The Simon Wiesenthal Center found out about it, but instead of quietly notifying the LDS Church of the problem and resolving it behind the scenes, decided to transform the minor drama into a full-blown crisis. On February 9th, 2012, the Center issued an inflammatory and hysterical statement in which they lashed out at the Church, claiming further communication was useless, and impetuously demanding that the Church change their doctrine and stop all proxy baptisms period. Here's the applicable part of the statement:
“We note that these rites were undertaken and confirmed in Mormon Temples in Utah, Arizona, and Idaho. Further meetings with Church leaders on this matter are useless. The only way such insensitive practices would finally stop is if Church leaders finally decided to change their practices and policies on posthumous baptisms, a move which this latest outrage proves that they are unwilling to do. We are grateful to activist Helen Radkey for exposing the latest outrage.”Note that the Simon Wiesenthal Center expresses gratitude to a sworn enemy of the LDS Church, Helen Radkey. Radkey has participated enthusiastically in the witch hunt against the Church over the proxy baptism issue, which heretofore had been led by the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. Also note the phrase "if Church leaders finally decided to change their practices and policies on posthumous baptisms"; since the LDS Church already changed its policy to require Mormons to agree not to submit names of Holocaust victims or celebrities for proxy baptism unless those names are direct ancestors of the submitters, I can only interpret the Center's statement to mean that they want us to change our doctrine and abandon the practice of proxy baptism altogether.
Update February 15th: The Anti-Defamation League also issued its own statement, although their rhetoric was milder. They welcomed the LDS apology, and were willing to acknowledge that the Church is making an honest attempt to live up to their previous agreements with the Holocaust lobby. But they, too, call upon the LDS Church to revisit its theological position on posthumously baptizing Jews and other believers outside the Church, just as other religions have reconsidered centuries-old beliefs.
But before Jews start dictating to us about our religious doctrine, maybe they should clean their own theological house first. For example, in the Talmud, which is the second holiest book in Judaism behind the Torah, one rabbi promotes pedophilia. The following is recorded in Sanhedrin 55b:
R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his.Raba said, It means this: When a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing, for when the girl is less than this [less than three years old], it is as if one puts the finger into the eye [tears come to the eye again and again, so does virginity come back to the little girl under three years];
And get a load of this from Kethuboth 11b:
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