Posted on 03/02/2012 6:55:55 AM PST by SeekAndFind
IN A COLUMN many years ago, I described how I once attempted to chart a family tree. Most of my father’s family had been killed in Auschwitz, and my efforts to trace their genealogy left me, I wrote, with a family tree that “has stumps where branches ought to be’’ and “gets narrower, not wider, as it grows.’’
A woman phoned me the morning that column appeared. She said she was a Mormon, and wanted to add the names of my father’s massacred relatives — the column had mentioned about 18 of them by name — to the Mormon Church’s vast genealogical archives. I told her that I certainly had no objection. Indeed, I was grateful for any gesture that might help preserve some remembrance of these family members whose lives had been so cruelly cut short.
At the time I knew nothing about “baptism by proxy,’’ the ritual that Mormons believe gives even souls in the afterlife a chance to accept their faith and thus enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only later did I learn that some Mormons, eager to save the souls of dead Jews, had taken to submitting the names of Holocaust victims for posthumous baptism.
The discovery didn’t trouble me at all. In Judaism, conversion after death is a concept without meaning; no after-the-fact rites in this world can possibly change the Jewishness of the men, women, children, and babies whom the Nazis, in their obsessive hatred, singled out for extermination. I found the Mormons’ belief eccentric, not offensive. By my lights, their efforts to make salvation available to millions of deceased strangers were ineffectual. But plainly they were sincere, and intended as a kindness.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.boston.com ...
Thanks Mr Jacoby for a little common sense. I mean, Hindus teach their children that I’m gonna be reincarnated as a rat or some such thing, to which I reply....so what?
I wonder how Muslims would feel about Mormons baptizing their ancient leaders? Or even their modern leaders?
I’m thinking Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. Now *there’s* someone who needs to be baptized, even if it made him melt.
It would certainly be entertaining to announce his baptism to Iran, as well.
With a Mormon Bishop and future Cardinal, running for President and the strongest opposition to the cult leader coming from devout Christians, we will see more and more conservatives trying to legitimize Mormonism.
If Christians get heart palpitations over mumbo jumbo in the basement of a Mormon Temple how are they going to deal with real palpable evil in the world that would just as soon kill us as look at us.
RE: With a Mormon Bishop and future Cardinal, running for President
Err.. Cardinals are supposed to be UNMARRIED, CELIBATE and CHILDLESS.
Certainly Non-Scriptual. It seems a bit silly and narcissistic.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
I don’t think Christians would have many problems with what the mormons are doing IF the mormons didn’t keep trying to claim that; they’re Christian, a “complete restoration” of Christianity and that what they’re doing is Christian.
Wanna be mormon? Fine, knock yourselves out, just don’t expect Christians to sit on the sidelines while they spew their heresies and blasphemies in the name of Christianity.
Because if we don’t, many will fall victim to the lies perpetrated by mormonism.
And to the “evil in the world”, Christians understand that there is a larger threat, the threat to one’s soul, not their body.
Bishop Romney is not Catholic, but he is expected to become the Mormon equivalent of a Cardinal, and possibly a Pope/Prophet..
As a point of fact they claim they are the ONLY Christians.
He has already served in a very high leadership role in the Mormon Church. I don’t know if he still holds the position or if it compares with the power of a Cardinal in the Roman Church.
Thanks, I know.
I was one once.
These vultures, the momos, did this to my sister, who died from luekeima at 23 years old. Posthumously “baptizing” w/o any permission, is the tip of the iceberg of disdain that I have for these kooks.
Can you explain why they bother with this ritual for the dead? Don’t they also believe we get another chance after death to choose to be baptized and therefore saved? Seems that makes this ritual redundant.
Yes Bishop Romney was a Bishop, and then a Stake President, over other Bishops.
Romney is expected to become the Mormon version of a Cardinal, and could possibly go all the way to Pope/Prophet, his uncle was in line for that Holy position when he died.
Mitt is thought by many Mormons to be fulfilling the "White Horse Prophecy" if he becomes President of the United States.
Temple Mormon, Harry Reid already runs the Senate.
If Romney wins the presidency and Senate does not turn Republican majority, we will have a situation in history where we will have BOTH a Mormon President and a Mormon Majority Leader in power.
The headline illustrates the wrong perspective on this issue. Of course, this ritual has no effort on the eternal destiny of the people being baptized by proxy. It is the poor deceived persons who think that baptizing these people is doing any good who the anti’s are concerned about. Participating in this ritual only draws them deeper and deeper into this deception and further and further from the grace provided by the true Jesus Christ. Drawing attention to this bizarre practice isn’t likely to turn those already involved but might warn others away.
Sure Mormons baptizing the Jewish dead does no harm, but does no GOOD either!
Absolutely and I find this cult’s practice appalling and arrogant!
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Jeff Jacoby's experience is fine, he was asked, and gave permission. Kind of. And has no bearing on baptism of dead Jews withoug permission, and against the policy of the Mormon Church. Unfortunately like birth control I suspect this will hang around as a political issue.
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