IS
IGNORANCE,
EVERYTHING
STARTS
TO
LOOK
IGNORANT!
Posted on 07/13/2010 10:43:45 AM PDT by Colofornian
MONTREAL — The “handful” of Mormons who continue to baptize Jews posthumously are violating church policy, says a senior member of the Utah-based religious movement.
Rabbi Schachar Orenstein, centre, spoke at a Mormon temple along with Mormon leader Mark Paredes of Los Angeles, left. At right is George Eric Jarvis, president of the Mormon church’s Mount Royal Stake, or Montreal branch.
Mark Paredes, who sits on the Mormons’ High Council in Santa Monica, Calif., and speaks for the church on Mormon-Jewish relations, was guest speaker along with Rabbi Schachar Orenstein of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue at what is described as the first ever formal dialogue between Quebec Jewish Congress (QJC) and the Mormon church in this province. The June 27 event was held before close to 400 people at the Mormon temple in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
There are about 9,000 Mormons in Quebec.
Paredes said there is “99.99 per cent” compliance today with the 1995 memorandum of understanding that was signed between the Mormons, formally the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Jewish leaders.
A few years earlier, it had come to light that some Mormons – Paredes says it was only eight – had submitted the names of tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust victims for what Mormons call “proxy immersions” for the dead.
The former U.S. foreign service officer made the comments as part of his lengthy address on Mormons’ strong support for Judaism and Israel, titled “The Common Threads of Judaism and Mormonism, or Mormons and Jews in the Last Days: A Zion Relationship.”
Paredes, who until recently was the executive director of the Zionist Organization of America’s western region, said, “No one thinks that more than a handful of Mormons, out of nearly 14 million [worldwide] continue to defy the church’s policy [on proxy immersions].”
The only instance where the church sanctions such activity is if a Jew was an ancestor of a Mormon, he added. Paredes explained that Mormons are required to research their own ancestors and, if they had not accepted the Mormon faith, perform “temple ordinances” for them that will allow them to do so in the after-life. However, these ordinances do not confer church membership, he said.
They were never permitted to do this for anyone else’s ancestors, he stressed.
However, Paredes continued, it is “highly inaccurate to refer to proxy immersions as ‘posthumous conversions,’ ‘making Mormons of the dead, etc.’”
“Mormons agree with Jews that Holocaust victims should not have temple ordinances performed for them, except in rare cases where a victim is the direct ancestor of a living Mormon,” he said. “Jews who are concerned about this issue are entitled to an explanation and, having visited Auschwitz last fall, I am very much of this opinion, and we do our best to provide one.”
Paredes, who was also the American Jewish Congress’s national director of Hispanic community outreach and a press attaché at the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, said he doesn’t believe that the strong historic ties between Mormons and Jews has been harmed by this issue.
He also reassured Jews that the Mormons are not seeking to convert Jews. Although proselytizing is a central aspect of the religion and all young men serve as missionaries, they are not targeting Jews, or members of other religions, for conversion, he said. “If our missionaries knock on a Jew’s door, they’ll also knock on the doors of his Catholic neighbour, Baptist friend and atheist cousin.”
Rabbi Orenstein also spoke on the commonality of the two religions, although he admitted his knowledge of Mormonism was not as great as Paredes’ of Judaism.
Paredes distanced Mormonism from Christian anti-Jewish beliefs.
“I am proud to state that our church has no history of anti-Semitism. In fact, we have a history of being pro-Semitic, philo-Semitic, of actively helping, not just tolerating, Jews in our midst.”
Mormons believe they are members of the House of Israel, feel a strong affinity with the Jewish people, and their theology and ritual have parallels with ancient Judaism. “Latter-day Saints are modern-day Israelites who build temples, have the priesthood, and receive revelation from prophets,” he said.
Mormons, like Jews, have known persecution throughout their history, since being founded in the United States in 1830, he went on.
The church is Zionist and has called for the gathering of the Jews in Palestine with their own political state since its founding.
In Los Angeles, Mormon-Jewish relations are especially strong, he said. Paredes recently took five rabbis to Utah and, for the past three years a Mormon has hosted the annual Israel Festival, for example.
Paredes’ employment in the Jewish community or Israeli-based organizations is not that unusual for Mormons in Los Angeles, home to 600,000 Jews. They work or have worked at the Jewish Federation, Magen David Adom, several synagogues and an Orthodox day school, he said.
Rabbi Orenstein touched on Mormons’ and Jews’ shared texts and vocabulary.
“We both speak of prophets and redemption and revelation. The definitions may vary, but it is a frame of reference for engagement,” he said.
Abby Shawn, chair of QJC’s human rights committee, said the meeting was at the initiative of the Mormon community and she welcomed the overture. “It went really, really well. They were receptive, inquisitive and highly sensitized,” she said. The Mormons arranged to have kosher food served afterward.
Shawn and Rabbi Orenstein appreciated Parades’s candour in addressing the baptism and missionizing issues.
“I see this as the first step to building a bridge. I hope there will be a follow-up in the future,” Shawn said.
Oh oh!
SOMEone said ANAL on a RELIGION thread!
Don’t tell Resty!
And also when ya gotta go, ya gotta go. Whether you call it going to the powder room or dropping the kids off at the pool. :-)
THX1138
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