The Mormon faith holds that unless one has been properly baptised into the faith, the deceased's soul cannot enter into the highest levels of salvation.
This would really seem to suck if the deceased was born after Joseph Smith recieved the revelation, seemingly being left out no matter how well the life was lived.
This is where the Mormon doctrine of Proxy-Baptism comes into play.
Basically, it means that any Mormon in good standing with the church may submit himself for baptismal rites in the name of a deceased non-Mormon relative, thereby conferring the graces of baptism onto them.
Nothing is automatic. It gives the spirit of the deceased the option to become a Mormon in the afterlife, should they so chose to accept it.
Of course, if you are a dead non-Mormon who only realised after death that Mormonism was The True Way, you would accept this gift happily.
(By extension, if Mormonism really does suck, no harm/no foul, right?) This also explains why Mormons are so genealogy obsessed. It's really important to their faith and practice.
Now, on to the gist, shall we?
And to be expected, somewhere in this story is an angry Jew or two...
Mormon church has posthumously baptized a Holocaust victim, this time Anne Frank. The allegations come just a week after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apologized when it was brought to light that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were posthumously baptized by church members at temples in Arizona and Utah in late January.
Researcher Helen Radkey, a former Mormon who revealed the Wiesenthal baptisms, said this week she found Frank's name in proxy baptism records dated Feb. 18, showing the ritual was performed in the Santo Domingo Temple in the Dominican Republic.
If you are a Jew, you should believe that the Mormon faith is a bogus pile of bogusness.
At least, that is what I assume being a non-Mormon myself. If I thought it was all good, I wouldn't be a non-Mormon, right?
So Jews, what's your issue?
It was a baptismal rite of no consequence.
In other words... nothing happened.
If anything, it shows that a Mormon relative somewhere felt enough love in his heart for a Jewish relative that he never knew, and wanted to give to her the bestest, greatest gift he was capable of: the gift of Heavenly Salvation.
To a Jew. A non-Jew loved a Jew.
This is not an act of anti-semitism, but anti-semitism in reverse.
An act of charity and love.
Get over yourself, already. And here comes the Mormon church taking away their Jewishness,Oh, shuddup!
Your offense is a direct offense against Mormons.
Dare you to ever preach 'tolerance' to me again, you hypocrite bastard.
The Mormon church doesn't exactly lend credibility to their own faith either:
"The Church keeps its word and is absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism,"
Right.
The Mormons are so convinced of their faith, yet will bend to political-religious pressure, depriving rightous spirits of their just rewards from God.
First it was "Blacks are not cool before, but now they are". The logical/theological explanation for the change in Black's coolness might fly with some, but it always seemed to be a stretch for me...
Now it's "Jews are cool, unless they died for being Jews".
I'd love to hear the theological explanation for that one.
10 comments:
Mormons, among themselves, specifically justify lying--particularly to non-Mormons--if it advances the cause of the faith. Read "Under the Banner of Heaven" and any number of other sources.
(I say this as someone who believes that all faiths are lies at their core. But here it is a matter of doctrine. One which Mormons, naturally, will vehemently deny.)
When they say they aren't Baptizing Holocaust victims anymore, they mean that they are just going to do their best to make sure you don't hear about it, and deny it when you do.
Just saying.
I would imagine that anything that smells of forced conversion (even in a purely symbolic way) is matter of particular sensitivity to our Jewish friends, given their history in Europe over the last 1500 years or so.
The phrase I was trying to remember (but couldn't in my pre-caffeinated state) is "lying for the lord".
http://www.mormonwiki.org/Lying_for_the_Lord
i didnt know about the mormon policy of lying, but is doesnt suprise me a bit.
Ya gotta shade the truth a bit if your church's heritage includes your church's founder taking women from their husbands and taking people in their early teens as wives.
And I guess this does have shades of forced conversion, but quite frankly, it reminds me of something I saw at Stone Mountain, GA. A couple of kids were driving a jacked up pickup with the Southern Cross flying proudly, and I asked a young black couple whether it bothered them. (naive yankee me) Their answer was that they had bigger things to worry about.
So do I, as long as I don't get the faithful Mormon woman's version of Heaven. :^)
FWIW, the Mormons are useful if you are interested in pursuing genealogy; because they do the after-death baptism thing, they have a crapload of birth records and other things available.
I guess I don't worry about this too much; if in the future some relative decides to be a Mormon and has me baptized, it won't change the circumstances of my life one bit. To Bubba's point, I have bigger things to worry about.
Oh, and for reference, some of my ancestors actually took part in chasing the Mormons out of Nauvoo. They didn't take kindly to Joseph Smith taking other men's wives and taking prepubescent teens as his wives as well.
Kind of a shame that THAT side of the story doesn't get told more often.
sometimes its good to be The Prophet.
It's the same reason people throw a shit-fit about folks saying "bless you" when someone sneezes. It lets them bully a safe target.
IIRC, the Mormons got in a bit of trouble with the Catholics in the past because some folks were going in and copying all the birth, death, marriage, etc records straight out of the files-- the offenders, in the cases I heard of, were told that's tacky and not to do it. In at least some cases, they're still totally allowed to use the records for research, though.
If they'd made a BFD about including Holocaust victims, I'd say it's tacky-- since it was done quietly, secretly, the way you would if it were genuinely a gift to the dead, not so much.
See also, charity: there are bad ways to go about giving people help.
good point FF: i dont know the mormon protocols.
i assume the baptised announced 'i'm doing this for so-and-so'.
this may not be the case.
i just dont know.
Gino-
I'm no expert, but according to the crash-course my mom gave us before we visited Utah (and a simi-Mormon aunt...who is married to our simi-Catholic uncle... yes, it was strange) all you have to do is file the paperwork. There isn't any big announcement, but the person that files them does get some sort of holy cred for bringing others into the faith.
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