Posted on 05/06/2008 6:50:34 PM PDT by Revelation 911
Who owns the past?
More specifically, who owns the people of the past?
That's what's at the root of a new worldwide policy of the Roman Catholic Church which forbids access to parish records to Mormons.
What are parish records? They are the ledgers and histories of Catholic congregations which record such things as births, baptisms, marriages and deaths. In many countries and communities, they are the only records of who lived where when.
In many countries, they are the only way to trace one's family tree and identify one's ancestors. They often are the only records which have been kept about people who lived generations and centuries ago.
And now, by dictate from Rome, they are off limits to Mormons.
Catholic bishops have been directed to deny to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints any access whatsoever to parish records from any place or any period in history. They may not be scanned, photographed, microfilmed, copied or otherwise seen or duplicated.
The ban applies only to Mormons.
That will be doubly frustrating because Mormons as a group are keenly interested in genealogy – tracing their roots – and Mormons as individuals comprise a large percentage of the world's professional genealogists – the people you hire to research your family tree.
The reason for the ban, according to the Catholic Church, is a disagreement with Mormon doctrine and practice. Specifically, the Mormon belief in “baptism for the dead.”
Mormons believe that everyone, to be saved, must be baptized. They believe that applies to all people, those who are alive now and those who have died. They believe – based in part on a reference in the New Testament – that people living today can be baptized as proxy for those who have died.
The belief is that the people who have passed away – living now in a spirit world awaiting the eventual resurrection – have the option to accept or reject the baptism. If they there, exercising their freedom of conscience and belief, want to accept the baptism which has been done here, they can.
What happens is, in a Mormon temple, a Mormon would go down into a baptismal font and be baptized on behalf of a dead person.
That dead person is often an ancestor of the specific Mormon involved. That dead person would have been identified as that Mormon researched his or her family history.
To help in that effort, and as a resource to all people interested in tracing their family tree – regardless of faith – the Mormon Church has for decades stockpiled records having to do with vital statistics. First in a giant vault in a mountainside, and now in computer data banks accessible to all in community-based family-history centers, the Mormon Church has copied census records, parish records, county registers, and any other type of government or church record that lists people from the past.
These records, available now on countless computer screens, allow people to trace their family lines. Often, Catholic parish records are very valuable. If someone is descended from a Catholic family, getting the parish records from an ancestral hometown can open up generations of unknown ancestors.
To help make that possible, Mormons have been engaged in “records extraction.” Records and registries – government or religious – are photographed and then scanned or typed in. Then anyone – for free, and without regard to religion – can access them.
That means that a person curious about his lineage could go to a family-history center and type in, say, his grandfather's name or his great-grandmother's name. He could then explore the hits, checking for connections, and then trace backward, finding the names of the parents and grandparents of those people. People can also learn what countries or regions their families were originally from, and get some sense of the history and times they are descended from.
For many people, those are interesting and valuable things to know.
And this decision by the Catholic Church will throw up roadblocks for many of those people.
For one thing, no one else – on a large scale – is preserving or digitalizing these records. If it weren't for Mormon volunteers and the Mormon computer system and family-history centers – all of which are available to people for free, regardless of faith – these records would continue to age and decay, hidden away in churches and city halls around the world.
In many instances, these records would have long since been lost – gone forever – if they hadn't been preserved by the Mormon Church.
But now, one of the richest sources of European information is off limits to Mormons and those who use their record system.
The Catholic Church says it is offensive that dead people on its parish records would be baptized by proxy in Mormon temples.
And that is an understandable reaction.
But they have carried it to an unfortunate overreaction.
Basically, Mormons believe something Catholics do not. Put another way, Catholics believe that these Mormon baptisms for the dead are a bunch of hooey.
That would mean that, from the Catholic perspective, they are meaningless, having no consequence in this life or the next. They are the foolish rites of misguided believers in a false church.
So what harm do they do?
And how far does the Catholic Church go to contradict the beliefs of others? Does it forbid Hindus to believe that Catholics are reincarnated?
And even if the offense is genuine and intolerable, is closing all parish records to one particular group of people a justified reaction?
When some Jewish groups in recent years expressed similar concerns about these baptisms for the dead, an agreement was reached to stop doing the baptisms for most deceased Jews. Jewish records, however, are still open to research and digitalization.
And that seems like a fair accommodation that could be a pattern for a similar agreement between Mormons and the Catholic Church.
But there remains a significant issue: Who do the people of the past belong to?
Do they belong to their church or to their descendants?
If a person is researching her family tree, and her ancestors were Catholic, should she be denied the names and birth and death dates of her flesh and blood ancestors because she happens to be Mormon, or because she hired a Mormon genealogist or because the only computer system in the world that makes these records available for free is operated by the Mormon Church?
Does the Catholic Church have the right to prevent you from knowing the names of your great-grandmother's mom and dad, or the date they were married, or where they were born or buried?
The reality is that no one else is categorically and methodically preserving these records – and countless others – and making them available to the public for free.
For literally millions of deceased people, the only way they can be found by their descendants is through the Mormon genealogy system. That system is available to anyone for free, with no religious obligations or overtones.
It is a service to the present and the past that helps people find their roots.
Ironically, it is the Mormon Church which is spearheading the effort to preserve Catholic records. Ironically, the Catholic Church has now decided to reject that effort.
Because of a disagreement on doctrine, countless people around the world will now be denied an affordable way to learn about their own families. Those people will overwhelmingly be Catholics or the descendants of Catholics.
Those people will be denied information about their own flesh and blood.
And that hardly seems right.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2008
A lot of non Mormons (including Catholics) use the resources of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for the purpose of tracing their family tree. Cut off their nose to spite their face.
The LDS family history centers are open to everyone regardless of faith and the service is free.
So how would the Catholics keeping the records know whether you were a Mormon? An atheist? A Catholic? It’s not like Catholics (or Mormons) look any different than the general population.
I see the point the RC is making.
Esp since not only do Mormons get “baptized” for the dead [a practice which is not Christian in the least and has no support in the Scripture], but dutiful Mormon men also do one other temple duty for the dead [shall we meniton it?] -and the RC is taking issue.
I use Ancestry.com even though I’m still seriously bothered at why the Mormons are gathering that information. I just feel sorry for them for believing that hooey, as the article put it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2012267/posts
Why post this right after posting much the same thing 20 mins ago?
Yes, I read that several times in the article. I get, it's free to anyone.
Well, that would be just about anyone with European ancestry with quite a few Middle Eastern people from the boundries of the Roman Empire thrown in as well.
I see a great business opportunity for an enterprising Catholic to microfilm parish records and sell them to Mormons.
Regarding Catholics and knowing about their dead relatives per Catholic Church records; other than a nostalgic review of their bloodlines, they already know all their relatives, if Catholic, or in general Christian, were already baptized, as part of their initiation into the Catholic (or any, or most of the Protestant) faiths.
As for Mormons wanting to rebaptize them as part of their curious form of Christianity (if that is what it is) what’s the point? Assuming that those Catholics, or Christians, lived their lives in accordance with their respective faith, and not strayed, we hope to be reunited in heaven with those who’ve passed on,and with Jesus Christ himself.
Baptism is baptism, based on the Gospels of the Christian faith. Period.
Okay. so let’s talk about it: it goes beyond the practice of baptism ‘for the dead’, it also includes ‘marrying the dead’, in Mormon temples.
Mormon men who want to be gods have to get their celestial wives by marrying them in Mormon temples, as polygamy is now not practiced -legally and openly- and as they need the wives to bwe sealed to them in a temple so they can raise them as their wives, then getting them from the lists of ancestors from RC parish rolls ahs been a hunting ground for wives.
Marriage and Sealing
President Joseph Fielding Smith said, “Now the duty of a man in his own family is to see that he and his wife are sealed at the altar. If married out in the world before they joined the church, or if they have been in the church and have been unable to go to the temple, it is that man’s duty to go to the temple, have his wife sealed to him and have their children sealed, so that the family group, that unit to which he belongs, is made intact so that it will continue throughout eternity. That is the first duty that man owes to himself, to his wife and to his children. He receives this blessing by virtue of the priesthood” (D. of S., Vol. II, p. 206).
Concerning celestial marriage in the temple, Apostle John Widtsoe wrote, “Several approaches to eternal marriage may be made: Two living persons may be sealed to each other for time and eternity. A living man may be sealed for eternity to a dead woman; or a living woman to a dead man. Two dead persons may be sealed to each other. It is also possible, though the church does not now permit it, to seal two living people for eternity only, with no association on earth... Further, under divine command to the Prophet Joseph Smith, it was possible for one man to be sealed to more than one woman for time and for eternity. Thus, came plural marriage among the Latter-day Saints” (E. & R., p. 340). While polygamy in this life is not being practiced by most Mormons today, many LDS men are sealed to more than one wife for all eternity in the manner just described.
http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/mclaims9.htm
The anti-Mormon diatribe coming from some segments of the Republican Party, and from many on FR, is truly disgusting and unAmerican.
Thank you for posting this as an accompaniment to the Deseret News piece.
“[a practice which is not Christian in the least and has no support in the Scripture”
1 Corinthians 15:29
“Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead?” (New King James)
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Hmmm I don't think my deceased relatives would be alright with this at all. Not any of them.
“So how would the Catholics keeping the records know whether you were a Mormon? “
We have horns, don’t you know?
Im sorry you feel that way....this was a news article and worthy of posting
If you dont care for it, perhaps you should abandon the thread
Before you do, please identify where on this thread there has been an "anti mormon diatribe", and perhaps we ought to alert the mod and ask the offending posts removal
“The anti-Mormon diatribe coming from some segments of the Republican Party, and from many on FR, is truly disgusting and unAmerican.”
Ya think?
actually one is from deseret news, and the other is commentary on same from lonsberry.com
You didn’t think it was appropriate to append it to the other thread? It was worth starting a brand new thread? OK.
I'll take my direction from the mods thank you
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