The opinions expressed below are solely those of the author.
There’s an old joke that goes something like this:
Papal Aide: Holy Father there is exciting news. Some of it’s good but some of it’s bad.
Pope:Okay, give me the good news first.
Aide: The Savior has returned to Earth! He’s on the telephone asking for you!
Pope: What could possibly be the bad news then?
Aide: He’s calling from Salt Lake City!
As such ecumenical matters sometimes go, relations between Catholics and Mormons have been relatively without rancor over the past several decades. Despite deep doctrinal rifts, the relationships between individual Catholics and Mormons have been free of the personal hostility which characterizes relationships between certain other denominations. In fact, the Bishop of Salt Lake City has said that Catholics and Mormons work together and get along fine in the Mormons’capital city.
But the facial peace between Catholics and Mormons has been strained by issues related to genealogy. It is well-known that the LDS church has some of the greatest genealogical information in the world in both quantity and quality. They obtain those records by going out all over the world and collecting or copying the original records. What is less well known is the doctrinal motivation for collecting ancestral records. Not being a member of the LDS church I’m hesitant to characterize their purposes other than to say that I am informed that it has to do with so-called re-baptism of non-LDS ancestors. That is the least what the Vatican knew in 2008, when the Holy Father instructed Catholic parishes not to cooperate with Mormon records seekers.
This issue had been brewing for quite a while. In 1995, Mormons and Jews reached an agreement that the LDS church would no longer “re-baptize” or “seal” Holocaust survivors that some LDS members had characterized as their ancestors. In 2001, Pope John Paul II approved a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which stated that baptism in the LDS church cannot be held to be a valid Christian baptism. The statement went on to say that because of differences between the Catholic and Mormon understandings of the Trinity, “one cannot even consider this doctrine to be a heresy arising from a false understanding of Christian doctrine.” L’Osservatore Romano, a newspaper which frequently reflects inside thinking at the Vatican said the ruling “changes the past practice of not contesting the validity of [Mormon] baptism.” The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time was Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
Nothing much seems to have happened on this issue between 2001 and 2008. But then in January 2008, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a letter which expressed “grave reservations” about the Mormon practice of posthumous baptism. A few months later, Pope Benedict XVI approved an order that each bishop should not “cooperate with the erroneous practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Cooperation includes allowing Mormon genealogists to have access to Catholic parish records. Ironically, just 10 days after this order was approved, Pope Benedict embarked on a visit to the United States during which two Mormons participated in a papal ecumenical service. According to the Catholic news service this was the first time any member of the LDS church participated in such a service.
This is a difficult issue for a Catholic genealogist to write about. Somewhat surprisingly, both the Vatican and the Mormon hierarchy seemed to downplay the impact of the letter on general relations between the two churches. Father James Massa, an official of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service that while the order had the potential to disrupt relationships between the two churches, the Catholic Church was embarking on a new friendship with the LDS church. At about the same time a spokesman for the LDS Church in Salt Lake City said that he had not seen the order and thus could not comment on it. He went on to say “We don’t have an issue with the fact that the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize our baptisms, because we don’t recognize theirs.” It’s a difference of belief.”
Other Catholic and LDS spokespersons further emphasized that the ban on allowing parish records to be given to LDS genealogists was not a major rift between the two denominations. The Catholic vicar general of the Diocese of Salt Lake City said that Catholics and Mormons enjoyed a long-standing mutually beneficial relationship. He said that the order concerning parish records was nothing new, because the Salt Lake diocese long had refused to give parish records to anyone “not authorized to have them.” This policy was much broader than Mormon genealogists.
So how should Catholic genealogists react to the church’s official ban on giving Mormon genealogists access to parish records?
Here are some things to consider: first of all, the Mormons do have the greatest collection genealogical records in the world. Additionally they have been an incubator for new advanced archival technologies. They allow free access to most of their records and have been known to create digital archives of Catholic parish records for the parish to keep.
I recall on my visit to the parish of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois in 2007, that the priest had labored alone and with great difficulty to get the parish records organized in a computer database. And before the completion of the project is computer crashed and the data was lost. Today, the records of St. Joseph parish in Prairie du Rocher are available free of charge as part of the set of records of the diocese of Belleville, Illinois on the LDS-run site FamilySearch.org.
Here are some other things to consider: the ban is directed to bishops and clergy, not to individual Catholics. So Catholic genealogists who cooperate with Mormon genealogists will not need the “Get out of Hell Free” cards available from my colleague Sheri Fenley.
Despite the ban, FamilySearch.org seems to add new Catholic parish records every week. Curiously most of those seem to come from outside the United States.
Perhaps the LDS spokesman quoted above was on the right track. Why should we as Catholics care that the Mormons believe in something that we don’t believe in? It is, as he said, a matter of belief.
One objection to the use of records by LDS genealogists has been the complaint that some of the Mormon records are inaccurate. Mormon leaders say that there are inconsistencies and inaccuracies primarily in the IGI. They say that they have taken steps to weed out inaccurate information in the IGI. Finally, the ban on cooperation relates only to the LDS church. No doubt there are many many other faiths with severe doctrinal differences with the Roman Catholic Church, who are not banned from examining parish records. And we’re not going to change their belief system by refusing to cooperate on genealogical records.
One of the ironies here is that the Catholic Church once had the biggest collection of genealogical records in the world. They weren’t centralized like the LDS records are. But for many centuries, the only place that genealogical records were kept was in the local church. After the Reformation, Catholic and Protestant churches alike continued to be the main repositories of genealogical records. Civil involvement in matters of birth, marriage and death is a relatively new phenomenon.
Because Catholic records aren’t centralized, there was an opportunity for cooperation that could have led to greater accessibility of Catholic records to historians, genealogists and the general public.
In 2008 I wrote:
“The LDS Church has been more than generous in sharing their extremely costly research endeavors with the world at little or no cost. I would hope that my church, had it been in their shoes, would be as magnanimous. In fact, what the Mormons have done is downright Christian. . .
” . . . Catholics and our faith are actually strengthened in a way by knowing and understanding our past and appreciating our ancestors. Curiously, we have the Mormons to thank for that.” See Catholics, Mormons at Odds Over Genealogical Records? at GeneaBlogie.
That’s still my thinking on the matter. What do you think?
Also posted at GeneaBlogie
The Catholic Gene 
Thank you so much for speaking on this. As a Catholic, I feel that I am losing all of the history of my Catholic ancestors, who loved and supported their faith. At least in my city, the Catholic Archdiocese has made it very difficult and expensive to get the information. As a genealogist, I want to see the ACTUAL records to know this is the right person, church, info, etc. Microfilming them before they are burned or destroyed is critical. Right now, my original 175 year old parish records are in moldy boxes in the basement of the rectory in an impoverished neighborhood where the non-genealogist volunteer goes into the basement once a week to research records with slips of information provided by a central office. It is ineffective, costly to me, impractical and frankly, insulting. I happen to have a few faiths in my family history – and I am grateful for the non-Catholic faiths who encourage me (by making it practical) to know the names and details of my ancestors who championed their faith. It is making me curious about the part that particular faith played in my ancestor’s lives. Sadly, I am not finding my Catholic records and will probably never see the originals. My descendants will only have tons of German Lutheran, Methodist and Quaker records of faithful attendance and sacramental participation.
Barbara, your examples show how the present policy has implications beyond simply repudiating a Mormon practice. And think about this: suppose they refused to share any of their records, LDS or non-LDS, with us because of the matter of transubstantiation?
I think you kind of hit the nail on the head with your statement, “Why should we as Catholics care that the Mormons believe in something [posthumous baptism] that we don’t believe in?” I for one am extremely grateful for the Catholic church records the Mormons have microfilmed and digitized over the years, and made available for free.
What a great post. I always enjoy a good Pope joke, In our area, it is pretty simple to access old parish sacramental records (thankfully). But now, after reading your post I can understand why the Church has been so hesitant. I always thought (assumed) that it was about privacy. Not the same case when I try to research records for my husband’s family in old southern parishes.
Thank you for taking the time to write an excellent post. I wish there was some way to change this strange decree by the Church. I am so grateful to the LDS church for helping me find my ancestors, all Catholic. I knew that re-baptism was the reason the Mormon church is collecting the records. But I have always had the same opinion as speedytexaslibrarian. Why would we be worried about Mormon re-baptism. Aren’t we then saying that theirs is the right theology and that re-baptism is indeed possible. Perhaps our Savior did call from Salt Lake City.
I would just like to comment on this. I am LDS ( Mormon) and I have performed many Baptisms for the dead in our Temples. Its not necessarily about RE_baptizing an individual, what if that person had never been Baptized to begin with?. There are many people like that. The Bible teaches that we must all be Baptized in order to get to Heaven, so what about those who were never Baptized? The Bible also mentions Baptism for the dead if you read 1 Corintheans 15:29. It plainly states that the practice of Baptism for the dead was practiced in Biblical times. So this is why the LDS church does this, and we do our genealogy to find as many people as we can to make sure they are baptized in this life.
As a Catholic genealogist-historian with over a third of a century of research time under my belt, I share your feelings of ambiguity about the privacy and disclosure issues on Catholic sacramental records. Let me give a few scholarly insights.
First, Catholic sacramental records are a treasure of the particular church (e.g., diocese and parish) responsible for their creation. A baptismal certificate is never denied to any Catholic who has a reasonable need for it. In my lifetime I have required certified copies of my own baptismal certificate prior to my confirmation and to my marriage. I have obtained copies of the baptismal records of many of my own immediate family members for legitimate needs (as an example, for establishing a delayed filing birth certificate for my late mother in law). Catholic families should take care to record this information within their own records, family Bibles, prayer books, and certificates; there used to be a page in every missal for this.
In many areas countries, Catholic registration of baptism is the only registration of birth available. Historically, this has been true for Mexico, Quebec, much of South America, and even in selected areas of the United States. Where the civil law requires that church records be divulged to civil authorities, they have been and will continue to be.
But here’s where the problem lies: not with the particular case, but with a general trend. Records management for these ancient (and arguably sacred) records has been a mixed bag. Some records have fallen out of Catholic control, just as some of our cemeteries have been sold over time as public parks. Contrapose this with LDS need: the LDS temple network stokes an undying hunger for “names” under which the faithful can stand proxy in vicarious rituals. Seemingly, the LDS have not yet developed a theology permitting anonymity of vicarious offerings; there must be a personal, historical attachment to a real, but formerly living, person.
Cash-poor diocesan authorities were falling into the trap of allowing the LDS missionaries to organize and microfilm the records in exchange for a “free copy” of the resulting microfilm. However, the microfilming contracts were apparently not reviewed closely; they surrendered literary rights to the material. Instant result, source for LDS “names”–and “controlled extraction”, or wholesale submission, of the aggregate contents of the records to the temples surely followed. An ongoing indexing effort even now is ensuring the “names” are processed even more efficiently; many of these records were filmed decades ago.
Yes, within the last year or so, virtual images of the actual documents are also appearing at http://www.familysearch.org. As a result, the names, birth dates, baptismal dates, First Communion dates, even confirmation dates of many living Catholics were suddenly being broadcast to the world from an LDS web site (I could cite examples of several prominent midwest dioceses for you!). Catholic records belong, by right and by canon law, to our ecclesiastic authority. The microfilm agreements compromised that, unwittingly. The LDS stance is that all the records of the world belong to them. Not so. The 2008 decree was vital, IMHO, to asserting the rights of Christ’s faithful to be secure in their own sacramental records. Again, IMHO, court action may be required to repeal or void the terms of the microfilming contracts.
Bottom line: diocese by diocese, world wide, the Church needs to do a better job of records management. Perhaps Pope Francis can encourage this by allowing the Vatican Archivists to complete their first-ever inventory of the collection!
Thanks for a very thoughtful comment, Loretta-Marie!
Who cares. These people mostly are deceased. The Catholic church should centralize their records, charge a fee and let people do their research. There are about fifteen Irish parishes in downtown NYC. it gets very expensive contacting each one.
Just go online and type in familysearch.org and you will have more records than you will know what to do with. Put out by the LDS church by the way.
When you are able to go page by page through baptismal records of a parish you will most likely find other relatives that, you won’t find on Family Search. For those of us living in the NYC area, the catholic records are the holy grail of our research. I wish they would open up the vault.
Great comment with great info! I have run into a number of brick walls when it comes to my Catholic ancestors, especially in Ireland and England where there was so much persecution. I’ve read that when Catholicism was basically illegal, often records were stashed or kept with a priest who was often in hiding or on the run. I’ve also heard that itinerant circuit priests like the Jesuits in hiding in England or the Jesuit missionaries in North America were supposed to send a copy of their year’s records to Rome, but if there is no centralized records in the Church, this must not be true? Mom always said that all our names were written in Rome, meaning copies of our sacramental records are on file somewhere at the Vatican. True or not?
I’ve heard too that all sacramental records are copied at the Vatican. Honestly, I don’t know if this is true or not. I can imagine that given the structure of the Church, it may well be true.
Thank you, Loretta-Marie. This was very informative!
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