Eamonn McCann: What if Mormons are right and Catholics and Protestants wrong?
Thursday, 28 August 2008
Given Christian teaching, does it make more sense to baptize dead adults rather
than live babies?
Why are the Catholic bishops so concerned about Mormons baptizing dead
parishioners? The Mormons didn't invent baptism of the dead. The practice has a
significant history within mainstream Christianity. The decision to order its
abandonment was taken only after heated debate, and was a close-run thing.
What's the difference, anyway, between baptizing the dead and baptizing babies?
A tiny infant will have as much understanding as a dead person — none at all —
of the complex philosophical belief-system it's being inducted into when
baptized, say, a Catholic. Transubstantiation? There's
daily communicants go to their deaths=2 0without any clear understanding of the
concept. So what chance the mewling tot?
Indeed, given that all
Apart from which, if the Catholic bishops hold that the beliefs of the Mormons
are pure baloney (as they must), and their rituals therefore perfectly
meaningless, how can it matter to them what mumbo-jumbo Mormons might mutter
over Catholic cadavers?
The current controversy has been prompted by Archbishop Dermot Clifford and
Bishop Bill Murphy complaining to the National Library in Dublin about records
handed over by the Church being made available to all and sundry. The Mormons
are believed to have taken advantage of this facility to comb through parish
records and baptize the souls enumerated therein, a batch at a time.
The bishops stepped in after the Vatican warned all national churches earlier
this year about Mormons misusing diocesan records. I have heard it suggested
that the alarm of the Holy See had escalated after reports that Mormon multiple
baptisms were regularly breaking the official record set by General Liu Kung
Lee who, in one afternoon, baptized seven regiments of Chinese soldiers into
Christianity with a fire-hose.
Let's look at the facts as understood by the early followers of Christ. For
more than 300 years after the Crucifixion, baptism20of the dead was widely
accepted, its biblical basis located in 1 Corinthians 15, 29: "Otherwise,
what shall they do who are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not again at
all? Why are they then baptized for them." In
other words, a deceased person could be baptized by proxy: otherwise, how could
such a person be included in the Resurrection? A good
question.
The radical Cerinthians and the Marcionites
were especially energetic baptizers of the dead. It was to wrong-foot these
sects, seen as competitors with the official Church at a time when it was
consolidating its position as the State religion of the Roman Empire, that the
Synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) voted, after bitter debate, to condemn
the practice.
Interestingly, a clear trace of baptism of the dead has lingered in official
practice to the present day, in the form of prayers for divine intercession on
behalf of the unbaptized souls. Prayers for
intervention were encouraged in Catholic schools in the 1950s. For all I know,
this remains the case.
Baptizing the dead might be seen as analogous, too, to the Jewish prayer of
intercession. Which serves as a reminder that US Jews put a halt to galloping
post-mortem Mormonism a couple of years ago by arguing that de-Judaising those who'd perished in the concentration camps
constituted a profound insult to Holocaust victims. Following talks in New York
between leaders of the two religions, the Mormons backed off.
T he key point is, surely, that all religions believe that the soul, after
death, at last knows what's what — whether Hinduism, Free Presbyterianism,
Jainism, Judaism, Islam, Catholicism or whatever is the true religion. What if
it's Mormonism? What if it's an everyday occurrence on the other side that
Catholics and Protestants are left standing dumbstruck at the Gates, gasping:
"Mormons! Who'd have believed it?" And maybe a wife berating her husband: "There! I told
you it would be the Mormons! But would you listen?! Now it's eternal hellfire
for the two of us, I hope you're satisfied."
In that scenario, shouldn't all members of all other religions be literally
eternally grateful to the Mormons for sharing their saving grace even unto and
after death?
If, on the other hand, it isn't the Mormons at all, those who turn out to have
been right can wave a merry farewell to the crestfallen followers of Brigham
Young as they trundle downwards to their eternal comeuppance.
What's the problem?