18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

[cahn]

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

Comments

Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Background

[mildred_of_midgard]

so is this, not least because yours truly, of course, is in a mixed-religion marriage and a lot of this stuff sounded very familiar

This one was for you!

(My church comes out strongly (for a contemporary church) against mixed marriages, although not of course strongly compared to these guys.)

What, no one was brutally murdered while going about their own business? ;)

we have just had the kids get baptized twice

Oh, this is interesting! Check this out:

As early as 1439, Pope Eugene IV had acknowledged the grace-giving efficacy of any baptism, more or less, that used water and invoked the Trinity, so long as the sacrament was performed with the correct intent. In the sixteenth century, when the breakup of western Christendom gave the issue great urgency, the Catholic Council of Trent had reaffirmed this position. Both Catholic and mainstream Protestant leaders were leery of anything that resembled rebaptism, a practice they associated with Anabaptist radicals. Rome therefore discouraged the inclination of priests in some parts of Europe, including the Habsburg Netherlands, to perform conditional baptisms (in which a priest would intone, “If you are baptized, I do not baptize you, but if you have not yet been baptized, I baptize you”) if they had any doubt of the validity of a person’s prior baptism. Conditional baptisms were not approved or practiced after the 1620s in the provinces of the Dutch Republic, nor were they in the diocese of Liège, where our story takes place. To be sure, the Catholic rite included elements, most notably the exorcism of demons, which many Protestant ones omitted. If a Protestant converted to Catholicism, these elements might be performed in a supplemental ceremony. This was not the general custom, though, in the Liège diocese, precisely for the reason, as a pastoral handbook explained, “lest the uneducated common folk think that we deem their [the Protestants’] baptism invalid, and that it is necessary to baptize them again for a second time.”

I thought the conditional baptism was really interesting.

Okay, while I'm here, question about LDS baptism. This is something I heard by word of mouth as a kid and I have no idea if it's true: I was told the whole indexing baptismal records that the church encourages members to do is so all these recorded people can be given a proper, i.e. LDS, baptism. I was told that your church was the only church that could baptize people who weren't present or even living, that they just have to know that the person being baptized existed, and that said church is on a quest to baptize as many people in the history of the world as possible. But that doesn't seem to jive with what you said just now about consent, and is the kind of thing that could easily be a conspiracy theory invented by a different church. So I'm curious!

On a related note, you with your expanded access to FamilySearch owe me some Frederician (boyfriend) lookups! When would be a good time of the year for you?

ETA: I meant to say, I like Anna in all this. She comes off pretty well with her, "Why shouldn't I take babies to the Reformed church? I can understand what they're saying, and it's not evil!"

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stuff

[cahn]

Heh. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are farther out there than Arians, so it's not really like Protestants vs Catholicism where they both do believe in the same creed and so on. (My church: We don't need your stinkin' creed!) And we also don't consider other religions' baptisms valid. So it does make more sense to rebaptize than it would for a lot of things.

I was told the whole indexing baptismal records that the church encourages members to do is so all these recorded people can be given a proper, i.e. LDS, baptism.

This is true!

I was told that your church was the only church that could baptize people who weren't present or even living,

This is only half true, it is specifically baptism for the dead (motivated by 1 Corinthians 15:29 KJV: Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?). It's possible they tried doing it for live people who weren't around at some point in Church history, it sounds like the sort of thing someone would try at some point, but I am not motivated enough to search for it and I think it's not all that likely since it's not even kind of Biblically motivated.

that they just have to know that the person being baptized existed,

Yes, this is true.

and that said church is on a quest to baptize as many people in the history of the world as possible.

Yes, true, because you have to be baptized to be saved, and how unfair is it that all these people died without baptism and didn't have the opportunity! (I gotta hand it to my church's theology, it really does try to deal with what Joseph Smith saw as unfairness.)

But that doesn't seem to jive with what you said just now about consent

The missing part is that, after the baptism for the dead is performed, the dead person has the choice of whether to accept the baptism or not. That's the consent part.

Of course, there's also the part where you might want to get consent from, oh, the relatives of the people you are baptizing, which historically the Church has not been great about -- for example, getting into a ton of trouble at some point because they were trying to baptize Holocaust victims *facepalm*. Anyway, they don't do that kind of thing anymore, but this is why they're so big on family history. Because if you take your great-x26-grandfather, or whatever, to the temple to get him baptized, it's rather harder to tell you you can't.

On a related note, you with your expanded access to FamilySearch owe me some Frederician (boyfriend) lookups! When would be a good time of the year for you?

Probably January!

Re: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stuff

[mildred_of_midgard]

(My church: We don't need your stinkin' creed!)

Lol! That makes sense, re rebaptism.

Thank you for all the explanations and filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge! It's one of those topics where I've only picked up scraps by osmosis.

The missing part is that, after the baptism for the dead is performed, the dead person has the choice of whether to accept the baptism or not. That's the consent part.

Ahhh! That solution did not occur to me, thank you.

for example, getting into a ton of trouble at some point because they were trying to baptize Holocaust victims *facepalm*

Yes, see, that's why I was willing to entertain the possibility that this was all a conspiracy theory made up by people who EXTREMELY don't want this baptism!

Probably January!

Excellent! You will be hearing from me then. :D