Mitt Romney converts dead people

Do you know what happens when you die? Well Mitt Romney does. He's going to baptise you into Mormonism. Since you're dead you won't be able to object. And another soul is saved from the fires of hell. Praise the Lord!!! Someone should tell the Jehovah's Witnesses of this approach. It just saves a LOT of time and hurt feelings. Think about it. Rather than go door to door and have people pretend they're not home, slam the door in your face, set their dogs on you or openly mock your "kooky" beliefs, you just wait until AFTER they're dead and convert them anyway. No muss. No fuss. And no expenses for Watchtower pamphlets. All in all it's the perfect approach for the more introverted missionary, or perhaps a missionary who's just tired of trying to outrun the local Rottweiler.


Who could object to such a swell setup? I mean it's a win-win for everyone right? The church gets "converts" and you don't have to explain to the pious young person standing on your porch that no you aren't interested in coming to a Bible reading,  no you aren't giving him any money and no you don't want any literature. 

Well as it turns out there are quite a few people who object to this practice. One of them happens to be Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and activist. And I think I would object as well. I mean imagine that you are minding your own business and then find out that Mormons are claiming that your deceased relatives converted to Mormonism and are presumably off ruling their own planets in Mormon heaven. Or consider that you're getting up there in age and discover that the Mormons have already calculated the likely time of your demise and are preparing to posthumously convert you to their faith. Wiesel wasn't pleased.

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who has devoted his life to combating intolerance, says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney"should speak to his own church and say they should stop" performing posthumous proxy baptisms on Jews.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke to The Huffington Post Tuesday soon after HuffPost reported that according to a formerly-Mormon researcher, Helen Radkey, some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had submitted Wiesel's name to a restricted genealogy website as "ready" for posthumous proxy baptism. Radkey found that the name of Wiesel had been submitted to the database for the deceased, from which a separate process for proxy baptism could be initiated. Radkey also said that the names of Wiesel's deceased father and maternal grandfather had been submitted to the site. 

A spokesman for the Mormon Church claimed that the names were simply entered into the database, and none were submitted for baptism, which he described as a separate process. The entry of a living person, he said, was a mistake, and he provided no explanation for the submission of Wiesel's father and maternal grandfather. By Monday the records for the names of Wiesel and his family had been changed to "not available," according to Radkey.

SOURCE

Ouch. Now far be it from me to question anyone's faith. I don't really care what you believe so much as how you behave. But at the very best it's sort of rude and at the worst downright arrogant and kind of creepy to run around claiming you've converted dead people. It's remarkable thoughtless and insensitive to their beliefs and more importantly to the beliefs and feelings of their living relatives. It's a sort of rewriting of history. I knew about this practice but I'm a little surprised that the Mormons are still doing it. Seems like that they would have gotten the message that their missionary outreach needs to be restricted to those who can still say yes or no: that is the living.

But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. After all back in 2007 When asked by Newsweek if he has done baptisms for the dead -- in which Mormons find the names of dead people of all faiths and baptize them, as an LDS spokesperson says, to "open the door" to the highest heaven-- he looked slightly startled and answered, "I have in my life, but I haven't recently". SOURCE

O-KAY. So perhaps the biggest question of the 21st century will not be whether or not America was ready to elect a black man with an African name to the White House but rather if America was ready to send a self-admitted necromancer to the White House. Maybe we'd better vote for Mitt while we have the chance. Otherwise he's just going to wait until we're dead and then claim we voted for him anyway. Yikes. He could be the first President seriously to go after the critical dead demographic. Kennedy made some overtures in 1960 but Romney could really win this under recognized voting bloc.

QUESTIONS

1) Is Wiesel right to be upset? Would you care if this happened to your deceased loved ones?

2) Is this a fair area of discussion or should the media have stayed out of it?

3) Will stories like this have any impact on the primary nomination (or general election should Romney be the nominee)