{"id":93,"date":"2009-02-19T13:04:28","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T13:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html"},"modified":"2009-02-19T13:04:28","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T13:04:28","slug":"what-if-the-mormons-are-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html","title":{"rendered":"What if the Mormons are right? An alternative view of baptisms for the dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A pleasantly entertaining op-ed piece from the Belfast Telegraph: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk\/opinion\/columnists\/eamon-mccann\/eamonn-mccann-what-if-mormons-are-right-and-catholics-and-protestants-wrong-13955402.html\">What if Mormons are right and Catholics and Protestants are wrong?<\/a>&#8221; Not only does the writer cover in short order the ancient Christian tradition of baptism for the dead and why its practice by modern Latter-day Saints shouldn&#8217;t really bother anyone &#8230; hey, it&#8217;s just fun to read Irish! As in this closing line: &#8220;If, on the other hand, it isn&#8217;t the Mormons at all, those who turn out to have been right can wave a merry farewell to the crestfallen followers of Brigham Young as they trundle downwards to their eternal comeuppance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here are a couple of paragraphs that lay out the author&#8217;s basic points.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Indeed, given that all Christian Churches believe that the soul lives on after death and retains understanding and consciousness of self, doesn&#8217;t it make more sense to baptise dead adults than live babies?<\/p>\n<p>Apart from which, if the Catholic bishops hold that the beliefs of the Mormons are pure baloney (as they must), and their rituals therefore perfectly meaningless, how can it matter to them what mumbo-jumbo Mormons might mutter over Catholic cadavers?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And just so no one gets the wrong idea, I&#8217;ll add that neither the doctrine nor the practice involves cadavers of any denomination or faith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A pleasantly entertaining op-ed piece from the Belfast Telegraph: &#8220;What if Mormons are right and Catholics and Protestants are wrong?&#8221; Not only does the writer cover in short order the ancient Christian tradition of baptism for the dead and why its practice by modern Latter-day Saints shouldn&#8217;t really bother anyone &#8230; hey, it&#8217;s just fun&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lds-doctrine"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What if the Mormons are right? An alternative view of baptisms for the dead - Mormon Inquiry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What if the Mormons are right? An alternative view of baptisms for the dead - Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A pleasantly entertaining op-ed piece from the Belfast Telegraph: &#8220;What if Mormons are right and Catholics and Protestants are wrong?&#8221; Not only does the writer cover in short order the ancient Christian tradition of baptism for the dead and why its practice by modern Latter-day Saints shouldn&#8217;t really bother anyone &#8230; hey, it&#8217;s just fun&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-19T13:04:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Banack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What if the Mormons are right? An alternative view of baptisms for the dead - Mormon Inquiry","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What if the Mormons are right? An alternative view of baptisms for the dead - Mormon Inquiry","og_description":"A pleasantly entertaining op-ed piece from the Belfast Telegraph: &#8220;What if Mormons are right and Catholics and Protestants are wrong?&#8221; Not only does the writer cover in short order the ancient Christian tradition of baptism for the dead and why its practice by modern Latter-day Saints shouldn&#8217;t really bother anyone &#8230; hey, it&#8217;s just fun&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html","og_site_name":"Mormon Inquiry","article_published_time":"2009-02-19T13:04:28+00:00","author":"Dave Banack","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html","name":"What if the Mormons are right? An alternative view of baptisms for the dead - Mormon Inquiry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-19T13:04:28+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-19T13:04:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/what-if-the-mormons-are-right.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What if the Mormons are right? An alternative view of baptisms for the dead"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/","name":"Mormon Inquiry","description":"Mormon News and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f","name":"Dave Banack","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","caption":"Dave Banack"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/author\/dbanack"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}