave you with a few necessary addenda to my reading of the book: 1) Thankfully, the publishers allowed footnotes on each page of the book. At the same time, they are written in diverse languages: Greek, English, French, German, and Latin. 2) The concern of theologians with the meaningfulness of the rite may not be what the ones participating in the rite recognize or expect. I always remember a young woman who wanted to become a Catholic looking forward to learning the various Catholic devotions, especially the Rosary. In her case, baptism was necessary but the devotional knowledge was what satisfied her. 3) “The Proposed Order of reception…” if used, should be done as an experiment in the true sense of the word “experiment.” Many of us graduating with a degree in Liturgy from Notre Dame in the late sixties went on to “experiment” with various facets of the liturgy but they were never true experiments. Instead, they were recreations of approved ecclesial rites which, with time, passed out of usage in the Catholic church. However, I must say, that recently I have seen some of these “experiments” used in Protestant celebrations.