You are seriously delusional and after this I am putting you on ignore. When have I ever asked you to apologize for doing proxy work or anything else? I don’t think I’ve ever even asked you to moderate what you do about it. I simply gave you my opinion on it and tried to help you understand how I see it. Seriously, have you even read any of the posts?
Jay.
this is a public forum. I am not addressing you personally…I am addressing the position you are defending…that of those who DO criticise. You jumped in the middle of this conversation, take the side of the critics, and somehow I am simply supposed to understand that you are NOT criticising?
How was I supposed to do that, when you didn’t mention that you didn’t mind proxy work until several days AFTER you jump into the debate? Of course, your last paragraph seems to indicate that you do, indeed, have a problem with the idea…
…and that you seem to side with the family that wants us to mark ‘offer rejected’ on the forms. As you have said, there’s no way to do that, and frankly, those who want this sort of thing don’t have a right to want it. That again is being very blunt…but just as I have no right to make my parent’s financial/religious/moral decisions for them, neither do the relatives of those who have passed on have the right to make those decisions for
them.
You may put me on ignore all you want to, but what I am seeing here is a fundamental refusal, on your part, to understand what it is I am trying to say.
I am NOT criticising your faith or the intent of your prayers for those who have passed on. I am NOT criticising the love that goes into them, or the fact that your actions and prayers are justified BY that love. Nor am I arguing that you are mistaken or wrong in doing so. How could I? I too pray for the welfare of people I haven’t had a chance to permission from, though I do ask whenever I CAN ask.
I am simply pointing out that…you don’t ask. You don’t feel it necessary, for all the reasons you have given me. You justify the fact that you don’t ask…and all that is fine; but all that does not change the fact that a:
you don’t ask, and b;
even though you don’t ask, you believe that your prayers are effective.
***Justifying your actions is NOT the same thing as denying them, Jay! ***
Nor have I ever criticised you or said that praying for the dead is NOT a good thing to do, in spite of the fact that you cannot–and do not even think about–asking them if they want such prayers.
Compare that to what we do; that is, our proxy work is not, and cannot be, effective without the direct and willing acceptance of those for whom it is done, and just perhaps you can see the point I’m trying to get at here:
Those who DO tell us how arrogant and coercive our proxy work is…those critics you are defending, by the way…are wrong to do so. They are wrong to take offense at what we do for the reasons they claim, because what we do is not even close to being as coercive as what they do every time they pray for a dead loved one, or have a Mass said on his behalf, or when they light a candle for her.
You justify it by saying that you are not coercing God…well, I never claimed you were. You justify it by saying that ‘of course’ anybody in purgatory would WANT this help…that those who wouldn’t want it would be in hell-----but y’know, there is absolutely no support for that position other than your own personal faith. You have NO idea whether those in purgatory would appreciate your prayers or not; you simply assume that '“of course” they would. You may be right…but then again, you may be wrong and in either case it doesn’t matter. Right or wrong, you don’t ask, and the very idea that it might be a good idea TO ask has you in a tailspin; it is utterly foreign to your belief system.
It is simple, Jay. You are defending those who criticise us because they claim our proxy work is coercive. Therefore, even though your personal beliefs about that may differ, you are the one doing the arguing…and you are the one to whom I must present my position.
Those who criticize us because they claim we are being coercive, or forcing our beliefs upon the dead, are projecting. Because this is what THEY do–because they believe that thier own prayers for the dead are effective “will they, nill they,” they assume that we believe the same thing about our own proxy work…and can’t seem to understand that we don’t; for us the idea of choice, and permission, is so central to what we believe and teach that the idea of anybody becoming a Mormon when they don’t want it is as unthinkable as your intransigent insistance that choice is irrelevent to your own actions and prayers.
Maybe your post will help her. 
You HAVE communication with your kid; you have conversations and know what his goals are. Tell me…would the same point apply if you decided to save up and offer a scholarship to some random stranger with whom you have no communication? One who may well neither want, nor need, your college fund?