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twopekinguys
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Man up Why Me?
Did you call me a liar?
Did you call me a liar?
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why_me
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I have posted many posts that compliment the catholic church. You said that I post negative posts about the catholic church. You can also post the posts where I said nice things about catholicism such as from this thread:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=371388&page=2
Go down to post number 29. I also have a couple more on that thread. I think that that post speaks for me too.
In fact, I have many posts that compliment the catholic church. How many posts do you have that compliment the mormon church? Have you shown charity toward the lds church on these threads?
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ThuriferAcolyte
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Dudes relax. Isn’t Dee trying to find out the Catholic view of Mormon doctrines, as he clarified in post number 15? forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=5644379&postcount=15
Let’s not bury that point.
Let’s not bury that point.
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why_me
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You can also check here:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=371388&page=3
My post is at the top of the thread. But I know that this will not change your opinion of me. But it does prove a point. I do post positive posts about the catholic church.
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why_me
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His OP was just a little different than that post.
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ThuriferAcolyte
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If you say so
I’m not arguing with you anymore. I’m on this thread to help Dee see the Catholic view of Mormonism, as he clearly says he is looking for. If you don’t like that, whatever, post away your anti-catholic websites, we’ve seen it before.
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sj2
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This is just a weird conversation. You said, “if you equate what they feel to a warm fuzzy it could be insulting to them”–okay, IF I did that, sure. But I didn’t. You do realize that in that quote I was giving you an example of what I didn’t say, in other words, I did not say “Mormons are wrong, it’s not the Holy Spirit; it’s just warm fuzzies.” You do see that I am saying I did not say that.
I don’t know what you feel in a Catholic church. You could feel good, or you could feel bad. Your personal feeling has nothing to do with if the Catholic church is true. It has nothing to do with whether the Holy Spirit is there or not.
Let me give you an example. I am sitting next to you in said Catholic church. You feel something positive inside you (the holy spirit? perhaps!) . . . I feel nauseous (the lack of the holy spirit or just a burrito gone awry?) Is either of our feelings an absolute reflection of whether the Holy Spirit dwells in the church? Is either of our feelings reflective of the validity of what the other believes about their religion? My opinion: I’ll let you decide what your feelings mean, and I’ll decide what my feelings mean.
Let me repeat . . . I, me, SJ, not you, not every Mormon, not Joseph Smith, just me . . . I felt something; I investigated; I moved on. That is not insulting to Mormons. That’s just my story. I get to claim whatever the heck I want to about what my feelings mean to me. You can do the same with your feelings. How do you not get that? Golly, I never even brought up the Holy Spirit, so how do you say, “you claim it is not the holy ghost but a warm fuzzy.” In fact, maybe I am insulted, because *you *are implying my warm fuzzies were not inspired by the Holy Spirit. For all you know I felt the Holy Spirit in the form of warm fuzzies when I was investigating the Mormon church, they just lead me back home to Catholicism. Do you discredit my experience of the Holy Spirit simply because I described it as “warm fuzzies”?
I agree with someone above, this just feels like derailing and is disrespectful to the OP. I’m sorry,** Tweedle_Dee ** I hope you understood where I was coming from. My investigation not only brought me closer to my home church, but left me loving many of the aspects of the LDS church that make/made my husband and in-laws so great.
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why_me
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This is the sentence that you wrote:This is just a weird conversation. You said, “if you equate what they feel to a warm fuzzy it could be insulting to them”–okay, IF I did that, sure. But I didn’t. You do realize that in that quote I was giving you an example of what I didn’t say, in other words, I did not say “Mormons are wrong, it’s not the Holy Spirit; it’s just warm fuzzies.” You do see that I am saying I did not say that.
The lovey-dovey wonderfulness of being “in love” kind of wore off. I saw that I do, in fact, love the BF and his family, but I really needed to investigate the Mormon faith, not just rely on “warm fuzzies”.
The term warm fuzzy is an exmormon term for what they felt during mormon services. As members it was the holy ghost and now as exmembers, it becomes only a warm fuzzy. And so, when you wrote this I felt that you were implying that you were not going just to rely on warm fuzzies, ie, what mormons would consider the pressence of the holy ghost.
Sorry if I were wrong.
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why_me
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I would not post anticatholic websites on this forum because I have the same attitude for them as the antimormon sites. I see them as having no credibility.
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Randy_Carson
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Dee-
You were right to be repulsed. Catholic bookstores should not profit from such stupidity.
Your instincts are also correct concerning the Catholic Church. Jesus promised to remain with His Church forever. He is able to protect her from falling into apostasy.
Keep asking your questions! We’ll do our best to answer…
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ThuriferAcolyte
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Um, the burial of a statue of St. Joseph is a known tradition. While it is not mandatory, it is not “stupidity”. It is only superstitious and “stupid” for people that think just burying it and that’s that “does something”, like a magic spell.
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xixxvmcm85
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Didn’t make sense to me either. That was step one of many in my investigation.
I still to this day wonder what his motivation was. Obviously I’m coming from the opinion that what Smith experienced wasn’t real. I don’t know if power or money were necessarily a motivating factor. After all, as soon as Smith came across any money (in a communal sense) the LDS Saints were quickly dispersed. Power, I think is more likely. Joseph Smith did after all run for the presidency of the United States even though it was quite obvious he had no chance of winning. I don’t think its a stretch of the imagination to say that Smith had a bit of an ego.
In any case, I don’t think it matters much. What matters is the truth of the claim. Either he saw God and was commissioned to restore the Church or he wasn’t, otherwise we could spend hours upon hours speculating about the motives of Ellen G. White (Seventh-day Adventists), Charles Taze Russel (Jehovah’s Witnesses), Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), Jim Jones (People’s Temple), David Koresh, etc.
I think many non-Mormons are quick to jump to very hasty conclusions about allegedly seedy motives of the early LDS. Many are quick to invoke Satan as the cause, or deception, when neither is necessary for an explanation. It’s well documented that people are capable of “witnessing” things that didn’t really happen yet they believe they really did. Minds are very suggestible.
There’s also the possibility of protecting one’s reputation. Have you ever kept a lie going even when you really didn’t want to just so you don’t have to face the fact of having told the lie in the first place? This is possible with respect to the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, though I don’t believe it’s likely. It might be likely for one or two individuals, but 8 and 13?
But just as I find the motivations of Smith irrelevant to the truth claims, so too do I find the motivations of the witnesses. They’re inconsequential in my mind since one cannot deduce the conclusion from the speculation. In any case, it seems the “witnesses” didn’t witness the Golden Plates in the same physical sense as we were all taught as children in Primary . I just came across this website a few days ago and am still reading this page so I cannot attest to the complete accuracy of it. Fortunately, the author writes in a respectful manner (as to not be deemed a vapid anti-Mormon) and he repeatedly cites his sources. I would nonetheless recommend that you double-check the sources yourself. Be a skeptic!
I think a lot of dissatisfied Mormons are quick to make this false dichotomy. I know I was, and upon introspection I realized it was because of my being raised to expect the church to have a visible priesthood. I still have this expectation today, but unlike as it was when I was a bit younger, the expectation has been validated by my own study rather than a cultural assumption. It also helps that this dichotomy is often employed by dyed-in-the-wool Mormons to this day. “Either the Catholic Church is true, or OUR Church is true”. Come to think of it, I might have heard this in a number of fast and testimony meetings.
In any case, it’s important (I think) to try to come at this with a fresh pair of eyes. Rid yourself of your previous assumptions, such as those that elevate the LDS Church to a higher probability than it likely deserves. It seems your testimony in Christianity in general is still strong, so start from there. Start with the canonized work of Christianity we have and work your way down through history. If there were an apostasy, you’ll find it, or at least find strong evidence for it.
This is what I did, and alas, after reading the ECFs, studying the history of the eastern churches (including the Oriental and Nestorian), studying a bit of the competing pre-Nicene versions of Christianity (Gnosticism, Manicheanism, Adoptionism, etc) I realized that there isn’t a single trace of any form of Proto-Mormonism. There is no trace of “The Church of Jesus Christ of FORMER-Day Saints”. There’s no single group of proto-Mormons to be found anywhere in Early Christianity. No group that had temple endowments (or even a temple for that matter), no patriarchal blessings, no garments, no references to a literal theosis. Nothing of the sort.
Much to my surprise, I kept seeing recurring themes in the documented history of Christianity such as the veneration of Mary as the Mother of God, and various forms of the baptismal rite. Contrary to what I had been told in Sunday School and Seminary, these weren’t haphazardly invented by the Catholics at some rigidly defined council centuries after Christ.
It’s a sacramental whose use has become rather prone to superstition (in my opinion) and for this reason, I wouldn’t bury St. Joseph in order to sell a piece of property.
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xixxvmcm85
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PS: Best of luck in your endeavors!!!
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RebeccaJ
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“You know when you feel good inside and when you don’t. When you do, you are in harmony with the Spirit of our Heavenly Father. Sometimes that feeling can change very quickly. You might be feeling good, and then someone comes and takes your toy from you, and suddenly you’re mad. This could make you want to hit, kick, bite, or scream. And **that isn’t the feeling **of the Spirit. How do you get back to feeling good again?”
“You will know the Holy Ghost is with you by the way you feel. President Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994)”
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why_me
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You will have to give me the source to this quotation.
It sounds as if he were talking to children which would make sense. But I would need to see the source and who was his audience.But I do think that it is important to feel the spirit when you are in a holy place or that his pressence is felt for example as in Acts 1:8; luke 1:35; Acts 4:8 (if peter was filled with the holy ghost it must have been a wonderful feeling) or in Romans 14:17 which states that we should have joy in the holy ghost. Joy is a feeling. Or in Romans 15.13 which states that we should abound in hope in through the power of the holy ghost. Hope is also a feeling.
And now that I think of it, to ‘feel the spirit’ is said in mormon meetings by some members.
And now that I think of it, this idea is also said in lds meetings. And come to think of it, when I sit in a catholic church I can feel peaceful and good. And I always assumed that this feeling was the holy ghost. How do you feel when you are in church?
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xixxvmcm85
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It varies.
I usually feel warm, fulfilled, satiated, like I do after a good meal.
Sometimes I feel grogy and irritable because I worked til 3am the night before.
Sometimes I feel giddy because this girl I’ve been trying to muster up the courage to ask for her number chose to sit next to ME in the pew
Sometimes I feel inspired by the homily, other times I feel turned off.
The thing is, I don’t assess the truth or the meaning of things based on my feelings. I’ve felt that same burning in the bosom during one of my priest’s very famous homilies. It turns out it was so famous that the Bishop got word of it and asked him to apologize and correct himself for teaching error the following Sunday!
My emotions have often failed me.
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RebeccaJ
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It is from lds.org. Let me google that for you. You’ll get more links than you have time to read.You will have to give me the source to this quotation.
For children or not, what does it matter? Other than, indoctrinating children to believe that when they are angry, God withdraws from them, is one horrific thing to teach a child.
No one said we are without feeling. Mormons take it to the extreme, giving a spiritual definition to every feeling. Most of the time a feeling is just a feeling. And, feelings can betray us.
It is just another separation of faith from reason. It is not reasonable to believe that every time you feel good, God is doing X and every time you feel rotten, God is doing Y.
Yes whyme, I figured you knew this already and were being contrary for the sake of being contrary. You can’t talk to a mormon without them telling you how they “feel the spirit”. Even in business meetings, decisions are made by how they “feel”. All reason, thrown out the window, but hey, it feels good.
It is why I don’t trust mormons why me. Not because I think they are bad people, or are going to harm me. I don’t trust their thought process. They make very bad decisions and come to very nutsy conclusions, and much of the cause of this is the feeling du jour. That, and the compartmentalizing that must go on in order to believe X while simultaneously facing the absolute reality of Y.
Bad thought processing. At times to the point that all reality is lost and only a fantasy remains.
But it feels good to them, except, the anxiety it causes that is hidden because you know, to feel anxious about what you should feel good about is NOT GOOD.
When I am at church, I feel profoundly grateful, particularly after I have received the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
There are times when I feel a great amount of pain at church. I take all I have to Him, and He takes it all. It is not always a feel good process why me, and if someone is telling you it should be…well, I still have that bridge for sale.
There are times I feel great joy, like at Easter Vigil.
And there have been times I have been very angry at God. There were times when I was seeking Him, that the faith I saw in others at Mass was a big puzzle.
Amazing thing why me, God just keeps on giving all He has, no matter how I feel. And for that, I am profoundly grateful.
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ThuriferAcolyte
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That was a wonderful testimony
! The Catholic Church really is amazing.
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ThuriferAcolyte
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Has the Mormon Church ever had pictures of Joseph Smith “translating” (is that even an accurate word here?) the Book of Mormon by placing the seer stone in a hat and putting his face in it? It seems like every picture is of him intently reading the Plates, and of course that wasn’t the only way he “translated”, as I’m sure all are aware of. Just wondering about the pictorial portrayal.
It probably just looks better to have him reading Gold Plates with Reformed Egyptian than putting his face in a hat.
mormonthink.com/transbomweb.htm
Another interesting website I found:
mormonstories.org/top10toughissues/
It probably just looks better to have him reading Gold Plates with Reformed Egyptian than putting his face in a hat.
mormonthink.com/transbomweb.htm
Another interesting website I found:
mormonstories.org/top10toughissues/
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xixxvmcm85
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Not that I know of.
Every artist’s rendition I’ve seen in church looked something like this
http://www.josephsmith.net/Static Images/parson-translation_HR.jpg
Every artist’s rendition I’ve seen in church looked something like this
http://www.josephsmith.net/Static Images/parson-translation_HR.jpg
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