Posted on 12/04/2009 12:16:44 PM PST by Colofornian
Helen Radkey sits in her tiny Millcreek apartment amid images of Buddha and Egyptian sun gods, good-luck charms, sacred texts, tarot cards and a makeshift shrine to a Catholic saint, complete with a relic. Her refrigerator is awash in photos of children, grandchildren and friends from around the country and across the globe.
Both bedrooms are piled high with box after box of file folders, evidence of her decadeslong drive to undermine the LDS Church's temple ritual in which living Mormons are baptized for a person who has died.
Each folder contains the name and personal information of an individual who has been posthumously baptized. She found the data through the church's Family History Library, poring over its genealogical records and looking for those people she believes ought not be there -- from Catholic saints to offshoot polygamists to infamous scoundrels such as Adolf Hitler and famous people such as President Barack Obama's mother.
Since 1993, she has garnered widespread media attention with every new find. She traveled to Rome several times to "warn" Vatican officials of the growing warmth between Utah's Mormon and Catholic leaders, reporting proxy baptisms of dead Catholics, including martyrs and saints.
She alerted Jewish genealogists that Mormons were not keeping their 1995 agreement to stop baptizing Holocaust victims.
Radkey has become an irritant to Mormon officials and the church faithful, who wince every time a newspaper reports her latest find in LDS baptismal records.
"I call her the Erin Brockovich of the Mormon/Jewish controversy," says New Jersey resident Gary Mokotoff, past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies who signed the agreement and feels indebted to Radkey for what he considers impeccable research. "You can defame her any way you want personality-wise, but she's still a whistle-blower."
Righting wrongs
Radkey's quest to eliminate LDS proxy baptisms may seem an odd obsession for a Catholic-turned-Mormon-turned-New-Ager from Hobart, Australia, but in many ways it fits neatly with the bulldog for justice she always has been.
Radkey descended from Irish Catholics on her father's side and British convicts and free settlers on her mother's. Her mom, a Protestant who converted to Catholicism at her marriage, often took Radkey and her brother to cemeteries, which is where young Helen first developed an interest in genealogy and a reverence for the dead.
Radkey attended Catholic schools, but eventually went looking for another faith. In 1963, two Mormon missionaries knocked on the door where she was a wife and mother. For eight long years, her husband refused to let her join this American-born religion, but Radkey was determined. In 1971, she relinquished the marriage and custody of her son and daughter for a chance to join.
"I gave up everything for the church," she says.
Later that year, Radkey met Stuart Olmstead, an American who was living in Australia. He also joined the LDS Church; they were wed and later "sealed" in a Mormon temple. They had identical twin sons after moving to Sydney, hundreds of miles to the north.
That's where Radkey's sense of fair play kicked in.
In a neighboring LDS congregation, four members were excommunicated after a disagreement with LDS officials in Sydney. The ouster outraged Radkey, who complained loudly about the treatment.
As punishment for speaking out, Radkey says, she and her husband were disfellowshipped, a step just short of excommunication, and stopped attending. Three years later, she condemned blind obedience in a tract called Free Agency in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Australia and distributed 300 to 400 copies to members in the area.
Then it was Radkey's turn to be excommunicated, but she long since had stopped believing in Mormon doctrine. She ultimately came to see LDS teachings as "poppycock" and the church as an oppressive institution, even a cult.
"I'd lost a sense of there being one true church," she recalls, "and began to explore universal principles."
In 2001, Radkey attended the viewing of LDS general authority Loren C. Dunn, a mission president in Sydney during her falling-out with the faith. Standing over Dunn's casket, she said, "I forgive you."
Moving to Utah
On a December 1980 visit to Boston, Radkey heard Neil Diamond's "America" and promptly decided to move here. The family settled in Kentucky, where Olmstead's family lived, but the marriage didn't last.
In 1984, she moved with her sons to the heart of the LDS Church: Utah.
"I had some unresolved concerns with Mormonism," Radkey says. "I thought I could help Mormons who had gone through what I had. I felt like I had to finish something."
She also had a premonition that she would have something to do with Jews.
"The Jewish imprint had been on me for a long time," she says. "I developed a passion for the Holocaust. I have five crates of Holocaust books, took Israeli dancing and even took Hebrew classes."
In Utah, she met Anthony Radkey, who worked in a flour mill and installed windows. Before she would marry him, Radkey insisted the nonpracticing Mormon have his name removed from LDS Church records. That marriage ended in 1992.
While the twin boys developed their athletic prowess, Radkey spent time doing psychic readings, studying various spiritual traditions and occasionally prancing around the house, crooning Diamond's hits.
She applied for and became a minister in the Universal Life Church because, she says, it didn't have a particular dogma, just promoted justice. Plus, she adds, "you can never be disbarred or excommunicated."
Radkey did feel that her boys needed a religious identity, so she sent them to St. Ann Catholic Parish and School in Salt Lake City.
That didn't satisfy her, either. She pulled the twins out of Catholic schools and sent them to Highland High, where they won tennis titles and earned scholarships to Gonzaga, a Catholic university in Spokane, Wash.
"It was an interesting childhood," says Matthew Olmstead, one of her 34-year-old sons and an information-technology-management consultant in Los Angeles. "She was on a crusade ... to single-handedly take down the Mormon religion. She was so consumed by that, we had a hard time relating to it."
Today, Olmstead respects his mother's work against proxy baptisms, but doesn't share her need to fight the practice.
"She sends us e-mails all the time, I feel bad because we can't read it all," he says. "I couldn't care less what Mormons do behind closed doors in their temples. I don't see the impact that [proxy baptism] has. It's all based on a belief system, and, if you don't buy into it, it's not going to move you."
Still, he recognizes it's a cause that keeps his energetic mother going.
"She needs to have a project to keep her busy. If not this, it would have been something else," says Olmstead, who, like all her children, remains close to Radkey. "She's very smart but could have done better if she had gone into business."
Birth of an obsession
In July 1993, just as the twins were graduating from high school, Radkey traveled to the (Jesuit) Martyrs' Shrine in Ontario, Canada. Moved by what she saw, she returned to discover that Mormons had performed proxy baptisms for Gabriel Lalemant and the other martyrs.
Thus began her dogged effort to publicize every posthumous LDS baptism that might offend others' religious sensibilities, beginning with Roman Catholics. In the mid-1990s, she remained focused on Catholic names, reporting findings to the Salt Lake City Diocese's bishop, George H. Niederauer, who dismissed her concerns.
After 1995, when LDS officials agreed to remove more than 350,000 Jewish Holocaust names from their records, Radkey explored whether those names were back on the list. By 2000, she reported some 19,000 names had reappeared.
In September and October 2002, she met with Family History Library officials to offer them her research for a price -- $30,000 and a continuing fee of $18 an hour, according to the Jewish magazine Forward -- but the LDS Church declined.
Instead, the Jewish Holocaust group compensated her for the hours and hours she had spent scrutinizing LDS genealogical records for Jewish-sounding names of people who died in Europe between 1942 and 1945.
Today, when she uncovers in those temple records any names she considers inappropriate or outrageous -- such as Anne Frank, Sen. Edward Kennedy or the recently canonized Catholic saint Father Damien -- she often alerts the press.
"I don't think it's right to impose [LDS] rituals on those who didn't share their beliefs when they were alive," she says. "We should be letting souls rest in peace and let them be who they were."
Mormons believe they have a spiritual mandate to offer the faith to those throughout human history who didn't have a chance to embrace it while they were alive. They see proxy baptisms as invitations, not compulsions. Those who have passed on can either accept or reject the ordinance.
If Radkey succeeded in scuttling the practice, the church no longer would feel compelled to collect and maintain all those genealogical records -- a loss to Mormons and non-Mormons alike.
Those most harmed by last year's Vatican edict to stop allowing LDS researchers to copy parish records were, ironically, Catholics.
"Most parishes can't or don't answer letters because they are understaffed and their highest priority is the living, as it should be," Kathy Kirkpatrick, a Quaker and past president of Salt Lake City's professional genealogist association, said at the time. "Most folks don't have the resources to visit a parish in person ... and sometimes even a personal visit doesn't get access to the records."
Anti-Mormon allies
Not surprisingly, Radkey has defenders and critics -- in and out of the LDS Church. She declines to name any Mormon friends for fear of reprisals against them. But she gladly claims career anti-Mormons Sandra Tanner and Michael Marquardt among her admirers.
Neither of them is as consumed by the proxy-baptism issue, but both support her efforts.
Tanner, who, with her late husband, Jerald, created Utah Lighthouse Ministry to "document problems with the claims of Mormonism and compare LDS doctrines with Christianity," calls Radkey an "indefatigable researcher" who "has done a phenomenal job."
Marquardt, a researcher of early Mormon history, helped Radkey assemble the materials she took to Rome. He praises her work ethic. "She spends hours doing this, looking up names and locations. As far as I know, it's always checked out."
In recent years, Radkey talked about her work at the annual meeting of American Atheists and posted her research findings on mormoncurtain.com, a site for ex-Mormons to share their stories and "recovery."
Radkey's longtime Salt Lake City friend Lynda Marsh sees a softer, gentler side to this genealogical pit bull.
"Helen can come across as looking like a hard woman, but don't be fooled, she's not," Marsh says. "She has a lot of compassion as well. She'll go the extra mile for a person. She did it for me when my husband was sick."
Marsh acknowledges Radkey's persistence can be annoying.
Once she starts talking about one of her pet issues, it's hard for her to stop. She frequently goes on tangents, piling detail upon detail from her encyclopedic mind, often dropping name after name she has discovered in the LDS library system. She cannot resist writing letters of complaint to newspapers on everything from prayer at public meetings and school choirs singing at religious services to the Catholic stance on gay marriage.
"Helen is a very dedicated person, not only to her research projects but to everything she undertakes," says Marsh, a former Mormon who shares Radkey's concerns about proxy baptisms. "Whether working on a job or with mentally disabled people, she gives her all to it. She's very dedicated to detail. What can you say when she's so passionate about it?"
Negative energy
Critics see it differently.
Rabbi Benny Zippel of Salt Lake City's Congregation Bais Menachem is equally distressed by the posthumous baptism of Holocaust victims, believing that a conversion requires a full-fledged, conscious willingness. Any kind of proxy baptism "is morally offensive and deeply hurtful to both the survivors of the Holocaust," he says, "as well as to the souls of those who died and laid down their lives for their faith."
Still, when Radkey came to him for support, he wanted nothing to do with her efforts.
"I don't like nurturing or enhancing negative energy," Zippel says. "I have been here for 18 years, enjoyed a very positive, enriching experience interaction with the LDS Church, with [former] President [Gordon B.] Hinckley and now with President [Thomas S.] Monson. I don't want to get involved with anything that is damaging to other people."
Gordon Remington, a Protestant professional genealogist, appreciates the use of the LDS Family History Library. He is fully aware of the theological reason Mormons gather the data and is not offended by it.
But Remington is offended by any individuals who use the Family History Library for personal and/or professional research yet seek to criticize or undermine the purpose for which the library exists.
"From the standpoint of a professional genealogist," Remington says, "I find that unethical."
Radkey says she is finished digging up questionable proxy baptisms. After completing a writing course at Salt Lake Community College, she plans to pen a screenplay about serial killer Ted Bundy, aka Theodore Robert Cowell.
Although Bundy joined the LDS Church when he was alive, he nonetheless was posthumously baptized in a Mormon temple.
Who discovered this? Helen Radkey.
(Forget about being nice neighbors; how about honorable neighbors?)
From the article: Radkey's quest to eliminate LDS proxy baptisms may seem an odd obsession for a Catholic-turned-Mormon-turned-New-Ager from Hobart, Australia, but in many ways it fits neatly with the bulldog for justice she always has been.
From the article: Three years later, she condemned blind obedience in a tract called Free Agency in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Australia and distributed 300 to 400 copies to members in the area. Then it was Radkey's turn to be excommunicated, but she long since had stopped believing in Mormon doctrine. She ultimately came to see LDS teachings as "poppycock" and the church as an oppressive institution, even a cult.
From the article: Today, when she uncovers in those temple records any names she considers inappropriate or outrageous -- such as Anne Frank, Sen. Edward Kennedy or the recently canonized Catholic saint Father Damien -- she often alerts the press. "I don't think it's right to impose [LDS] rituals on those who didn't share their beliefs when they were alive," she says. "We should be letting souls rest in peace and let them be who they were."
From the article: Rabbi Benny Zippel of Salt Lake City's Congregation Bais Menachem is equally distressed by the posthumous baptism of Holocaust victims, believing that a conversion requires a full-fledged, conscious willingness. Any kind of proxy baptism "is morally offensive and deeply hurtful to both the survivors of the Holocaust," he says, "as well as to the souls of those who died and laid down their lives for their faith."
From the article: Although [Ted] Bundy joined the LDS Church when he was alive, he nonetheless was posthumously baptized in a Mormon temple.
Yet another Mormon multiple killer...joining LeBaron, Mark Hofmann, Gary Gilmore, Orin Porter Rockwell, Wild Bill Hickman, Meadow Mtn Massacre conspiracy culprits, etc.
I'm a Baptist. I'm gonna stay a Baptist. But if, after I die, some Mormon wants to be baptized in my name, they have my permission. they can neither help nor hurt me as I'll be dead and in God's arms.
come to think of it, I'm in God's arms right now, so they can go right ahead.
Some people are just too sensitive to what others are doing, and some are just trouble-makers.
She is a brave woman. I find it deaply offensive to baptize Holocaust victims who died for Judaism!
As to the effect on the dead, there is none.
As to the effect on the living, it is hurtful and in many ways disrespectful but not actionable in the legal sense (no not a member of the bar so YMMV)
I would say that the people that died in the Holocaust both Jew and Gentile for the most part died as a result of Utopian goals, which is why I despise worldly Utopians.
There is an effect on the families of the dead. It is hurtful and despicable.
The Mormons should be called on it!
I think this woman fits the classic definition of whackjob.
Two mormons come to her door and she ends up getting a divorce and losing her kids to become mormon.
She listens to a song and decides she has to move to another continent.
Finally she finds a religion without rules, where she can be as strange as she wants. She hauls her poor kids all over the map because of her changing belief systems.
Now when they ask her kids about her, they basically say thank God she found something to occupy her, because otherwise who knows what the heck she’ll do.
Thank you for making my point in your post. If people think it’s a bunch of hooey (LDS doctrine) - and this woman obviously does - then why do they care? It would mean nothing.
I am a Mormon. In our faith, we believe that people get a second chance after death to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Most other religions believe that you either go to Heaven or Hell and that’s it . . . forever. No hope. In our Church, we believe that those who have accepted the Gospel and who have obeyed the Commandments on earth will receive their righteous reward in Heaven. Those who did not accept the Gospel and/or who did not obey the Commandments go to a place called “spirit prison” which is not a bad place but a place where they are stuck unless/until someone living on the earth has compassion and the wherewithal to take their case and offer them the opportunity to put Jesus Christ and His Atoning Sacrifice at the center of their universe. St. Paul spoke of the different levels of heaven. In 1 Cor. 15:29 Paul says, “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?” If you do not believe this is real, then it means nothing. This is what we believe. In the Temples we make covenants with Heavenly Father. The first time we go to the Temple it is for ourselves. Every other time we attend the Temple it is for someone else. Most often, we go through the Temple for people we don’t even know.
I don’t know why this infuriates people so much. They are protesting WAY too much and some are obsessed.
The woman is absolutely obsessed and goes way too far out of her way to attack Mormons. It’s really bizarre, to say the least.
The Jews who were killed by Hitler didn’t volunteer to die, so they can hardly be said to have “died for Judaism!”
I confess that I don’t really care what Mormons do.
When they said shma Israel in the gas chambers, they died for kiddush haShem.
To convert them after death when they refused it living is the height of bad taste and hypocrisy.
Well, I posted a double "dead dunk" articles from Peggy Fletcher Stack today -- here's the "twin" article: ProxyBaptismsLDSChurchHopesNew SystemThwartsMischiefMakers
What's interesting, Saundra, is you using that reference to ex-Mormons/non-Mormons about being "obsessed" about baptism for the dead, when here's the first concern I raised when somebody asked what the harm/issue was with baptism for the dead:
CONCERN #1: It leads to billions of Lds man-hours being obsessed with the dead. I think we should be consumed with the living -- not the dead.
Saundra, the true obsession with the dead & records lies with Mormons -- not ex-Mormons. THEY are the ones spending billions of wasted man-hours and mucho $ better spent on the poor & lame & widows & orphans a la Dickens, who though not a Christian derived his ethic from the Bible. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2400420/posts
No one can be converted “after death”. That’s ridiculous. This whole issue is a pointless argument.
Tell that to the Mormons...
Saundra, did you know that Joseph Smith said: "ALL those who have not had an opportunity of hearing the Gospel, and being administered unto by an inspired man in the flesh, MUST have it hereafter, BEFORE they can be finally judged. (Lds Presidents book on Smith, p. 471)
Smith said "ALL." Is the Lds church committed to that? All?
That means all pre-Gutenberg people.
That means all "dark ages" people.
That means all primitive and ancient tribal campfire clans.
ALL. Everybody. Mandated by Smith for EVERY spirit!
Doncha think Lds should be doing NOTHING ELSE since your founding prophet said "ALL?"
Tell us, Saundra, how the Mormon church plans to uncover non-existent records of most of these peoples & people groups?
Seances?
Ouija boards?
Magic 8 balls?
Pet rocks like Smith had?
Extensive searches worldwide for more hidden gold plates?
Mass manufacturing of urims & thummims?
Please tell us how, Saundra?
And what kind of "false hope" is the Mormon church peddling in -- this "hope" you talk about -- when 98-99% of the coveted records of which they seek have been lost, destroyed or never existed?
Lds genealogists, give up the ghost now. What Smith said will never happen. That quote alone shows he's a false prophet. It's a wasted life. Wasted efforts. Focus on those living, not on the dead. Jesus asked someone in Luke 9 why they sought the living among the dead? And Paul the apostle warned you NOT to "devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work—which is by faith. (1 Tim. 1:4)
Indeed, that's all Lds have been prompting -- with the Jews for example, controversy promotion vs. God's work. Indeed, this chasing of the wind for "endless genealogies" is what the apostle Paul told Titus to avoid: avoid foolish controversies and genealogies... (Titus 3:9)
Mormons, if you won't adhere to 1 Tim. 1:4 & Titus 3:9, then just get your scissors out, and Thomas Jefferson-like, cut them out.
serial killer Ted Bundy
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Yeah the mormons will take anyone...
as long as they are dead and cant say NO
The ones still breathing are surfing the Net and saying Big NOOOOOOOO
and tghe ones already enslaved in mormonism are getting out in droves...
Yeppers those dead dunkings of Christians and Jews and famous people that the youth are doing for hours at a time are the only way the mormons have now to pad their membership...
0% growth with the living...
1,000% with the dead...
Stanley Ann died in 1995 and when she was dead dunked and then asked last year whether or not she wanted to be a mormon ???
Apparantly she said “Yes, I want my son to be the first mormon president”
Hey, Nana, who was it that asked her that ???
Who was it that heard her say she wanted to be a mormon ???
Did she pay her club dues ???
Did she sustain Joey Smith as a TWOO prophet of the mormon god ???
Did she sustain the LDS as TWOO ???
Nana doesnt know...
You will have to ask the mormons that one...
Not sure how that works...
I guess the mormon gods have a secret way to do that ...
John and the 3 Nephites as go betweens perhaps ???
No he didn't SD, look at the whole context of the passage
In 1 Cor. 15:29 Paul says. . .
The whole context of 1 Cor 15 is the resurrection where Paul uses the terms 'we' and 'us', except here where he uses the word "they", why, because they were not Christians but outsiders - duh.
I am a Mormon. In our faith, we believe that people get a second chance after death to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Yeah well Jesus was not a mormon He doesnt agree with you or mormonism...
Jesus said that we had to accept the Gospel while we were still alive...
Jesus figured we had plenty of time while we were alive...
If there was time to accept Jesus after we died, jedsus would not have bothered to come in the first place...
There is nothing in the Christian Bible about hearing the Gospel and accepting jesus after we are dead...
Once we are dead it is too late...
Oh nana, you’re wrong, Obammy ain’t the first Mormon President. I went and looked for Ronald Wilson Reagan and he’s a Mormon too..... He and his daddy and momma. The Mormons got him!
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Search/frameset_search.asp
Most other religions believe that you either go to Heaven or Hell and that’s it . . . forever. No hope.
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Kid in Christianity there is always hope...
All your life...
Youre alive right now so you have hope of being saved...
Yes with Christianity there is just Heaven or Hell...
That is why today is the day of salvation...2 Corinthians 6:2
pou might only have today...
After you are dead that is it...its too late...
you will go to either heaven or hell...
Heaven if you are blood washed saved...
Hell if you arent...
Jesus had no problem with that...
and nor do I...
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