I want to change my user name to “Dick Move.”
I should just repost my first post in the thread CalMeacham linked to:
Anyone who cares about the substance of that opinion can read the other thread, where it’s set forth at length.
I now pronounce all your ancestors atheists.
When you are performing a Christian religious ritual in a church, one that purports to make all my ancestors atheists, get back to me and I’ll see if I can’t work up some indignation.
And I pronounce all previously deceased peoples of history to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. That means tha…hold on, there’s someone at the door.
Maintaining an accurate and extensive genealogical database is a more laudable goal than trying not to offend some prissy Pwecious Pwincesses. Go Mormons, go! Our descendants will thank you.
Doesn’t offend me personally, but I can certainly understand why it would offend others - even if it is effectively meaningless (unless you are a Mormon). It is disrespectful of the living to monkey with the memory of their dead ancestors, even if it is only in symbolic ways.
It is the same reason why pissing on someone’s gravestone isn’t a good idea. It affects nothing - the dead cannot feel piss, and piss will not damage or deface a gravestone that gets acid rain on it anyway. It is simply preceived as disrespectful, even if the pisser happens to think it is a sign of everlasting fertility or something.
See, that’s it in a nutshell for me. I don’t want to spend eternity in Protestant Heaven, much less Mormon Heaven, so I never fully renounced being Catholic. See, if there’s anything I learned in daily religion classes in grades 1-8 it’s what I need to do at the last possible second to guarantee an eternity (well, after a spell in Purgatory) with Italians, Mexicans, and Poles. The food’s better, the women prettier, and there’s booze and gambling.
This topic comes up from time to time, and I don’t know anything that I or any other LDS members on this board say will change anyone’s mind.
The bottom line is that no one is trying to “force” anything on anyone. We are trying to give an opportunity for salvation to those who did not have that chance when they were alive. You will never see anyone make the claim that “Great-Grandpa Edward was a Mormon because I was baptized for him.” It doesn’t work that way.
As a point of interest, there is evidence from Paul’s letters that the early Christians also practiced baptisms for the dead. In the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul is preaching about the fact that all men will be resurrected. Almost in passing, in verse 29, he asks,
My main objection to it is that it’s yet another way that the LDS church refuses to mind their own business. Stop trying to tell other people who they can marriage, stop trespassing onto other people’s property to try to convert them, stop posthumously baptizing people you didn’t even know…just mind your own damn business.
I’m speaking solely about the church leadership here, but good riddance, what a bunch of nosy assholes.
And you, and other LDS members, either cannot or will not acknowledge the insult in offering someone an “opportunity” based on your assumption they “did not have that chance when they were alive”. You completely disregard the reality that many of those people earnestly and honestly believe they did have that opportunity already, thank you very much, and either knowingly accepted salvation in their own faiths or knowingly rejected the entire concept (of salvation, of Christianity, or of religion) outright. And you do not merely “give the opportunity” – “Hey dead people! if you want to be baptized give us a call and we’ll arrange it!” – you perform a sacrament, a temple ordinance upon them or for them by proxy, without knowing whether they would appreciate it or even allow it. And many of them would clearly not allow it, not in a millions years, as you fully well know.
But you (the LDS) do it anyway. Of course you do, because your religion requires you to, and you believe it is the right thing to do – a gift you are offering to people who will be disadvantaged if they don’t have it. (Heaven for them? Maybe; but definitely not the extra-super-primo-fine Mormon heaven!) I have no real problem with that – on what grounds could I? – but I don’t think anyone with even a basic understanding of religion or faith would seriously say they cannot possibly imagine why anyone would be offended by it.
A single passage subject to such vehement disagreement as to meaning strikes some of us as pretty flimsy “evidence.” (Anyone who cares to, can simply Google 1 Cor 15:29 for about a zillion hits.) Which is of course just another reason the LDS should confine its practices to its own adherents and leave those of other faiths alone.
Lemme see if I have this straight. Grampa Schlomo is already in the Afterlife. He sees that the LDS had it right and, had he been exposed to Mormonism while physically alive, he would have had the chance to be right, too. What’s to stop him from converting on his own? Why does he have to wait for Joe Smith here on Earth to extend the invite?
From the OP’s link:
I think you need to accept that Jews have been given excellent reasons to be wary of attempts to distort the historical record in relation to the Holocaust.
I do agree with the sentiment stated elsewhere here that the main problem with the Mormon practice of posthumous baptism is that it insults and causes pain to the descendants of Holocaust victims.
Yeah, well you also get the Irish (most of 'em, anyhow) and the French.
Because Saba Schlomo must be baptized in order to be saved. God is all-powerful, but He chooses not to save the unbaptized, no matter how worthy. No baptism = no salvation. Ergo, if Grandpa wasn’t baptized while living, he must be baptized after death.
The rationale for it makes perfect sense, assuming you believe the LDS tenets. The fact that it makes zero sense to many people outside the faith doesn’t really concern them, because they are convinced that they are right and the rest of us are wrong. Imagine how happy Schlomo will be when he sees his error and accepts his baptism! Who could possibly have a problem with that?
It doesn’t seem to me to be hard to understand why a Jew might be offended by this. Throughout the history of Christianity, Jews have been forced to convert and undergo baptism they did not want (or die resisting it). The world is finally enlightened enough where it’s not a worry while they are alive, but now people are trying to get them after they are dead. Even if they understand that it’s not a “real” baptism, it’s symbolic of all the oppression they have undergone throughout history.
I’m Catholic, and I don’t love the idea of someone else proxy baptizing me, but if I were Jewish, I think I’d be completely outraged.
They’re not offended because they honestly, truly couldn’t give a flying fuck. They have a thousand justifications, and what it all really comes down to is, “We don’t give a flying fuck.”
Why just apply it to the church leadership? The members know what the leadership is doing and support them in various direct and indirect ways.
I read that already, and I still don’t see how this plays intio the hands of Holocaust deniers.
This isn’t just Jews and Catholics, by the way. The Mormons have been doing this to anyone they think appropriate. there are reports from the 19th century of them doing it for anyone, period. I suspect that prominent figuires like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have been vicariously baptized and undergone other rituals several hundred times by now. The LDS have been at this for over 150 years, and it hasn’t exactly been a Big Secret for qute a while now. I’m a bit surprised everyone’s getting upset over it at the same time, just now.
Because I’m a goddamn hippie liberal and I can’t help but feel terribly guilty whenever I pull out that big brush. I do have a problem with people not speaking out against it, but I’m not sure if that’s on the same level as those who are really all for it.
Then again, I seem to recall Mormonism being one of those religions where churches operate along “God needs your cash so hand it over or your soul is damned”, so that might add another layer to it.
The world would be such a better place if people just got the fuck over the idea that your god wants you to drag as many people as you can into your belief set.
I think few would care if the LDS people had a ceremony once in awhile in which they offered posthumous baptism to all deceased members of other faiths, without specifying actual people.
It’d still be loopy, but not as offensive as compulsively collecting souls and jotting down names in a book, apologizing and promising to stop, but then secretively resuming the practice anyway.
I recall this same argument (minus the implication that everyone is suddenly picking on Mormons) being made in a thread about Confederate flag protests - i.e. that if an offensive practice got by for awhile without a great deal of attention, it is effectively grandfathered and no longer a legitimate target of protest. Sorry, idiocy like this doesn’t get any automatic pass.
It holds true for all religions: no matter what ancient books, rituals and inertia seemingly tell you to do, God does not want you to be a pain in the ass.