Tuesday, February 14, 2012 3:18:27 PM
Mormons apologize for baptism of Simon Wiesenthal's parents
Simon Wiesenthal attends a trial of suspected Nazi war criminals in Vienna in 1958. The Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed outrage that a Mormon church member had posthumously baptized Wiesenthal's parents, who died in the Holocaust.
Simon Wiesenthal Center via AP
By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY
Feb 14, 2012
Mormon church leaders have apologized to the family of the late Holocaust survivor and famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal after a church member posthumously baptized [ http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53506130-78/church-mokotoff-jewish-lds.html.csp ] Wiesenthal's parents last month, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Mormons believe posthumous baptism by proxy rites allow deceased persons to receive the Gospel in the afterlife.
The baptism of Holocaust victims, like Asher and Rosa Wiesenthal, was supposed to be barred by a 1995 agreement between the church and Jews, although some submissions continue by church members, the Associated Press reports [ http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mormons-apologize-proxy-wiesenthal-baptism-15593186 ].
In Salt Lake City, officials of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, apologized Monday, saying that the church "sincerely regret[s] that the actions of an individual member ... led to the inappropriate submission of these names," which were "clearly against the policy of the church," The Tribune reports.
"We consider this a serious breach of our protocol," church spokesman Scott Trotter said in a statement, "and we have suspended indefinitely this person's ability to access our genealogy records."
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement [ http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4441467&ct=11624095 ] that his organization was "outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples."
Cooper added:
We note that these rites were undertaken and confirmed in Mormon Temples in Utah, Arizona, and Idaho. Further meetings with Church leaders on this matter are useless. The only way such insensitive practices would finally stop is if Church leaders finally decided to change their practices and policies on posthumous baptisms, a move which this latest outrage proves that they are unwilling to do.
Salt Lake City researcher Helen Radkey found documentation of the baptisms while conducting regular checks of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints genealogical database last week, the AP says.
Wiesenthal died in 2005.
Copyright © 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/02/mormon-church-baptize-simon-wiesenthal/1 [with comments]
Simon Wiesenthal attends a trial of suspected Nazi war criminals in Vienna in 1958. The Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed outrage that a Mormon church member had posthumously baptized Wiesenthal's parents, who died in the Holocaust.
Simon Wiesenthal Center via AP
By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY
Feb 14, 2012
Mormon church leaders have apologized to the family of the late Holocaust survivor and famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal after a church member posthumously baptized [ http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53506130-78/church-mokotoff-jewish-lds.html.csp ] Wiesenthal's parents last month, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Mormons believe posthumous baptism by proxy rites allow deceased persons to receive the Gospel in the afterlife.
The baptism of Holocaust victims, like Asher and Rosa Wiesenthal, was supposed to be barred by a 1995 agreement between the church and Jews, although some submissions continue by church members, the Associated Press reports [ http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mormons-apologize-proxy-wiesenthal-baptism-15593186 ].
In Salt Lake City, officials of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, apologized Monday, saying that the church "sincerely regret[s] that the actions of an individual member ... led to the inappropriate submission of these names," which were "clearly against the policy of the church," The Tribune reports.
"We consider this a serious breach of our protocol," church spokesman Scott Trotter said in a statement, "and we have suspended indefinitely this person's ability to access our genealogy records."
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement [ http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4441467&ct=11624095 ] that his organization was "outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples."
Cooper added:
We note that these rites were undertaken and confirmed in Mormon Temples in Utah, Arizona, and Idaho. Further meetings with Church leaders on this matter are useless. The only way such insensitive practices would finally stop is if Church leaders finally decided to change their practices and policies on posthumous baptisms, a move which this latest outrage proves that they are unwilling to do.
Salt Lake City researcher Helen Radkey found documentation of the baptisms while conducting regular checks of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints genealogical database last week, the AP says.
Wiesenthal died in 2005.
Copyright © 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/02/mormon-church-baptize-simon-wiesenthal/1 [with comments]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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