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I don’t care, they can go ahead and Baptize me to their hearts content.
With Our Lord’s grace I’ll be sitting in heaven laughing at them!
Where’s the controversy here? Mormons only do baptisms for the dead because they consider all non-Mormon baptisms to be ineffective and void. Likewise, Catholics consider Mormon proxy baptisms (and, primarily due to a denial of an eternal, triune Godhead, their “normal” ones, too) to be invalid. This constitutes a “tie.” Till now, Catholics haven’t publicly considered Mormon proxy baptisms to be a direct, intentional slight to us or anyone else, despite the obvious implications of them. Perhaps the Mormons need to look at this in the same way. The mutually considered “invalidlity” of the other’s baptismal practices offsets any umbrage-taking. Let’s move on.
But on the other, I can see that parishes should not materially cooperate in assisting a completely invalid baptism.
In other words, I think it's probably not right to turn over parish records to LDS baptizers, no more would it be right for a synagogue to do so.
If the LDS can obtain the records from a neutral source, either a government archive or a genealogy database, then more power to them, baptize away, knock yourselves out. But it's tacky to expect a rabbi or a priest to help them do something that's against their religion.
P.S. . . . does anybody know what the deal is with all the cattle around the font? If it were a watering tank, they'd surely be facing the other way . . . . Seriously, I've seen medieval fonts with supporting animals, usually the Gospel archetypes of the angel (Matthew), the winged bull (Luke), the lion (Mark) and the eagle (John), but never with all the cows.
That explains their fascination with genealogy.
Is that a bovine polygamous family?
It means nothing, but I would find it offensive. The idea of “baptizing” people after their deaths is a mockery of other Christian faiths.
In the spiritual dimension, it would have no effect on any soul as far as I understand Christian baptism.
The only victims of these proxy baptisms are the practitioners of the false religion that practices them. They can't do a thing to the departed.
At least Jews aren't the only people being silly over this matter.
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I may be in the minority here, but I find it ‘dis-honoring’ the life intentions and faiths of the departed. I checked the list (a link was provided on another thread) and to my dismay, both my deceased parents and great aunts (who were Catholic nuns!!!) were there. So my profoundly Catholic dearly departed could have been baptized (I know in name only) into a faith they knew nothing about. Why should their names, their existance on earth be ‘used’ for the faith of someone alive today who knows nothing of them? If they did know of their lives, why would they ‘baptize’ a Catholic nun Mornon? Why can’t the departed be left to rest in peace?