January 8, 1977, The Pittsburg Post-Gazette, page A4, Mormons Gather Names For Baptism Of Dead, by Charles Hillinger,
April 29, 1994, Rome News-Tribune - AP, page 6B, Mormon baptism offensive to some,
June 11, 1994, The Free Lance-Star [Fredericksburg, VA] AP, To Mormons, rite of baptism is for all the world, by Vern Anderson, AP Writer,











January 8, 1977, The Pittsburg Post-Gazette, page A4, Mormons Gather Names For Baptism Of Dead, by Charles Hillinger,

April 29, 1994, Rome News-Tribune - AP, page 6B, Mormon baptism offensive to some, Saints and sinners, popes and pillagers, martyrs and mass murderers -- everyone who ever lived, in fact -- eventually will get the chance to be a Mormon. Alive or dead. At least, that is a central tenet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has 50,000 full-time missionaries proselytizing the living, and many times more members performing baptisms and other rituals for the dead. To Mormons, the idea is a deeply spiritual, divinely inspired undertaking, staggering in its scope: to give every post-mortal spirit a chance to accept or reject baptism in the "true Church of Jesus Christ." "If they do not accept the baptism, it is of no effect," according to the church-sanctioned Encyclopedia of Mormonism. To some non-Mormons, nowever, the practice is appallingly presumptuous, a sort of theological hijacking. For example, Mormon genealogical records show baptisms performed in church temples for dozens of Roman Catholic saints, including Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Assisi, Ignatius Loyola, Thomas More and Thomas Becket. "You can guess how we feel about it," said Julie Anderson, spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake, although Catholic authorities will say nothing officially about the Mormon practice. Helen Radkey, a former Catholic and former Mormon, is blunt, calling it "religious bigotry" and a "basic issue of respect and arrogance." Radkey, whose two sons attend Jesuit-run Gonzaga Univeersity, visited the Martyrs' Shrine in Ontario, Canada, last summer and was deeply moved by the martyrdoms of French Jesuits Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant. The two missionaries were grotesquely mutilated over several hours and then killed by Iroquois warriers in 1649, some 181 years before Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church on the premise that all other churches were false and corrupt. Upon her return to Salt Lake City, Radkey went to the Mormon Family History Library to look up more information on Lalemant. She said she "freaked" when she discovered he had been baptized---twice---by Mormon stand-ins. "These men died for what they believed in, and it's disgusting to have someone come in and baptize them after they'd given everything," she said. In a December letter to Radkey, Father John J. Paret, director of the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in upstate New York, offered another perspective. "I don't know just what to say about these strange activities of the Mormons, except that it does not seem that they will hurt us in any way," Paret wrote. "Indeed, it would seem to be a tribute to the (Catholic) Church and to the Jesuits that the Mormons should seek to make these great men their own in some way." Mormon officials are well aware of the criticism. They seek to defuse it by stressing that baptisms and other, uniquely Mormon rituals performed for the dead have no validity by themselves. The dead in "the spirit world" awaiting God's final judgment must accept the true gospel of Jesus Christ before the ordinances done by proxies can apply, said Thomas E. Daniels, spokesman for the church's Family History Department. "So it is a labor of love," Daniels said, since the ordinances are believed essential to salvation in the presence of God. "We are doing for them what they can't do for themselves." However the project is viewed, it is accelerating as the church approaches 9 million members and plans to build many more than its current 45 temples. The church's registry of names---an extraordinary boon to genealogists and other researchers of all faiths---exceeds 2 billion. Millions more are added each year as teams of Mormon specialists pore over public records throughout the world, offering free microfilm copies in exchange for access. Church photographers make over 100 million exposures of documents a year. Since the first baptisms for the dead were performed in 1842, Mormons have logged some 200 million such ordinances. But several million have been inadvertent duplications owing to a multilicity of records, spelling errors and, perhaps, the allure of celbrity. Radkey's research shows that Joan of Arc has had 14 proxy baptisms. Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny and W.C...Fields have had five each; Humphrey Bogart, Lucille Ball, Fred Astaire, Boris Karloff Marilyn Monroe and Walt Disney four each; and Vivian Leigh, Alfred Hitchcock and Mae West three apiece. "Nothing is going to entirely eliminate duplication," Daniels said, not even incorporation of the cumbersome microfilm into a new computer system designed of offer quicker access. Dupliccation currently run about 3 percent to 4 percent a year, but are expected to decline. Last year the church adopted a policy that rank-and-file members could submit for baptism only the names of their own ancestors.

April 29, 1994, Rome News-Tribune - AP, page 6B, Mormon baptism offensive to some,



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June 11, 1994, The Free Lance-Star [Fredericksburg, VA] AP, To Mormons, rite of baptism is for all the world, by Vern Anderson, AP Writer,