Dissecting an ad for Pre-Inquiry / Utah

[rich123456]

I am placing an add in our local newspaper here in Utah. It is for pre-inquiry in advance of the inquiry for the RCIA. We need this one door to our faith always open. If you have sells or marketing experience or just have a few Ideas of your own please fill free to pick this apart, add or subtract. Pray about it. Ask the Spirit to come down. If you are ex-Mormon that would be great as you can get into the mindset of someone reading this here in Utah.

I would love to place the Catholic Answers web-site on this but in my heart I cannot because of the overtone of their writings such as this found at the end of one

“The LDS / Mormon slogan,

“Families are forever,” means fractured families”

http://www.catholic.com/library/Distinctive_Beliefs_of_Mormon.asp

This never pierces a heart for Christ in Utah, around the world, even on forums when this tone is used. It comes from a fallen people (us) trying to bring others into their fold. I can look past these tactics because I have Christ at the core of His Church. But those who do not have Christ at the center of their lives cannot look past this tone. The very people we are trying to save. If you feel the same humbly let Catholic Answers know. You know how this tone goes over on these forums at times. Could you imagine if this tone never popped up its head from Catholics here posting? I called on it a few years back to no avail. Anyway…

Here it is: See what you can do.

Receive Catholic Answers

Go directly to the source: Catholic Answers to your honest questions 6 to 7 P.M Tuesday nights at Saint Thomas Aquinas located at 795 North 800 East on the hill. Enter through any door and go downstairs to the Social Hall. If you have questions, doubts about what you have been taught, or you’re just curious please come and learn about our 2000 year old Apostolic faith. Tour the Chapel; ask questions about what’s inside and what takes place. Do Catholics pray to Saints? Worship Mary? Exalt the Cross? etc… If you have any questions please call Rich at: 881-5722 or just come as you are. Look foreword to seeing you and peace in Christ always. Visit us at: www.stthomaslogan.org

 

[StubbleSpark]

I am not associated with Catholic Answers, but in their defense, I have to say that the quote you presented is not meant for evangelizing Mormons, Protestants or otherwise. The tone is neither delicate nor over-the-top-Mountain-Dew-extreme-to-the-max. It is just straightforward. Calling a duck a “duck.” :yup:

Having said that, you are right in chosing a more tactful way of publicly presenting your faith.

As for your ad, I like it. If you can keep up with the workload, then I think you should be able to pull in a few sincerely interested people. I am assuming that because you live in Utah, you are reading up on your BoM and other Standard Works, right?

 

[rich123456]

“Families are forever,” means fractured families”

Everything that comes out of our mouths should be about putting Christ foreword. If it’s not about that than it is dead wood. I love Catholic answers, it has inspired me for many years. I come from a fractured family myself. We had no religion growing up. Not only have I stood by and watched this in my own family, I have watched it in my new Catholic family as well; I see this in myself as well. This is why I choose to be baptized Catholic. Because in our faith we come face to face with our brokenness, our fractures, the very place where we can come to know our original blessings.

As a child I watched the two people I loved most in this world tear themselves apart. A Father, who commits adultery, is caught and begs for forgiveness from his lover, a mother who can’t forgive and chooses to end her life, a brother who looses his life in the back of a truck as it rolls because he snuck out to party with friends. An aunt who speaks to those around her but nobody listens because she speaks to much and is annoying. All these things that in the end make us hunger for something better, to go beyond the pain.

I am not speaking about a quote that is bubble gum as you say. Because if he or she is told that he or she comes from a fractured family why should they listen to one who also comes from a fractured family, my family, our Catholic family?

We have to be careful, because what seems small may be very large. As a teen I smoked and drank, wore Levi’s, had long hair, hung with others from other fractured families, we were pretty cool!. I remember the popular kids, how they would look at us because we were fractured, from fractured families.

They came from great families; All was well in their families. This gave them the right to judge us because they knew that because of what we did, and what we said that we were from fractured families.

To make a long story short I became Catholic because I saw that it was fractured and that at it’s core was Christ and His healing. That God see’s all of us the same, and loves us all the same, no one more broken than the other, all broken. I have become comfortable in that sense. I guess you could say I am a duck, becaue as you have said, a duck is a duck.

We just have to watch our approach in evangelizing and always check it and monitor it with prayer. One sentance can do a lot of damage as to how others percieve our faith.
catholic-rcia.com/pages/Forgive.html
If only my parents had known God

God Bless
Rich

 

[StubbleSpark]

Mormons believe in three heavens. Families that are baptised together have the hope of staying together but the children still have to be accountable when they become adults themselves – and not everyone always receives a temple elect. This means that if one family member fails to meet specs on Earth, he goes to one of the lower heavens where he has no hope of advancement through “eternal progression.” This separation lasts forever. I am also a little fuzzy on whether the children who grow up and have families of their own and are “sealed” with them are actually able to interact with the parents they were originally sealed with.

That is beside the point. What is indisputable is that their heaven is segregated with the goody-goods at the top and the rest of mankind in our heavenly hamster cages. This flies in the face of the unifying fire of God (called Love). In our Heaven, we bask in this eternal Love – united to Him. This is one of the factors that makes communion of the saints possible – they do not BEND God’s will, they PERFORM it through prayerful intercession.

Nothing you said about the broken nature of families indicates they are ideal. But Heaven is where the greatest and most eternal of Divine ideals is brought to perfection. A divided Heaven means that families must inevitably be divided DESPITE THE FACT THEY ARE IN HEAVEN!

Mormons point to the temple sealing ceremony and, as a point of pride, say, “Look! If you are Mormon, you get to be a family in Heaven. Christians can’t because they believe Christ when He said no one will be married in Heaven!” While deliberately ignoring this other doctrine of separate heavens that DEMANDS families be cut off (at least until human cloning is perfected and we can safely say that not all humans come from families).

This is not just bait-and-switch, it is outright deception! If they were selling cola, we could sue them for misrepresentation! Horrifically, what they are actually “selling” is Mormon flavor Divine Truth – which because of its changeable nature is not Truth at all but a sucession of dogmas of convenience.

It also does a great disservice to our doctrine because it ignores the fact that Our Family is both Eternal AND United! Note the singular use of “family”. That’s right, our baptism makes us all one big family. There are no earthly marriages in Heaven because we are all wedded (in total conformity with) Divine Truth, Love, and Justice (God).

What does this mean? It means our eternity is more ideal than theirs, for one. It also means that when our earthly families fail us; because, as you say, we are all flawed; we still have recourse to our HEAVENLY FAMILY: Mary, all the angels and saints, and the Blessed Trinity! Through God they are closer to us than any other earthly presence physcially, emotionally, and spiritually.

The “Mormon families mean broken families” quote that prompted your message was only being factual – it was pointing out an inherent and undeniable aspect of Mormon theology. In this sense, it was even kinder than it probably should have been. If it sounds horrific and cruel, it is. But that ain’t Catholic Answers’ cruelty, my friend. :nope: That’s a duck. A duck being called a duck.

When dealing with a group that induldges in mutually conflicting ideas, you have to be kind of blunt to force them to confront those discrepancies. Not much good can be accomplished by down-playing it and sugar-coating it for them because the sugar-coating is the problem.

Think about that part in the Two Towers when Gandalf had to free the king of Wormtongue’s mind-control. Did that look like a pleasant purging? :nope: Nope. Did it ultimately help the king? :yup: Yep.