Either Catholics or Mormons have it right...

[JeanMichel]

My intuition tells me that Joseph Smith knew nothing about the Catholic Church except the prejudice that as present in those times.

I have to agree with Kathleen. Smith was just a boy and like most all children, he would reflect the ideas and norms present in the society he grew up in. He was just a simple boy the era.

Frankly, I am a bit impressed with his story. However, I am impressed with most of the stories I know of children who have received special visions. The Church has a wealth of truly remarkable visionaries. My favorite is St. Bernadette of Lourdes. I have had the opportunity to visit the shrine twice. It is a remarkable place and I would recommend it to anyone as a place of pilgrimmage and adoration. In fact, if one has the time, visit Lourdes and then begin the great Camino de Santiago de Compostela. From Lourdes it will take about five weeks, a long journey but one that will change your life.

Was Smith’s visition true? I really don’t bother with the question. Do members of the Mormon faith follow the teachings of Jesus? Can you see the light of Christ active in their lives? Emphatically yes. It is beyond doubt that Jesus is active in their personal lives.

Is truth important? Beyond measure, it is the purpose of this life to find truth given to man by God and exemplified in Christ and live it. Each of us travels this life to find these absolute truths. We each have a knowledge of truth and all are trying to perfect their knowledge. There is no need to berate, accuse, or besmirch the point of progress found in others. For those who are further down the path, thier progress will be known by their love, patience, and compassion shown toward others in teaching these truths. You will also see others who harken Christ with their lips, but by their actions it is shown their hearts are far from him.

 

[zerinus]

“The Gentile church which fails to perpetuate that prophetic tradition.” Huh? According to current Jewish belief, that prophetic tradition ceased well before the Christian era.

That is because the Jewish church also went into apostasy, and was in an apostate condition when Jesus Came. But the prophetic tradition hadn’t altogether ceased, because John the Baptist followed by Jesus came in that tradition, and the Apostles also were prophets.

It is Christian belief, not Jewish, that Jesus was a prophet and the apostles were guided by the Holy Spirit.

Yes, but Jesus and His Apostles were all of the Jewish race, the race with which God had made a covenant through Abraham that through his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed.

It is a Christian belief that Jesus was the final revelation, so of course there would be no more prophets! Therefore it is quite reasonable that the Gentile church doesn’t perpetuate that “prophetic tradition.” Hence, there is nothing amiss.

We disagree. There is no scriptural basis for this. On the contrary, there is scriptural evidence to the contrary, as shown in previous posts.

However, that doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit is not present and guiding the Church subsequently.

I am sure to some extenet it has been present; but not the to the extent one receives it through the sacrament of the laying on of hands, because the authority to perform such a sacrament was lost.

Who gave us the Bible? Leaving aside the question of the earliest origins of scripture, we know from simple history that the Catholic Church gave the Bible to western Europe. This is an important point, because most of us here owe their origins to western Europe, and our belief in the Bible to western Europe. You must realize, whether or not the early Christian church was the Catholic Church or not, the Church in western Europe was the Catholic Church. And the people of western Europe, including the Reformers, came to a belief in the Bible, the OT and the NT, via the Catholic Church. Plus, the physical scriptures themselves were preserved and copied and transmitted through the centuries to western Europe by the auspices of the Catholic Church.

So, yes, for us here on this forum, the Catholic Church gets credit for giving us the Bible.

I agree that she gets credit for preserving the Bible, the Christian tradition, and faith in Jesus Christ; but not for “giving us the Bible”—and the implication that Catholics like put on it, that it somehow gives them the sole copyright to the Bible, and the ultimate legitimacy as God’s only true church.

 

[onenow1]

T

I agree that she gets credit for preserving the Bible, the Christian tradition, and faith in Jesus Christ; but not for “giving us the Bible”—and the implication that Catholics like put on it, that it somehow gives them the sole copyright to the Bible, and the ultimate legitimacy as God’s only true church.

Well the way I see it since you are giving credit to the preservation of it. It should be understood Catholic monks copied it,and the CC can only be the truest interpreter of it . With so many modern translations, it does makes your head spin, each new eccliasial cummunity reeked of egotism and still does in this age of enlightment, or should I say revolt. So I say thank you Martim, Zwingli, Calvin, Arius, etc for your enlightned views !<< Even they couldn’t agree folks !!

God Bless
Happy Thanksgiving to all !

 

[KathleenGee]

I had a visit with my good friend, a very independent mechanic who came out of a Seventh Day Adventist background, highly intelligent, straight A student, prolific thinker. He outsmarts the mechanics for my Jetta TDI.

We had a brief talk about Christianity. He knows Greek. He says all Greek translations fo the past 200 years aren’t the best…wants to go back. He says the real context of scripture can historically and authentically can only be found in the Latin Vulgate. (!!!)

He says all of Scripture is context and you also have to study the times. He says Christianity in its true form is found in the ancient practices.

So it deeply behooves me when the Mormons scoff at the earliest description of the liturgy that was presented in 155 AD to the Roman Emperor…

I want to study contextual Catholic Church history. My pastor gave me a text…I will bring it on later. The other day I got a CD from a monastery on the liturgy of the Mass.

All non-Catholics/Orthodox do not believe that true worship of God is defined by God – how He wants to be worshipped, not how we want. He gave Moses such a tremendous detail of worship to the building of the temple down to the vestments of the priest. Christ laid out the fulfilled worship at the Last Supper, and He always said coming to Him together was as a banquet table…we dine on the Lord Himself.

Only God Himself can fulfill the deepest desires of the human heart.

 

[ParkerD]

…
All non-Catholics/Orthodox do not believe that true worship of God is defined by God – how He wants to be worshipped, not how we want. He gave Moses such a tremendous detail of worship to the building of the temple down to the vestments of the priest. Christ laid out the fulfilled worship at the Last Supper, and He always said coming to Him together was as a banquet table…we dine on the Lord Himself.

Only God Himself can fulfill the deepest desires of the human heart.

KathleenGee,

You understand of course that the LDS believe the true worship of God is defined by God, and that we follow by revelation, how He wants to be worshiped. We understand that concept very well, and consider it very important.

As far as the Eucharist, a recent conversation on another thread shows a stark contrast between gaining the “divine nature” through repentance and change and being lifted up by Christ, and “dining” in the words you used.

The LDS take literally the words of Peter as recorded in 2 Peter 1:

2 Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

This all ties together. Christ lifts through His grace by people coming unto Him and believing in Him and having faith, repenting, changing, having a life change. I have seen and heard it in the lives of people whose lives have completely changed because of this real and tangible blessing.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, with great peace in your lives.

 

[SteveVH]

Mormons claim that in time down through the ages Christians strayed and eventually apostacized from the true Church that Jesus founded. The claim is also made that much of the Bible has not been translated or interpreted properly and that many errors have been introduced into it. I ask how is this so? What reference do they have to make this claim? If the answer is Joseph Smith and the “Book of Mormon”, then I ask how come many passages in the BoM contain Biblical passages from the King James version of the Bible and includes all grammatical, translation, and theological errors that appeared in the KJV?

Actually, the current line of thought in the Mormon church is that the Apostasy wasn’t a gradual process, rather the Apostasy occurred upon the death of the last Apostle. That is when all new “revelation” ceased and the Catholic Church, the Church that Jesus had started just fifty or so years earlier, had lost “priesthood authority”. Poor Jesus. The Boy Scouts have lasted longer than His Church did. What a failure.

Somehow the Apostles spaced out and forgot to appoint new Apostles when one of the originals died. Keep in mind, according to Mormon belief, that having Apostles, not just bishops ordained by those Apostles, was necessary in order for the priesthood to survive. We are asked to believe that something this important was somehow forgotten or they just never got around to it. The Apostles had no problem in ordaining many bishops, but they somehow just couldn’t get around to ordaining new Apostles. I would have loved to been around when the last Apostle died. Can you imagine? "Dang it, you know what we forgot to do? We forgot to get some more Apostles ordained. Now what are we going to do?

So now, the only religion with a true priesthood is the Mormon church. Never mind that their priests do nothing that is priestly (such as offering sacrifice) and basically the qualification for becoming a priest is reaching puberty. Too bad for all those Catholic seminarians who go through years of discerment, education and training.

 

[Javl]

KathleenGee,

You understand of course that the LDS believe the true worship of God is defined by God, and that we follow by revelation, how He wants to be worshiped. We understand that concept very well, and consider it very important.

As far as the Eucharist, a recent conversation on another thread shows a stark contrast between gaining the “divine nature” through repentance and change and being lifted up by Christ, and “dining” in the words you used.

The LDS take literally the words of Peter as recorded in 2 Peter 1:

2 Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

This all ties together. Christ lifts through His grace by people coming unto Him and believing in Him and having faith, repenting, changing, having a life change. I have seen and heard it in the lives of people whose lives have completely changed because of this real and tangible blessing.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, with great peace in your lives.

So then, Parker, you would rather accept the words of Peter than the direct request of Jesus when He said at His last supper: “do this in rememberence of Me”.

PAX DOMINI

Shalom Aleichem

 

[KathleenGee]

First of all, and excuse me beforehand…

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and my prayer and our prayer, is that we all become one in heart, soul and mind.

 

[Miriam1947]

Well, I did not have time to go through all the posts and am not sure if this has been posted…but here is a comparison of the Bible vs the Book of Mormon…archaelogists searching for evidence of the truthfulness of both…

youtube.com/watch?v=dTtq62XQ4jw

Wow what a great video. Thanks for posting this link.

I wonder if Mormons will watch it. Because if they do they would have a really hard time believing in the Book of Mormon.

 

[zerinus]

Well the way I see it since you are giving credit to the preservation of it. It should be understood Catholic monks copied it,and the CC can only be the truest interpreter of it . With so many modern translations, it does makes your head spin, each new eccliasial cummunity reeked of egotism and still does in this age of enlightment, or should I say revolt. So I say thank you Martim, Zwingli, Calvin, Arius, etc for your enlightned views !<< Even they couldn’t agree folks !!

God Bless
Happy Thanksgiving to all !

That is a valid criticism of Protestantism, which I don’t disagree with. I am not in favor of the Protestant Reformation. I think they made a lot of things worse rather than better. Where things had gone wrong, what was needed to fix it was a Restoration, not a Reformation. Protestantism was not in fact a true reformation. It was a rebellion misnamed a reformation. A genuine reform movement could have achieved a lot of good, but Luther was after revenge and rebellion rather than a genuine reform. Mormonism is a different story and has nothing in common with Protestantism or the Reformation.

 

[clinoforms]

Mormonism is a different story and has nothing in common with Protestantism or the Reformation.

it was created by a protestant and incorperates many protestant tenants. the biggest being king james onlyism. also the irrational rejection of alcohol was a classic protestant tradition.

if mormons had it right then we live in a irrational universe. mormonism is about as likely to be true as JWs or islam.

 

[Miriam1947]

Todd did you leave the Catholic Church for Mormonism?

 

[Madaglan]

Madaglan,

The most important thing that one needs to understand if thinking about Mormonism and Joseph Smith and making comparisons, is that Mormonism ties directly to Biblical teachings in every respect. As you noted, the Quran doesn’t do that. So one can certainly dismiss any similarity as merely a deception, since God allows counterfeits and deceptions to happen if one’s motives are impure and if they don’t look to the source of truth for their inspiration.

Mohammed would have needed to adhere to the principles for gaining truth in his day, just like anyone else–and not depart from Biblical truth. That completely disqualifies a possible comparison of the two.

Just because Swedenborg made an attempt and felt inspired, doesn’t mean he gained authority to establish a true church. That is why the OP statement stressed authority as a necessary component to be looked at.

The prophecy of Daniel is still in the early stages of being fulfilled on the earth. It’s a great thing to watch unfold…

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello Parker,

In fairness, I believe there is a world of difference between Islam and Mormonism. It’s hard to believe how Islam can accept any of the gospels (think passion narratives) when its sacred scripture flatly denies that Christ died on a cross.

What concerns me is the circumstance of private revelation. I used Mohammad as an extreme example of a man who claimed to receive personal revelation and authority by God, but whose teachings were in fact heresy. Of Christians, the Montanists and the Zwickau prophets claimed personal revelations and spiritual authority above what they saw as a corrupted version of Christianity. They believed they were acting in accordance with the Scriptures, and they believed they had genuine authority to perform specific actions set forth by their revelations. Joseph Smith claimed to have received authority, even to establish a church, but who is to say he was really given this authority?

As a former Roman Catholic, the logic of the quote provided by the OP does not make sense to me. The Pope claims to have an authority given to him by Christ through the Petrine succession. Roman Catholics root this claim in Matthew 16:18. If the Pope is shown to not have this authority (as through a Patristic and historical study of the verse and the subject of Papal primacy, etc.) the authority claim of Joseph Smith and Mormonism does not become valid by default. For my part, I believe that the authority claimed by Joseph Smith to establish a church is false because 1) Christ established the Church and said the gates of hell would not prevail against it (goes against Scripture to establish a new church believing the first failed), and 2) there was, from a historical standpoint, no Great Apostasy following the death of the last Apostle. St. Ignatius, St. Polycarp and St. Clement (1st-2nd century Christians whose works we possess today) clearly continued to teach what was entrusted to them by the Apostles and the disciples. I see continuation of the same teaching from the Apostles, through the Apostolic Fathers, through the Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils up to the Fathers of today.

I don’t intend to sound polemical with all this. I do hope you had a happy thanksgiving as well!

 

[Madaglan]

I had a visit with my good friend, a very independent mechanic who came out of a Seventh Day Adventist background, highly intelligent, straight A student, prolific thinker. He outsmarts the mechanics for my Jetta TDI.

We had a brief talk about Christianity. He knows Greek. He says all Greek translations fo the past 200 years aren’t the best…wants to go back. He says the real context of scripture can historically and authentically can only be found in the Latin Vulgate. (!!!)

He says all of Scripture is context and you also have to study the times. He says Christianity in its true form is found in the ancient practices.

So it deeply behooves me when the Mormons scoff at the earliest description of the liturgy that was presented in 155 AD to the Roman Emperor…

I want to study contextual Catholic Church history. My pastor gave me a text…I will bring it on later. The other day I got a CD from a monastery on the liturgy of the Mass.

All non-Catholics/Orthodox do not believe that true worship of God is defined by God – how He wants to be worshipped, not how we want. He gave Moses such a tremendous detail of worship to the building of the temple down to the vestments of the priest. Christ laid out the fulfilled worship at the Last Supper, and He always said coming to Him together was as a banquet table…we dine on the Lord Himself.

Only God Himself can fulfill the deepest desires of the human heart.

His claim about the Vulgate is moot. It implies that the Vulgate is more representative of the ancient context than is the Septuagint, something not readily conceded by many Biblical scholars.

 

[Madaglan]

Actually, the current line of thought in the Mormon church is that the Apostasy wasn’t a gradual process, rather the Apostasy occurred upon the death of the last Apostle. That is when all new “revelation” ceased and the Catholic Church, the Church that Jesus had started just fifty or so years earlier, had lost “priesthood authority”. Poor Jesus. The Boy Scouts have lasted longer than His Church did. What a failure.

Somehow the Apostles spaced out and forgot to appoint new Apostles when one of the originals died. Keep in mind, according to Mormon belief, that having Apostles, not just bishops ordained by those Apostles, was necessary in order for the priesthood to survive. We are asked to believe that something this important was somehow forgotten or they just never got around to it. The Apostles had no problem in ordaining many bishops, but they somehow just couldn’t get around to ordaining new Apostles. I would have loved to been around when the last Apostle died. Can you imagine? "Dang it, you know what we forgot to do? We forgot to get some more Apostles ordained. Now what are we going to do?

So now, the only religion with a true priesthood is the Mormon church. Never mind that their priests do nothing that is priestly (such as offering sacrifice) and basically the qualification for becoming a priest is reaching puberty. Too bad for all those Catholic seminarians who go through years of discerment, education and training.

Steve, I agree with you that it does not make sense that the Church Christ founded and declared would not be overcome by the gates of hell, should founder upon the death of the last Apostle. When I read the Apostolic Fathers and the pre-Nicene Fathers, I do not discern a Great Apostasy near the time of the death of the Apostle. I rather see a line of continuity, assaulted by Gnostics, Ebionites, Montanists and what not, but nonetheless prevailing.

 

[KathleenGee]

The Church could not begin without the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the beginning of the Church…and it continued to breathe Christ’s life into it…His W ord Incarnate…

Christ is God. He would not have started a church that would flop, nor would any apostle with reason of course chose their bishops and successors…

The Mormons started with their own new apostles but they were allowed to appoint successors but the Apostles — witnesses to Christ, were not…???

St. John the Evangelist died…so did the other apostles…So?..the Church continued on.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Actually, the current line of thought in the Mormon church is that the Apostasy wasn’t a gradual process, rather the Apostasy occurred upon the death of the last Apostle. That is when all new “revelation” ceased and the Catholic Church, the Church that Jesus had started just fifty or so years earlier, had lost “priesthood authority”.

Is this the “official” Mormon church or just members who say this. I’m a bit curious because on one of their discussion boards they are taking this a bit further saying that is was Christians that precipitated the “great apostasy” by actually killing the Apostles themselves.

Poor Jesus. The Boy Scouts have lasted longer than His Church did. What a failure.

And poor Jesus had this happen twice once in the “old world” and once across the ocean in the “new world”. And… animal sacrifice will need to be practiced again, so His sacrifice was, it seems, lacking.

 

[zerinus]

it was created by a protestant and incorperates many protestant tenants. the biggest being king james onlyism.

We are not a “king james onlyist”. We have adopted the KJV as our official standard Bible, but that does not mean we reject other translations. We think other translations can be good too, and they all can make a useful contribution to understanding the Bible. We just happen to think that overall the KJV is the best, although in some respects it may have shortcomings.

The rest of your post frankly does not merit a reply.

 

[Javl]

That is a valid criticism of Protestantism, which I don’t disagree with. I am not in favor of the Protestant Reformation. I think they made a lot of things worse rather than better. Where things had gone wrong, what was needed to fix it was a Restoration, not a Reformation. Protestantism was not in fact a true reformation. It was a rebellion misnamed a reformation. A genuine reform movement could have achieved a lot of good, but Luther was after revenge and rebellion rather than a genuine reform. Mormonism is a different story and has nothing in common with Protestantism or the Reformation.

I agree with you 100%. If Martin Luther had stayed within the Church and truly fought for a true reformation things would be altogether different and much better than what they are today.

Also, you can say that the LDS is a sort of Reformation. If the “Great Apostacy” occured as claimed by the LDS, then the institution of the LDS is a Reform-ation.

PAX DOMINI

Shalom Aleichem

 

[Rv_Cain_Spencer]

I’m a strong Catholic who loves researching other religions to learn about them, and recently I’ve been researching Mormonism just for fun. I think it’s interesting once you get into all the different denominations and what not, but I digress.

I found this on YouTube and thought it was interesting

This is from an account of Orson F. Whitney, who was an Apostle for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
"Many years ago a learned man, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, came to Utah and spoke from the stand of the Salt Lake Tabernacle. I became well-acquanted with him, and we conversed freely and frankly. A great scholar, with perhaps a dozen languages at his tongue’s end, he seemed to know all about theology, law, literature, science and philosophy. One day he said to me: 'You Mormons are all ignoramuses. You don’t even know the strength of your own position. It is so strong that there is only one other tenable in the whole Christian world, and that is the position of the Catholic Church. The issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. If we are right, your are wrong; if you are right, we are wrong; and that’s all there is to it. The Protestants haven’t a leg to stand on. For, if we are wrong, they are wrong with us, since they were a part of us and went out from us; while if we are right, they are apostates whom we cut off long ago. If we have apostolic succession from St. Peter, as we claim, there is no need of Joseph Smith and Mormonism; but if we have not that succession, then such a man as Joseph Smith was necessary, and Mormonism’s attitude is the only consistent one. It is either the perpetuation of the gospel from ancient times, or the restoration of the gospel in latter days."

Here’s the link to the video: youtube.com/watch?v=vktEaSevdfE
The video is the same as above, but with nice music in the background.

I thought it was an interesting point. I would like to know what you guys here thought.

Though if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the Catholic Church.

But what it all really boils down to is the Eucharist and nothing else. I really fail to see how if our Apostalic succession was in breach we now some how end us believing the trinity is actually three Gods rather than three in one. There are a great many other points.