The Vatican blocks Mormon access to records | A Soft Answer

http://www.asoftanswer.com/2008/05/02/vatican-blocks-mormon-access-to-records/

This is a link to a Mormon site about the controversy re re-baptisms of Catholics.

Maybe we can start writing letters to the Catholic Bishops with copies to the Vatican to let them know of our feelings. We could also write to the Mormon Bishops in the local stakes. The two entities need to have a dialog about this. Maybe the LDS can work something out in order to allow further work.

The Jews who in 1995 discovered that their Holocaust victims had been re-baptized into the LDS were furious and thought the LDS church arrogant. They want to be Jews forever. I know devout Catholics want to remain so also.

I know I wondered why so many of my ancestors had been "baptized" into the LDS since the actual documents show they were all baptized Catholic. I found that many published family trees and trees and group sheets submitted to the LDS church or gathered by them from books, etc. had been put into databases and volunteers would go into the temple and get into what looks like a giant hot tub, nd they have the lists of people to be baptized on a screen and they baptize them by proxy.

Why this posthumous baptism? "A distinctive doctrine of the [LDS] church is that the dead as well as the living may receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. Every man, woman, and child who has ever lived or who ever will live on the earth will have full opportunity, if not in this life then in the next, to embrace or reject the gospel in its purity and fullness". The belief is that baptism needs be done by the living since it cannot be accomplished except by those "still in the flesh". They say that Jesus sent his disciples to preach his gospel which includes the "ordinance of baptism". They also say that the Apostle Paul mentioned baptism for the dead. However, I am in agreement that only direct descendants converting to the LDS church have the right to speak for their ancestors and re-baptise them themselves, and non-descendants should not take that upon themselves.

When I told someone at my local LDS church that my Catholic ancestors would roll over in their graves to find they had been re-baptized into a creed they did not believe in and rejected outright when alive, I was told that the dead had a right to refuse the baptism--- in other words, the dead have "free agency". But why put that burden on them?

Most Christian churches believe that to die without being baptized is to remain in purgatory forever and never get to Heaven. So, Catholics baptize their babies who do not have the ability of free agency. When my Mother realized I had rejected the Catholic Church (I am a confirmed agnostic) she wanted to know why I was the only one in the family who did that--that I had been "born" a Catholic, and I told her no, I had been baptized as an infant without my permission, and that I had the right then to reject that creed.

So, I don't really care who re-baptises me into whatever faith--since all Christians and Muslims feel that the doctrines of their creeds are the only true faith, as long as I can continue to have access to the records of my ancestors. Too bad that the LDS re-baptized some without the permission of their ancestors, and too bad that the Catholic Church objects so much to something that is meaningless to their creed.

We'll just have to see how this plays out. In the meantime I am grateful for the genealogical work of the LDS, but so sorry to see that they were so aggressive in applying their doctrine.

Emilie
Port Orchard, WA