Because Catholics believe in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” - it’s even in the Apostles Creed. So it’s completely unnecessary to have more than one baptism.
This Wiki page has a very good discussion about vicarious baptism, different sides of the issue. By the way, the LDS do not consider it repbaptism because, as mentioned upthread, the LDS only consider LDS baptisms to be effective. When an LDS member converts to Catholicism, that person must receive the Catholic ordinance, which is not called, AFAIK, rebaptism.
As I mentioned in some other threads on the subject, the LDS practice absolutely does not include baptizing the individual on whose behalf it is offered. It is essentially–and literally–a prayer.
I wonder, though, what the LDS Church’s official reaction to this news is. I just checked the newsroom section of the Church’s home page and did not see anything about it there.
Don’t hang it on religion. I dislike it too and I’m a Christian.
If you know nothing about my beliefs that maybe you’d be better off not assuming what they are? I do not believe the LDS worship a different God from the Christian God; I’ve never said anything like that, here or anywhere.
It really pisses me off that you would presume to inform me of what I must believe. You can ask if you like, and I may or may not answer, but any further notification of what I must think or believe, or what naturally flows or does not, will be ignored.
Which is, of course, merely another facet of what is so insulting about the practice: That they would presume to decide for others what baptisms are or are not “effective.” It is quite literally saying “Your beliefs are not good enough.” Again, I can certainly understand believing that – quite a few people worldwide believe their own religion is the One True Religion. But to go beyond believing it to substituting your church’s baptism for their own after they are dead and cannot object – that’s the part that is offensive.
I have to tell you in all frankness, the most honest defense of the practice IMO is the one that says “Yep; that’s what we do. We’re sorry you don’t like it but we believe the dead have to be baptized into our faith to enjoy full communion with God and we believe our obligations to the souls of the departed outweigh our desire to please the living.” That’s hardly going to lessen the offense, but at least it’s honest. At the end of the day, my finding the practice offensive does not mean I can’t also see that it is done in good faith. I might wish they didn’t do it, and I might endorse any attempt by another faith to stymie it (as you know, the LDS isn’t actually entitled to baptismal records from the Catholic church or anywhere else), but I can still understand why it’s done. At the end of the day, this response is also one that cannot be argued with.
To me, defenses that amount to defining the rite as something other than what it is, are not persuasive and come across as not intellectually honest. (I’m trying to be respectful here, and distinguish how the argument strikes me, which I am doing, and imputing intellectual dishonesty to you, Monty, or to anyone else, which I am not doing.)
It is NOT a prayer as the term is generally defined. It’s not even only “essentially a prayer” as far as the LDS are concerned: It is an ordinance, and a temple ordinance at that, one that can only be performed in the temple. It involves ritualized action, including immersion of the proxy – who must meet certain criteria to be an acceptable proxy – and a formalized recitation. There is a set, there are participants, there are lines. That is not just a prayer under any common definition of the term, and the fact that it is not merely a prayer is also reflected in what it is called: a baptism for the dead.
Saying it is a prayer requires defining the term “prayer” differently from how it is commonly used and understood, just as saying it is not a baptism requires defining the term “baptism” differently from how it is commonly used and understood. I’m not required to accede to such redefinitions in order to make the practice more defensible. Nor is that redefinition necessarily respectful: The LDS themselves say this a temple ordinance, not a prayer. They say that it is a baptism for the dead, done because any non-LDS baptism done in life is not effective. They thus acknowledge that what other Christians purport to do by baptism is essentially the same thing they purport to do with their baptism. I do the religion the courtesy of assuming that they are actually doing what they appear to be doing and say they are doing. I accuse them of engaging in a practice that many outside their own faith find offensive; I do not accuse them of disengenuity.
Earlier this week KSL TV asked both the LDS Church and the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese for comment, and both declined to say anything because they had not yet seen the declaration.
Hey, maybe we’ll see a “baptismal arms race” come out of this.
The other churches can go into their respective huddles, and then emerge with assurances that they can advertise their ceremonies as being “post-death-rebaptism proof,” or something. Maybe they’ll even offer a slightly updated ceremony, acknowledging the efforts of competing faiths and specially guarding against them. “After much prayer,” they might say, “we are confident that this baptism is permanent, and serves as spiritual armor in perpetuity. People baptized in this way will slide right past those posthumus proselytizers trying to hand out leaflets outside the Pearly Gates. So have no fear that your loved ones will be recruited out of the grave.”
Then the Mormons will huddle, and come back with: “We’ve updated our ceremony also, taking into account the efforts of the religiously misguided to block our message of salvation, and God tells us that we are now guaranteed to catch the ear of everybody who enters the afterlife.”
Other churches: “Oh yeah? Well, before we bury people, we’re cutting their ears off! So there!”
Mormons: “We’re spreading spiritual glue on the ground around the gates of paradise! Neener neener!”
And so on.
Should be worth a few laughs, at least.
Don’t ever call me a liar again, Jodi. Oh, and I suggest you go find a dictionary that has the definitions of the word prayer in it.
Note, from the very same dictionary, the definition of Baptism does not contain the word prayer.
The Baptism ceremony is not a “mere” prayer. It has much deeper meaning and purpose.
I knew nothing other than that you were a Protestant, and given that apparently the four largest Christian churches agree with me, I didn’t think I was jumping too far for conclusions.
If you do not believe the LDS worship a different God, then why are you not LDS? There must be some difference between that religion and yours, and if that difference is believed to be acceptable to God then it is a different God no matter what other similarities there may be. For a start, I would assume that the LDS God is happy with baptising the dead, and likewise I would assume that your defense against that idea suggests you believe your God does not.
I apologise for the presumption. But I have asked questions of this type numerous times, and they appear to have been ignored. I felt the only option open was to rather than work with your particular beliefs, to suggest what might be the case for all the beliefs you might hold - hence all the "if"ing.
If I haven’t pissed you off enough that you are justifiably uninterested in carrying on, could I try again?
- Do you believe that the baptism as performed by people who follow your beliefs to have a vital spiritual component?
- Do you believe that the baptism as performed by the LDS is a sacred, by which I mean holy, spiritual, influenced by God, ritual? That the baptised person is affected in a spiritual way?
I was very careful to avoid doing so, but if that’s your take on it then fucking suck it up. My response would be more measured if yours had been, but I don’t take orders from you.
I looked it up before I posted, despite the fact that, as I was certain, I know what it means. The definition of it does not undermine my position, it supports it.
Hmmm, mlees; I seem to see the word ceremony in there. One would presume that baptism is a religious rite, would one not? Religious rites are, of course, ceremonies.
But you were. You don’t know what flavor of Protestant I am, and you don’t know that I would agree with my church’s position on this if it disagreed with mine. We don’t sign an oath of perfect allegiance, you know. FTR, I’m a Methodist, a member of the United Methodist Church, and a pretty liberal one.
Because I don’t believe the same things they do. Their understanding of God is different from my own in some pretty significant ways, but why would that necessarily mean they are worshipping a different god?
There are differences between all Christian denominations and between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I believe we all worship the same God. This is hardly an extraordinary position held only by me. As it happens, you don’t have to search too far to find people who would exclude the LDS from the community of Christian faiths based on their beliefs, but I do not consider it my business to make those sort of determinations. They consider themselves Christian and that’s good enough for me.
You can ask me what I believe if you want. I’m happy to answer so long as you are respectful. But if you’re looking for me to argue them with you or defend them from you, I won’t, because I don’t owe that to you or anyone.
I believe that we ask for God’s presence and blessing through the ritual of baptism, which is a sacrament in my church. (One of only two.) We do not believe in re-baptism (for any faiths; we would not be so presumptious as to re-baptize a Mormon on the grounds their baptism was ineffective), and we do not believe in baptism after death. But I do not believe that the rite becomes a meaningless thing if God is not present. (How would we know if He was there or not?)
Holy to them, and therefore respected by me. Whether it is influenced by God depends on who you asked. Certainly they are invoking Him, and to say that He is not present would be a presumption on my part. How would I know if the baptized person is affected in a spiritual way? Wouldn’t that depend on the person?
A number of people, both posters here and people I know IRL, what my personal opinion would be of other faiths doing the same or similar practice. I’m fairly certain I’ve mentioned on the board that I would have no problem with it. I have attended Buddhist rites on Buddha’s Birthday (it’s a national holiday here so it’s easy to attend them on that day) where one important part of the ceremonies is called The Transfer of Merit. I actually found it to be beautiful.
But this is not a co-option of a ritual you yourself practice but rather a separate religious rite; it’s not like you’re Tranferring Merit in your church and the way they do it is irreconcilable with the way you do it. It also is not done to replace any ritual you do yourself in your faith, on the grounds that what you have chosen to do for yourself was ineffective. And the fact that you’re okay with it still doesn’t mean that everyone else must be.
Fair enough, and I apologise again for assuming too much.
I think we’re talking past each other again.
I think you’re saying that all the worship goes to the same God. And i’d agree, that’s not a revolutionary or rare position. But each of those faiths have a generally different idea of who that God is, and as you’ve pointed out even within those faiths there’s a wide difference. What i’m saying is that while the praise may end up going to the same God, that which is being worshipped is different. The God invoked is different. The God whom some picture when praying is different. That while there are many people who believe all people or all of some people worship the same God, generally the God they believe all worship is their definition.
Ok.
I would say that if you God didn’t exist, then the rite would be a meaningless thing in spiritual terms. It wouldn’t be meaningless to you, or people of your faith, of course, because you believe he does. In physical terms, specifically emotionally, it still carries meaning. But spiritually it would not. If there is no God, then asking for God’s prescence and blessing is (apologies for bluntness) pointless on that regard.
I do not know. But it seemed to me your annoyance at this practice was partially due to the idea that it was a ritual being inflicted upon others. Surely since the person in question is dead, and thus can only be affected by God and spiritual influences, you are actually presuming they are affected, that God is heeding them?
No, but evidently the fact that you are annoyed by one particular practice must mean that everyone else must be also.
Point out to me where I have ever purported to speak for anyone other than myself.
Why, because you say so? If the Tin Man, Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion have different ideas of what the Wizard looks like, are they each petitioning a different wizard?
But this is not the case. There is a generally accepted understanding that all People of the Book (Jews, Muslims, Christians) worship the same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You can find people in each religion who would disagree, but that’s pretty much the party line.
If I don’t know if He exists or not (and at the end of the day, I don’t), how does that render the act without meaning in this world, which is of course the only world I can know, and under my faith?
How is this relevant? We can only gauge the meaning of anything based on the knowledged and beliefs we have in the here and now, so any ultimate lack of Spirit is irrelevant. We don’t know in this life, and this life is where we function. “Ultimate pointlessness” outside this world is itself pointless; this is the world we’re in and none of us know the next.
I have no idea what affects the dead; I make no presumptions in that regard.
I don’t get your point here.
The word ceremony doesn’t appear in your linked definition of prayer.
My point was that the Baptism is not seen by some of the faithful as the same thing as “any old” prayer. There is a lot more meaning attatched to it.
Prayer and Baptisms may be both subsets of religious ceremonies, but that doesn’t mean that they are the same thing.
Jodi seems to be arguing my thoughts a little bit better than I can, in most ways. 
That’s entirely due to my lack of skills in correctly and completely articulating myself.
Let me try one last time:
In doing the Baptism of the Dead ceremony, the Mormons are pissing off folks of other faiths. They are PO’d, in part, because the ceremony is (indirectly) involving folks who are not part of the Mormon faith, and may be direct ancestors of those “other faith” folks. The dead may not care, but their decendants seemingly do.
It doesn’t matter if you or I think that the ceremony is actually effective or not. The Mormons clearly believe that the ceremony has spiritual meaning and benefits, or they wouldn’t bother doing it, and the folks upset clearly believe that it is more than just any old prayer.
If the Mormons had announced that they were “offering prayers” for the victims of the typhoon in Burma, I don’t think anyone would mind much.