The most recent controversy over Mormonism’s practice of posthumous baptism reached its peak in February when it came out that Eli Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, had ended up on a to-be-baptized list. Wiesel called on Mitt Romney to condemn the practice of proxy baptisms for Jews, particularly Holocaust victims, echoing complaints made by Jewish leaders in the early nineties. The Church has apologized profusely and maintains that they have made every effort to keep Holocaust victims off of the rolls; the latest cases, officials said, are the consequence of overzealous members ignoring the rules.
The LDS Church performs posthumous baptisms to give the dead the opportunity to accept the faith and be united with their families in eternity, even if they failed to hear or listen to the Mormon message during life. Intense public controversy over the practice goes back more than twenty years and has come from Christian as well as Jewish groups – both the Anglican and Catholic churches have taken steps to restrict LDS access to their historical records, objecting, as a 2008 Vatican letter put it, to the “erroneous practices” of Mormons and seeking to protect “the confidentiality of the faithful.”
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