Recently, a young LDS missionary got in trouble for defacing property at a Colorado Cathedral. It was a stupid and thoughtless act. The Catholic authorities could have had him prosecuted and nobody, including LDS, would have thought any the less of them. But, they forgave the action. This kid did something really dumb but the consequenses could have marred his young life. I was extremely impressed by the Catholic Church. In my mind, they were exhibiting the kind of Christ-like behavior that Jesus Christ taught all of His true disciples to do.

It’s a shame that both sides can’t live by that kind of example.

And one more question. Simply because your Church collected the records, does that mean the knowledge of people’s ancestors is the intellectual property of your Church? all the posterity of people who were Catholic, are they all not inherently entitled to know their parents, simply because they are not of the same faith, or of any faith at all? Is the right to know one’s ancestry at the whim of the Catholic Church just because they were so efficient at monopolizing a huge swath of our common history?

Now, you are not Catholic in spite of the Church but because of it : the Church does not simply bow down to informal American individualism.

As for the delay, I persume this guideline is a bit late, but better late than never. In any case, the LDS ought to know what the Church thinks of its cultic activies, of which it disaprooves (ie false baptisms for dead people).

The Church, through its diocese and parishes, keeps its own records and genealogical data that clearly outmatch any kind of LDS bookkeeping, which basically copies from what Catholics have already done in a most admirable way. For instance, in Easten Canada, France and Mexico, the entire genealogy is kept by the Church.

Guess again Doctor. These numbers are a blip on the overall number of faithful, Orthodox Catholics in each of the countries sited here. Nice try.