I must be awfully bad and choosing my words.
The “consent” I’m referring to, is that of the parents of the child; the case of baptizing a dying child Catholic
who is not your child, and
whose parents would oppose such a baptism. I hope this clears up what I’m asking.
Oh, sorry. That’s a much better argument.
I think in that case you have to take into account the way moral obligations shift in times of distress. One very common error in modern moral philosophy - both in speculative and practical terms - is a tendency to look at extreme situations first, and move from there to define norms, when in fact it is the normal that measures the exceptional. (Understanding why it’s licit to steal a loaf of bread when you are starving depends on understanding why it is normally wrong to do so.) In the case of a dying child, we should begin from the standpoint of normalcy, that in the usual order of things, children are not supposed to be baptized that way. Why is that? It is because normally parents are the ones who are primarily obligated to care for the child. Because they have such an obligation, they also have a right, prior to anyone else’s interference. Yet in the case of a child at point of death, the person who is most immediately obligated to act in the child’s interests is … whoever happens to be at hand.
By the way
soren1, could you point me in the direction of that “Killing Her Twice” thread? I’d love to read your specific objection to the LDS practice.
Thanks!
The thread is forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=9041058#post9041058"]here, but I don’t register any objections in my post there. In fact, I defend the Mormons from the specific charge of offending other religions and undermining freedom. I think it’s a red herring that Catholics would be better off abandoning.
I do have criticisms of course. Broadly, I think the Mormons have very shallow understanding of divine sovereignty. They treat the gospel as if it were somehow the right of people, who by sinfulness have made themselves enemies of God, to have it offered to them. Thinking in this manner, they justify baptism after death by an argument from justice, as if God had a duty to make provision for people who don’t hear the gospel in their lives. He does not; he only would if you think he owed people something. This does not mean that God does not make such provision as a mercy, but the Mormon tendency to see this as a requirement of justice is utterly misguided and reveals a shallow theology.
They also have a bad exegesis of 1 Cor 15:29. There are a good two dozen viable alternatives to their interpretation of it, five or six of which are very credible. The one I find most persuasive was proposed by a Jesuit named Bernard Foschini in a doctoral dissertation around 1950. Foschini argues that Paul’s suggestion of baptizing for the dead is part of a rhetorical question that actually presupposes that such baptism would be absurd. In a brilliant, radical move, Foschini repunctuates the text (which had no punctuation in the Greek original) to read, “Why then are they baptized? For the dead?” I wasn’t persuaded by his argument at first, and have changed my mind about it more than once, but over the years it has grown on me more than any other. He makes a very good case for how it fits Paul’s line of argument about the resurrection in the chapter, which seems to me decisively superior to all other interpretations that I know.
If Foschini is incorrect, the likely alternative is probably something in the ballpark of St. Robert Bellarmine’s interpretation. He claimed that since any good work can be offered on behalf of the dead, so too can the sacraments. If people offer masses for the dead, why not offer baptisms for them as well? It would seem appropriate, Bellarmine reasons, since Baptism represents resurrection, as the baptized person is born out of the water. Thus the verse fits with the general Catholic position about works for the dead, and Bellarmine had a lot of success stumping Protestant with this argument. How many Mormons know that 1 Cor 15:29 has historically been a staple of
Catholic apologetics?!
Of the other theories that exists, the LDS exegesis stands out for its simplicity. In itself, that is a good argument in its favor, but by itself, it is not enough. Their fatal problem is that Smith’s reading of the text (as usual) lacks consistency with a total understanding of the Hebrew and early Christian worldview. The thought expressed in Heb 11:27 that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment,” encapsulates not just the opinion of the writer of that one letter, but is borne out by the entire religious tradition of the Hebrews, evidenced in both biblical and extra-biblical texts. If the early Christians had taught any form of post-mortem conversion, it would have been remembered as one of their most radical teachings, yet it is not remembered at all.
. Even though ive lived in Salt Lake the last 20+ years