Do you ever just have one of those surrel moments, where you take a step back and say, Wait, are you guys seeing this??? I had one of those the other night when I was listening to NPR and they did an explanation behind the Mormon Babtism scandel.
The whole thing on both sides is utterly ridiculous: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/15/146944923/mormon-baptism-controversy-threatens-romney
QUENTIN COOK: The savior said that everybody had to be baptized to enter into kingdom of heaven and so, by proxy, there is a baptism for all of those who are deceased. Now, we concentrate, first of all, on our ancestors and then for the people in the world at large.
This baptism is not binding on them unless they accept it, so we consider this a great effort of love and accomplish our Father in heaven's plan for his children that are deceased.
SIEGEL: And just to clarify, Howard, he's speaking of the deceased accepting the baptism?
BERKES: That's right. These baptisms involve people who have died and have been dead for some time and what happens is that, inside Mormon temples are these baptismal fonts. They're pools of water. They're about the size of a hot tub and they each have 12 carved oxen that are holding them up and there's a line of volunteers who read a long list of names as other volunteers are immersed into the water. They're stand-ins for the deceased.
OMGWTFBBQ
ERNEST MICHEL: It is wrong for the church to posthumously baptize dead Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. My parents, who were killed in Auschwitz, would have never agreed to be baptized by the Mormon church and that's why we are so concerned about it.
...they don't care...cause they're dead.
BERKES: And, simply put, it's people who died because of their faith are being baptized into another faith. That doesn't sit well. Again, Mormons insist that the deceased soul won't accept the baptism if it doesn't want to, so there's really no harm done.
WAT
So yeah. Totally surreal when you realize everyone is insane and fighting to see whose the least insane.
The whole thing on both sides is utterly ridiculous: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/15/146944923/mormon-baptism-controversy-threatens-romney
QUENTIN COOK: The savior said that everybody had to be baptized to enter into kingdom of heaven and so, by proxy, there is a baptism for all of those who are deceased. Now, we concentrate, first of all, on our ancestors and then for the people in the world at large.
This baptism is not binding on them unless they accept it, so we consider this a great effort of love and accomplish our Father in heaven's plan for his children that are deceased.
SIEGEL: And just to clarify, Howard, he's speaking of the deceased accepting the baptism?
BERKES: That's right. These baptisms involve people who have died and have been dead for some time and what happens is that, inside Mormon temples are these baptismal fonts. They're pools of water. They're about the size of a hot tub and they each have 12 carved oxen that are holding them up and there's a line of volunteers who read a long list of names as other volunteers are immersed into the water. They're stand-ins for the deceased.
OMGWTFBBQ
ERNEST MICHEL: It is wrong for the church to posthumously baptize dead Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. My parents, who were killed in Auschwitz, would have never agreed to be baptized by the Mormon church and that's why we are so concerned about it.
...they don't care...cause they're dead.
BERKES: And, simply put, it's people who died because of their faith are being baptized into another faith. That doesn't sit well. Again, Mormons insist that the deceased soul won't accept the baptism if it doesn't want to, so there's really no harm done.
WAT
So yeah. Totally surreal when you realize everyone is insane and fighting to see whose the least insane.
