SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Anne Frank was posthumously baptized in an LDS temple in the Dominican Republic over the weekend, adding to a growing controversy over the Church's practice of performing ordinances on behalf of Holocaust victims.
Online records found on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family Serch website show that a member submitted Frank's name to the Santo Domingo Temple for ordinance work.
Members of the LDS faith are allowed to submit names on behalf of deceased relatives to the temple so that they may receive all the ordinances necessary for salvation and exhaltation in the next life. LDS doctrine does not imply that deceased individuals automatically become members of their church via such proxy ordinances, but that they may accept the ordinances if they choose to.
Over the past three decades,
the Church has been under a lot of scrutiny from Jewish organizations who demand that victims of the Holocaust be excluded from such practices. Frank's name has been submitted on other occasions as well.
A week earlier, the
LDS Church apologized for a similar incident in which the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal and his parents were posthumously baptized in a January Mormon temple ritual.
Since the 1990s, the Mormon Church has prohibited its members from submitting Holocaust victims' names for temple ordinances, unless they can trace the individual's lineage directly to themselves.
Over the past few years, the Church has added new software to its database that roots out attempts to submit Holocaust victims' names, but that hasn't stopped certain individuals from trying.
In a statement released by church spokesman Michael Purdy on Tuesday, the Church said:
The Church keeps its word and is absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism.
It takes a good deal of deception and manipulation to get an improper submission through the safeguards we have put in place.
While no system is foolproof in preventing the handful of individuals who are determined to falsify submissions we are committed to taking action against individual abusers by suspending the submitter’s access privileges. We will also consider whether other Church disciplinary action should be taken.
It is distressing when an individual willfully violates the Church’s policy and something that should be understood to be an offering based on love and respect becomes a source of contention.
