The Deseret News writes today, "The Catholic Church has ordered dioceses across the globe not to give information in parish registers to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." This is a very painful blow not only to the LDS church but to genealogists everywhere. For decades the LDS church has been microfilming every record possible and preserving those records in a secured granite vault in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City. This effort helps to ensure those records are preserved for future generations. As technology has advanced many of those records have become available online. All of the records have always been available to anyone, LDS or not, so that they could research their ancestry.
There are religious differences at the heart of this move, but it seems like those differences could be worked out. FamilySearch.org has been a great resource for many years now and is enjoyed by anyone with access to the Internet. In more recent years companies like Geni.com and MyFamily.com have shown that genealogy is not the boring realm of old people with nothing better to do, but an engaging activity enjoyed by family members young and old. The preservation of the lineage of mankind and access to that precious information seem like such worthwhile en devours that surely both parties can reach an accord.
If not then we have just witnessed a genealogical nuclear bomb.
Tags: ancestry · Catholic Church · genealogy · LDS church · records7 Comments
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[...] Genealogy at Risk? By Justin Ball In more recent years companies like Geni.com and MyFamily.com have shown that genealogy is not the boring realm of old people with nothing better to do, but an engaging activity enjoyed by family members young and old. … Nobody Listens Anyway - http://www.justinball.com [...]
I guess I understand both sides of this discussion! It’s one thing to gain information solely for the purpose on ancestory work…..but we know that the church uses those names for other reasons. Don’t really have any investment in either side of this. Thanks for sharing Justin!
I’m certain you’re aware that the underlying reason for the Church’s interest in genealogy is not about archiving valuable records for the benefit of all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead
That is true. However, Google’s primary reason for providing search these days is to sell ads the side effect of which is to provide users a great service. Would you stop using Google for search because their motivation is not inline with yours? The question becomes is the side effect of the archiving program - a church’s religious intentions - a reason to stop the archive effort? In so many projects where there is ‘open data’ or a free search there needs to be some sort of sustainability model and often that involves some ulterior motive by the provider. It is left up those using the services to decide if the providers intentions are to far out of line to be acceptable.
Are you going to equate advertising/search with baptism/salvation? Seems to me that there’s something a bit more sacred about the latter. Also, it’s quite transparent to the Google user which are the normal search engine “hits” and which are the ads. The baptism by proxy activities are for the most part unknown by nonmembers–even those that use the LDS databases for genealogical research. If the Church were much more open about what they were doing then I would concede this dual-purpose activity might be justified based on your argument. On a related note, shouldn’t an individual have a right to determine which faith they are baptized under? According to Wikipedia entry on baptism:
“According to the Catholic Church, baptism imparts an indelible ’seal’ upon the soul of the baptized. Thus, once baptized, an individual cannot be baptized again. This teaching was affirmed against the Donatists who practiced rebaptism. Baptism is said to operate ex opere operato and is valid even if administered in heresy or schism.[1] Like holy orders, it confers a “character” on the recipient, who can never be rebaptized.”
No equation intended. I am only pointing out that large archives of data require some type of sustainability. In this case the cost of sustaining the archive is the activities of a religious organization. There are other archives such as ancestory.com, and rootsweb. Those sites charge their users for access which is another model that maintains the life of the archive.
I wouldn’t say that the majority of the activities of the LDS church are not ‘Open’. They send out missionaries world wide to talk about these types of activities and visitors to any of the LDS churches history libraries can talk to the staff at those centers about the religion’s intention for the data. Note also that most of those users are consuming and not contributing data. It is fairly rare for a non LDS individual to contribute data for church ceremonies. Most of those contributions come from people who are members and who feel that they have some right to speak for their ancestors.
That actually leads to another interesting issue which is who has rights to use the names of people who have passed on? I imagine that if you go far enough back in time both you and I share some common ancestor somewhere - thats just how the math works out. Does one of us possess some greater right than the other to the use of the name of that individual. I don’t have an answer to that question. I only find it interesting. The Catholic Church has asserted their right to control records. I don’t think that any person or organization anywhere has the right to speak for or take control of the free will of another individual.
As a side note the doctrine of the LDS church is not that the individual who is baptized is actually baptized but that there is a human here on earth that participates in some event which the deceased then has the opportunity to accept or reject. They are not automatically bound to that ceremony.
This argument of course gets into dogma which is always open to hot debate as religious belief is based on personal belief so I am sure that another religion would cry heresy anyway. There will always be an unresolvable difference in the beliefs of individuals. The resolution of that conflict is unfortunately a great source of contention which is unlikely to end as long as mankind exists.
Records should be available to all as long as the people are deceased and should be FREE !!!!! Thank goodness for LDS…It doesn’t matter that they are Mormoms and I am protestant. They have helped me greatly in my family research.