Vatican Orders Catholics Dioceses to Withhold Records from Mormons

Well this is interesting. Inside Catholic has the details at The Vatican is withholding parish records from Mormons. More on this later as I check this out. Look for updates on this entry.

LET ME CLARIFY HERE. According to the CNS report that I cite below the Church is concerned about the Mormons' Genealogical Society of Utah.

Update 1 OK, I hope the media does not make this a huge controversy. We actually have good relations (we meaning the Diocese of Salt Lake City and the Mormon powers t that be in Utah). Elsewhere who knows. Anyway the question should be asked why Parishes were cooperating at all? Was it to further "genealogical" efforts? I mean if Catholics went down the Southern Baptist and asked them for all the names of their dead baptized so we could pray for their souls I would not be offended if the baptists said hell no which would be likely.

I don't think Parishes should be helping out on this because well we don't believe in what the Mormons are doing. Duh!!

Anyway Catholic News Service has a much fuller article here with reaction from Catholic Powers that be.

This Catholic Blogging Priest in Utah is far less Diplomatic than the Father James Massa, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs that is cited in the above article . GO see his post About Time!

More coming up later

Update 2-
This Mormon blogger feels that today is "not a good day in Mormon/Catholic relations". PLEASEEE BY the way he cites the Deseret News article on this and there are right now 521 comments!!!! Most are SHOCKED at why this happened. I suppose I am wondering why this was happening in the first place. Maybe I am missing the Mormon Viewpoint here. It appears this is a bigger deal to Mormons than I thought. It appears the media will not have to "Make" this a huge controversy because it is one

The Catholic News Service blog has a good post here about the story at Rocking the Mormon world. It is a good piece that gives some Mormon Reaction. It also mentions how for the first time a couple of weeks ago that two Mormon Officials participated in a Papal event while the Pope was in the USA

Mormon Coffee, that appears to a site that is not Mormon, has some thoughts on the reaction at Catholic Parish Registers Off-Limits to LDS Church

More from a Mormon Viewpoint here at Catholic parish registers belong to humanity. Comment 70 is interesting:
Julie Smith wrote: “I don’t think it is being honest with your fellow men to ask for parish records under false pretenses.”(12)
Alma 43:30 “And he also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands, and their liberty, and their church, therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem; therefore, he found by his spies which course the Lamanites were to take.”
Don’t forget the secrecy which the Church had to employ in order to carry a copy of the first temple film to Europe back in the Sixties. I don’t know if they broke any international laws or not, but they certainly didn’t advertise what they had in their possession.
The point is, there are greater laws and lesser laws - Jesus eating corn from a field on the Sabbath and healing on the Sabbath, the Spirit commanding Nelphi to slay Laban. Temple work is about the highest law I can imagine, thus, I don’t consider not divulging our intent to an archivist as particularly troubling. However, if we are specifically asked if our intent is to do temple work with the information, I believe we must be forthcoming.
Comment by K.C. — 5/5/2008 @ 3:39 am

Anyway I suspect the media is going to pick up on this in a major way. So we might be revisiting this issue again tomorrow

There are some interesting side issues. You know the Genealogy thing. I mean are preventing the cure for Cancer if don't give over names. Looking at the some of the comments at the Mormon sites you would think the Catholic Church is about to put back medical science because these records will not be in one place and researched. Anyway more later