Romney’s campaign said yesterday that any questions about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should be directed to the church.
The church acknowledged earlier this week that Wiesel’s name and the names of his late father and grandfather had been entered into a genealogical database as candidates ready for posthumous rites.
“None of the three names were submitted for baptism, and they would not have been under the church’s guidelines and procedures,’’ Michael Purdy, a church spokesman, said in a statement. “The names were simply entered into a genealogical database. Submission for proxy baptism is a separate process.’’
The church acknowledged that the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s father and mother were recently baptized, in violation of the church’s policy of not baptizing victims of the Holocaust.
“We sincerely regret that the actions of an individual member of the church led to the inappropriate submission’’ of the Wiesenthal family, Purdy said. “These submissions were clearly against the policy of the church. We consider this a serious breach of our protocol, and we have suspended indefinitely this person’s ability to access our genealogy records.’’
Members of the Mormon Church baptize the names of the dead in a common rite designed to allow them access to heaven. Mormon theology teaches that the deceased can then choose whether or not to join the church as Mormons.
“It’s an impetus toward generosity, not toward covert conversion of the dead to Mormonism,’’ said Terryl L. Givens, a scholar of Mormonism at the University of Richmond. “It’s like putting somebody’s name on a guest list. They might have no interest whatsoever in the party, but at least the door is now open to them.’’
