Posted on 09/17/2008 8:04:31 PM PDT by Grig
Why are the Catholic bishops so concerned about Mormons baptising dead parishioners? The Mormons didn’t invent baptism of the dead. The practice has a significant history within mainstream Christianity. The decision to order its abandonment was taken only after heated debate, and was a close-run thing.
What’s the difference, anyway, between baptising the dead and baptising babies? A tiny infant will have as much understanding as a dead person — none at all — of the complex philosophical belief-system it’s being inducted into when baptised, say, a Catholic. Transubstantiation? There’s daily communicants go to their deaths without any clear understanding of the concept. So what chance the mewling tot?
Indeed, given that all Christian Churches believe that the soul lives on after death and retains understanding and consciousness of self, doesn’t it make more sense to baptise dead adults than live babies?
Apart from which, if the Catholic bishops hold that the beliefs of the Mormons are pure baloney (as they must), and their rituals therefore perfectly meaningless, how can it matter to them what mumbo-jumbo Mormons might mutter over Catholic cadavers?
The current controversy has been prompted by Archbishop Dermot Clifford and Bishop Bill Murphy complaining to the National Library in Dublin about records handed over by the Church being made available to all and sundry. The Mormons are believed to have taken advantage of this facility to comb through parish records and baptise the souls enumerated therein, a batch at a time.
The bishops stepped in after the Vatican warned all national churches earlier this year about Mormons misusing diocesan records. I have heard it suggested that the alarm of the Holy See had escalated after reports that Mormon multiple baptisms were regularly breaking the official record set by General Liu Kung Lee who, in one afternoon, baptised seven regiments of Chinese soldiers into Christianity with a fire-hose.
Let’s look at the facts as understood by the early followers of Christ. For more than 300 years after the Crucifixion, baptism of the dead was widely accepted, its biblical basis located in 1 Corinthians 15, 29: “Otherwise, what shall they do who are baptised for the dead if the dead rise not again at all? Why are they then baptised for them.” In other words, a deceased person could be baptised by proxy: otherwise, how could such a person be included in the Resurrection? A good question.
The radical Cerinthians and the Marcionites were especially energetic baptisers of the dead. It was to wrong-foot these sects, seen as competitors with the official Church at a time when it was consolidating its position as the State religion of the Roman Empire, that the Synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) voted, after bitter debate, to condemn the practice.
Interestingly, a clear trace of baptism of the dead has lingered in official practice to the present day, in the form of prayers for divine intercession on behalf of the unbaptised souls. Prayers for intervention were encouraged in Catholic schools in the 1950s. For all I know, this remains the case.
Baptising the dead might be seen as analogous, too, to the Jewish prayer of intercession. Which serves as a reminder that US Jews put a halt to galloping post-mortem Mormonism a couple of years ago by arguing that deJudaising those who’d perished in the concentration camps constituted a profound insult to Holocaust victims. Following talks in New York between leaders of the two religions, the Mormons backed off.
The key point is, surely, that all religions believe that the soul, after death, at last knows what’s what — whether Hinduism, Free Presbyterianism, Jainism, Judaism, Islam, Catholicism or whatever is the true religion. What if it’s Mormonism? What if it’s an everyday occurrence on the other side that Catholics and Protestants are left standing dumbstruck at the Gates, gasping: “Mormons! Who’d have believed it?” And maybe a wife berating her husband: “There! I told you it would be the Mormons! But would you listen?! Now it’s eternal hellfire for the two of us, I hope you’re satisfied.”
In that scenario, shouldn’t all members of all other religions be literally eternally grateful to the Mormons for sharing their saving grace even unto and after death?
If, on the other hand, it isn’t the Mormons at all, those who turn out to have been right can wave a merry farewell to the crestfallen followers of Brigham Young as they trundle downwards to their eternal comeuppance.
What’s the problem?
The last real prophets died prior to the time of Alexander. Being a Mormon means hoping that God has a sense of humor.
God does have a sense of humor. Don't have to be a Mormon to believe that.
Nope.
Hey, you can drop the Mormons-are-not-a-cult stories now.....Mitt lost, as any thinking person always knew he would.
Where does scripture teach this?
I can’t seem to find any verse indicating infants should be baptized, there is of course 1Cor15:29 about baptism for the dead, plus the records of early Christians who practised it.
What’s the difference, anyway, between baptising the dead and baptising babies?
Babies presented for baptism are alive. The dead are, well, not.
Yeah, the duck billed platypus is an sure example that God has a sense of humor.
I’m both a Baptist and a “Moore man”. How about that?
Beat me to it. Stealing from Kevin Smith, I see?
[1 Corinthians 15:29] Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead? This doesn't say anything about the soul living on and on. It's speaking of the resurrection.....which is scriptural.
You’re familiar with the story about Joseph Smith, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Rosetta stone?
The practice has a significant history within mainstream Christianity. The decision to order its abandonment was taken only after heated debate, and was a close-run thing.
Pardon? I am not intimately familiar with this particular practice through history, but as far as I am aware the only really solid references to this strange practice, beyond the very cryptic words of St. Paul which may be directed toward such, are a few patristic comments, and canons in the Synod of Hippo and the Third Council of Carthage, I believe. None of them, that I know of, accepted such as orthodox or proper. And nothing among these comments would provide real evidence of a "significant history" though of course they do show that somebody was doing it. St. John Chrysostom pointed to the Marcionites as being the perpetrators, and since they held that God was evil, I don't accept them as evidence of much that is Christian.
And where does the "close-run thing" come from? What is that a reference to? Is it being claimed that the votes in the two councils was tight? I have never heard anything saying that those councils were heated in their debate or close in their votes. If there is some evidence of this specific issue being hotly contested it seems strange that it is never discussed.
Not really.... I'll start it and you finish:
Joseph Smith, Napoleon Bonaparte and Rosetta Stone (Sharon's lesser known sister) were in a bar and Jo says...
Thanks for the 1Cor reference and the history lesson on the early Christians. There is a verse in one of the Gospels that says, "Let the little children come to me."
Huh? Cadavers? I'm not a Mormon, but am pretty knowledgeable about the LDS Church's past and present practices, and I'm quite sure I've never heard of any cadavers being present during baptisms of the dead. Presumably the author was just being figurative, but it could be misleading to anyone who's unfamiliar. It's not like Mormons are conducting these baptisms in mortuaries or graveyards -- a practice which the families and fellow religious group members of the deceased would be very reasonable in objecting to.
And the context of that verse is very clear that he was talking about not telling them to run along but letting them spend some time keeping company with the Savior. There are no grounds to say that verse has anything to do with infant baptism.
Joseph Smith thought he had something nobody could ever check him on i.e. Egyptian hieroglyphics; the best scholars in the world had been beating their heads against trees for centuries with that one and gotten absolutely nowhere. The claim was that he had used “prophecy stones” to translate two or three papyri into an equal number of the holy books of the Mormon faith. And then Napoleon Bonaparte dragged the Rosetta stone back to Europe with him, several decades later European scholars could translate hieroglyphics fairly easily, and it turned out one of those papyri of Smiths was a formula for brewing beer. Scholars pronounced Smith a total fraud at the time.
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