Posted on 05/08/2008 10:33:59 AM PDT by NYer
The Catholic Controversy of the Week (well, the most-prominent one) involves what you see above.
That's a Mormon baptismal font, and in a move that sent the religion beat into overdrive -- and threatened to put a damper on the tip-top relations that just saw two top leaders of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints attend an ecumenical prayer gathering with the Pope for the first time -- an early April letter from the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy urged the global church to withhold parish registers from LDS, citing the Mormon practice of posthumous baptisms.
The story was first reported by CNS last week:
The order came in light of "grave reservations" expressed in a Jan. 29 letter from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the clergy congregation's letter said.While the LDS leadership has refrained from public comment on the letter -- which it was supposed to receive on Monday -- in an effort to contain the damage in the Mormon home-base, where Catholics and LDS have long enjoyed exemplary ties, Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City took to the local airwaves earlier today:
Father James Massa, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, said the step was taken to prevent the Latter-day Saints from using records -- such as baptismal documentation -- to posthumously baptize by proxy the ancestors of church members.
Posthumous baptisms by proxy have been a common practice for the Latter-day Saints -- commonly known as Mormons -- for more than a century, allowing the church's faithful to have their ancestors baptized into their faith so they may be united in the afterlife, said Mike Otterson, a spokesman in the church's Salt Lake City headquarters.
In a telephone interview with CNS May 1, Otterson said he wanted a chance to review the contents of the letter before commenting on how it will affect the Mormons' relationship with the Catholic Church.
"This dicastery is bringing this matter to the attention of the various conferences of bishops," the letter reads. "The congregation requests that the conference notifies each diocesan bishop in order to ensure that such a detrimental practice is not permitted in his territory, due to the confidentiality of the faithful and so as not to cooperate with the erroneous practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."...
Father Massa said he could see how the policy stated in the letter could strain relations between the Catholic Church and the Latter-day Saints.
"It certainly has that potential," he said. "But I would also say that the purpose of interreligious dialogue is not to only identify agreements, but also to understand our differences. As Catholics, we have to make very clear to them their practice of so-called rebaptism is unacceptable from the standpoint of Catholic truth."
“I do think it’s important for people not to jump to conclusions,” said Bishop Wester. “It’s simply reminding us that our sacramental records are supposed to be preserved, taken care of and that they’re supposed to be kept confidential.”...While the rite of posthumous baptism is commonly understood to extend only to the non-LDS ancestors of Mormons, reports last year indicated that Pope John Paul II was just one of a list of notable names baptized that also included Hitler, Chairman Mao and Mickey Mouse.
2NEWS’ Brian Mullahy asked Bishop Wester how he reconciles his words with the words of Father Massa.
“I understand what Father Massa is saying,” said Bishop Wester. “What he says is true, the Catholic and LDS Churches have two distinct theologies of baptism. We know that. We’ve always known that.”
The LDS practice of baptisms for the dead has also been condemned by Jewish groups who say that names of Holocaust victims are still in LDS genealogical database for unwelcome baptisms.
Like Jewish leaders in past, Bishop Wester met with a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for a respectful conversation.
Bishop Wester says he wants to make sure that it is understood that the Vatican letter is not an attack on the LDS church and despite doctrinal differences; the two faiths can still live together peacefully, without straining relationships.
“Even though we have different theologies, we have found many ways to work together, we respect each other, we acknowledge the values we hold in common. That hasn’t changed,” said Bishop Wester.
Ping
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.
“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.”
I believe its supposed to be derived from the lavabo (cleansing vessel) in Solomon’s temple which was brazen and had cast oxen.
The LDS group believes their modern temples are either a more perfect continuation and/or the fulfillment of the Jewish archetype (i.e. Solomon’s temple).
I notice that there are twelve of them - possibly something to do with the Twelve Tribes? (aren’t the folks in the Book of Mormon one or more of the Lost Tribes?)
Is that a bovine polygamous family?
Could you not know that it appears to be an attempt to reproduce the vessel that was used at Solomon’s temple? Or maybe you were joking and I’m a bit thick?
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.
It's always nice to see somebody "get it".
I was thinking of the Golden Calf.
I hope this can be resolved so that researchers won't suffer. I doubt that the pope believes that a dead Catholic will be adversely affected because a fifth cousin three times removed had some kind of proxy baptism performed for him in the Mormon church 100 years after his death.
++++++++++++++
There are 12 oxen.
I think (and please, someone correct me if I remember wrong), that they represent the 12 tribes of Israel. Don, you are better then I am at this kind of stuff, am I right?
"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.”
Wow. You sure cut to the chase.
Great post.
sitetest
Will we see anyone asking
“Why do mormons worship oxen?”
/sarcasm
LOL!
You're bad!! That didn't even occur to me.
;-)
sitetest
The dead cannot be baptized, so this is a moot point. Furthermore, the Catholic Church and most orthodox Protestants have never considered Mormon baptisms to be valid, because they are not Trinitarian Christians and essentially have a different intention in baptizing.
This is all about inflating Mormon statistics. Muslims - and Islam is a heresy that is very, very similar to Mormonism - assert that everybody was born Muslim, and therefore they can consider themselves to be the majority, which the press happily believes. The Mormons assert that they have some huge numerical majority, and while I have seen them all over the place in Europe “evangelizing,” I have actually met only one native European Mormon. I’m sure there are more, but the point is that Mormons are very canny and are trying to use this as a media war.
It’s a pity. Mormons (the LDS, that is, who of course were forced by the US government to adopt American standards if they wanted Utah to be part of the Union) are trying very hard to be Christians, and many of them assert that they are like any other Protestant group. That is, somehow the Faith disappeared for 1500 years and then reemerged with their particular “reformer.” The Mormons, of course, think it disappeared until the 19th century, but heck, what’s a few hundred years among reformers.
That said, when their “reform” occurred, they rejected the Trinity, do not regard Jesus as the Son, and like the Muslims, have a “prophet” that trumps everything else. The only thing that prevents them from truly following their prophet, as the Muslims follow their prophet, is that the US forced them to abandon some of their prophet’s practices, and there are some in the Mormon community who actually want to be standard Protestant Christians and are trying to reject that ugly heritage.
Baptizing the dead is simply a way of inflating their head count, and while it has no effect, it makes them look a lot more important than they are. Personally, I think the real battle is going to come with the clash between their “prophet” and Islam’s “prophet.” Both of them had similar beliefs, but obviously, there’s only room in this world for one “final prophet.”
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.
Yes.
Some modern Christians like to mock what they don't understand about Mormonism not realizing that it also is a part of their own tradition. 1 Kings gives a basic explanation along with the meaning of other Christian smybolism in the rest of the chapter.
1 Kings 7:23 ¶ And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 24 And under the brim of it round about there were knops compassing it, ten in a cubit, compassing the sea round about: the knops were cast in two rows, when it was cast. 25 It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them, and all their hinder parts were inward. 26 And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two athousand baths.
Here is a 12th century "orthodox" version.
Liège (Belgium), St. Barhélemy (Bartholomew) - Baptismal font of Renier de Huy (first part of the XIIth century).
Ping
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And some folks are continually deceived by the half-truths, and clever deceptions of Satan.
This is an invasion of personal privacy.
Genealogical research? What does that accomplish? We are all descended from Adam and Eve and that is their point in gathering these documents. They require that all converts to the mormon faith document their genealogy in order to have their ancestors baptized. in the process, they have discovered that after 10 generations one can trace their ancestry all the way back to the first two humans.
What I think is being prohibited is parishes materially assisting LDS heresy by providing records directly to them.
And I'm a genealogical researcher, AND I've used the LDS records.
By the way, they are not all that accurate, as they are submitted by all sorts of people of varying expertise -- some of them are worse than the little old ladies in tennis shoes who keep trying to find some family descent from Bonnie Prince Charlie (vide Florence King's Southern Ladies and Gentlemen). There are some awful errors in the LDS databases. I don't enter anything in my database proper unless I have verified it directly by seeing the actual records - otherwise it stays in my working notes.
Mormonism is not "part of [Christians'] own tradition", though, just because Joseph Smith borrowed a lot of stuff from the Bible. So did Islam.
I like the oxen.
I am Catholic, and so I LOVE symbolism - espcially OT symbolism that foreshadows the Christological truths of the NT.
And the oxen in the white mormon font also have a dual symbolism of the American West, which I would imagine is a source of pride for mormons.
My dear Aunt Ruth was the youngest daughter of a lady (her grandmother, my great-grandmother) who was the youngest of 11 children. Our ancestress died very young and had not imparted any family knowledge to Aunt Ruth, so that that branch of the family was cut off (my grandfather died years ago). Aunt Ruth did not even know her grandparents' names. I got started on that branch of that family and was able to provide for Aunt Ruth before she died the names of her grandparents, where they were born, where their parents came from, and quite a bit of interesting information about them, including the names of all their children. She told me she was so happy, that she had always wondered who they were!
It is very much a Southern thing to know where your family hails from. It is also necessary if you want to join the D.A.R. or the Daughters of the Confederacy. We aren't descended from a "Signer" -- but we ARE descended from the brother of one - the elder brother of George Walton, who signed for Georgia.
With a lot of the old church records, probably no one else is going to go to the trouble and expense of filming them if the Mormons don't. In some cases the original records were later destroyed so that all that survives is the microfilm. If only they had microfilmed the Irish records which were destroyed in 1922.
I wouldn't trust the records submitted for the LDS ceremonies, since errors could have crept in, but only the original records. (Of course there's always a chance that an error was made when the record was first made.)
The same goes for the S.A.R. or the S.C.V., of course.
I joined the SAR on the basis of descent from a member of the Virginia militia who was present at the siege of Yorktown. I don't need to know that I had an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution, but I find it interesting.
Almost 100 percent of their stuff is duplicated by other genealogists (mostly the D.A.R., Colonial Dames, F.F.V., and other such organizations). Not only microfilm (the complete U.S. Census handwritten returns are available in any branch of the U.S. Archives), but actual books such as "Marriage Announcements from Upcountry Carolina Newspapers" - this book actually exists, I consulted it to find one of my gggg grandfather's marriages.
The destruction of the Irish records, btw, is unfortunately due to an attempt to preserve them by consolidating them in a central location -- which was then torched by the IRA. Microfilm if it existed at all was in its infancy, but if it had been instituted the same centralization would have had to take place, and they AND the microfilm would have gone up in smoke just the same.
Weird!
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?
I believe the group that caused the destruction of the Irish records wasn't even the main IRA, but an extremist die-hard faction.
A lot of Virginia records were lost because they were taken to Richmond for safekeeping, and then burned in 1865.
BTTT
thanks
English records are also first class. They've done a good job keeping them, and they were doing a good job long before Joseph Smith quit treasure-hunting and crystal gazing and took on a new line of work.
The Irish records have always been a problem, long before the IRA was even thought of. Irish government has always been a bit lackadaisical in the matter of efficiency. Btw, Pearse and Connnolly are not what I would call an "extremist die-hard faction," even though the IRB was not the IRA (I guess you could call it a predecessor). And Collins was involved in both the IRB and the IRA.
I totally agreee! In one of my previous jobs, my boss was a mormon. When he explained about their baptism for the dead, he said I had the right to file a document with the LDS Church stating that I did not want to be baptized by them now or in the future. What arrogance!!
BTW - can you post the link from the other thread. I would like to see how many of my ancestors have been baptized by them.
English parish records in theory are available from 1538 on, when Thomas Cromwell ordered them kept (I think not every parish has fully-preserved records). The contrast with Scotland is stark, where the records even in the 1700s are far from complete.
From what I've read, even before 1922 the Irish records were far less complete than those of England. Apparently the Catholic parish records were not kept at the Four Courts in Dublin but in local parishes, so may survive, but you have to know which parish and get permission to look at the records from the pastor--at least that was true in the early 1980s. Possibly things have improved since then.
My attitude towards both sides in the Civil War is "a pox on both your houses." Count on that shady character de Valera to come out on top though.
Scotland's records are a bit messy compared to England, but at least they had a census relatively early on.
Our family was mostly in and around London and in the county of Kent, and the parish records are exemplary. Apparently the Great Fire didn't do a lot of harm.
http://www.familysearch.org/
From my searches, the info seemed to come from Social Security Death Registry...I didn't see any actual 'RC' type notation...nor does it say whether or not the name listed has been 'baptized.' It may have been or maybe not. No one has provided any info as to how to ascertain that.
Sorry if the 'link' isnt live...I am using my phone and sometimes they 'die.' It is the correct addy though...
PaMom
Thank you! Most interesting. It seems a large group of my ancestors have been missed :-) (and I won’t be volunteering the information either). Most appreciated.
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