Baptism for the dead

“ For if they who are baptized among them receive eternal life through the remission of their sins, why do they come to the Church? But if no salvation is received from a dead person, and they therefore, acknowledging their former error, return with penance to the truth, they ought to be sanctified with the one life-giving baptism which is in the Catholic Church. ”

“ To interpret, therefore, a ritual baptism as symbolic of the spiritual burial, is as incongruous to the Scriptural conception, as would be the employment of the burial of the dead to represent the outpouring upon us of the Spirit of life. And to understand the apostle, by the expression, “buried by the baptism” to mean directly the spiritual phenomenon which the phrase designates, and at the same time to convey an allusion to a ritual baptism as being a symbol of the burial, is an absurdity which does violence to the whole conception, to the destruction of its propriety and significance. ”

“ In the dedication of a building they bless the different parts even to shingles and nails. A full hour was consumed when the large tabernacle was dedicated, in enumerating and blessing the different materials that made up its construction. One other very peculiar tenet of the church is baptism for the dead. They are women principally who enter with enthusiasm in practising this rite, and they have been immersed as many as twenty times in one day to insure the future of departed friends. ”

“ Such were the conceptions with reference to which the rites of Levitical baptism were ordained. They were designed to answer the question: How can these dead be made alive, this defilement be cleansed, and the curse lifted from man and the earth? They announced life to the dead, and the healing of their corruption. They proclaimed Christ’s atonement made to redeem us from the curse, and his Spirit given to implant in us new life and purge us from dead works to serve the living God. ”