Ex-Mormon Missionaries

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Does anyone know any good sites with stories from ex-mormon missionaries? I have read a bit about how they are often disillusioned with their mission experience. It might be nice to know more about what they go through.
 
Great article!
I just received my visit from the LDS boys 2 days ago.
I talked to them about the early fathers.
After they left I wondered if we catholics have our own literature - pamphlets - that we could give to Mormons and Witnesses when they come.

They told me some things I didn’t know they believe.
That in 600AD a jewish man named Lehigh sailed the ocean and settled this continent. Somehow this led to those gold tablets being buried.

I was shocked that so many educated people could believe such a preposterous untruth.
I asked them “so you think the American Indians are really jewish?” and they said yes - excited that I was learning their lesson.
I said “But they aren’t jewish! Not by race and certainly not by religion! - Where is the proof that they ever practiced the jewish faith? The American Indians practice paganism”
They said the proof was in the Book of Mormon.

What is the deal with these tablets anyway? Where are they and what do they say?
Have they ever allowed any archeologists to study them?

Have any of you read the Book of Mormon? Is it worth the time?
 
I have many of the same questions. My neighbor who I am good friends with is Morman. We have not gotten into serious discussions, just the, “this is what we believe” kind of thing. She explaind the Jewish thing and their afterlife (all the different levels. She is a friend so I didn’t want to be rude and say how can you believe this stuff.

Also she actually said when explaing how Mormanism came to be that God gave peter the keys but he didn’t pass them on to anyone and that Jesus had the real deal then left and said do the best you can(her exact words, I will never forget) How could the God tell us, do the best you can?!!!

Any advice on how to very kindly talk about her beliefs without makeing her look silly. I didn’t want to respond to anything because I thought it is just to ridiculous.
 
The best place to start looking for information about the LDS is right here on the Catholic Answers web site.

catholic.com/library/noncatholic_groups.asp

Toward the bottom of the list on this page you’ll see numerous easy to read and informative articles about Mormons and what they believe. If you want to go deeper, there are a couple of excellent books by Isaiah Bennett available on this same site. Bennett is a Catholic priest who converted to Mormonism, then back to Catholicism. Finally, I’d recommended the Beginning Apologetics series available here:

catholicapologetics.com/ba2.htm

Good luck!
 
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Fidelis:
The best place to start looking for information about the LDS is right here on the Catholic Answers web site.
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Why would someone look on the Catholic Answers web site to learn about the LDS church? Should a person look on the LDS web site to learn about the Catholic church? Neither approach makes any sense to me. If you want to know what the Mormons believe, you should go to their web site, and after reading their site, compare what they believe with what the Bible teaches. Not all of the beliefs of the LDS church are different than what the Catholic church teaches.
 
rod of iron:
Why would someone look on the Catholic Answers web site to learn about the LDS church? Should a person look on the LDS web site to learn about the Catholic church? Neither approach makes any sense to me. If you want to know what the Mormons believe, you should go to their web site, and after reading their site, compare what they believe with what the Bible teaches. Not all of the beliefs of the LDS church are different than what the Catholic church teaches.
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But you can look at the Catholic Answers site to find out the Catholic church’s view on the LDS church and you can also find out information from someone that was a Catholic priest, left the church to join the LDS church, was a member of the LDS church for awhile, saw the church from the inside and then left and came back to the Catholic church.

When doing research it is good to see multiple sides of the story, not just the propaganda. If I wanted to research Scientology if I only looked at their sites I would think it was a great religion, if I never saw the www.xenu.com site.
 
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Marauder:
…When doing research it is good to see multiple sides of the story, not just the propaganda…
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This is good advice. The best way to research is to check out both the Catholic perspective on Mormonism and the Mormon perspective on Mormonism and then go from there.
 
Not all of the beliefs of the LDS church are different than what the Catholic church teaches.
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rodofiron,

You have to understand what the Catholic Church teaches. Don’t rush into conclusions. The LDS belief may look like a Catholic belief, BUT magnifying your lenses --it is not. Re-adjust your lenses and magnify properly.🙂

Pio
 
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Lorarose:
Great article!

What is the deal with these tablets anyway? Where are they and what do they say?
Have they ever allowed any archeologists to study them?

Have any of you read the Book of Mormon? Is it worth the time?
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I was raised devout LDS and served a mission in 1981. In 2003, I became Catholic after many years of searching for the truth.

To answer your questions:
The “tablets” are “golden plates”, Supposedly, thin plates of gold in a book form.
The official story goes:
No one but Joseph Smith ever saw the plates. There were witnesses to the plates that saw them with their “spiritual” eyes. The witnesses were allowed to lift(heft) the plates while covered with a cloth. After they were translated to English an angel took the plates back.

So, no archeologist has ever seen the plates.
I’ve read the Book of Mormon 4 or 5 times. It’s an interesting novel. Not a great read. There are much better works of fiction.
 
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Tmaque:
I was raised devout LDS and served a mission in 1981. In 2003, I became Catholic after many years of searching for the truth…
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I always invite into my home the Mormon missionaries that come knocking at the door. I try to engage them in conversation, and give witness to the one true faith, but Mormon beliefs are so bizarre, that I find it hard to have a dialog with them about Christianity. I really don’t want to spend the time it would take to plow through the Book of Mormon or the Pearl of Great price to be conversant with Mormon beliefs.

For a Catholic that is reasonably informed about his faith, what apologetic tactics would you suggest for evangelizing Mormon missionaries?
 
Not everyone is convinced about the ‘spiritual eyes’ business: Various accounts were told by the 11 ‘official’ witnesses, and it seems from at least some of the accounts that the witnesses claim to have seen the golden plates as physical entitites, hefted them in their bare hands, viewed the ‘reformed Egyptian’ hieroglyphics, etcetera.

One of the great problems with LDS history is that there are at least two versions–and usually several–of almost every significant event. Often at least one account is by someone with a clear bias against the LDS Church, and at least one or two accounts by ‘true believers’ whose credibility is also suspect. I would say that it would be very wrong to read Gerald and Sandra Tanners’ (Mormonism-Shadow or Reality?) or Richard Abanes’ (One Nation Under Gods?) anti-Mormon polemics against Mormonism if you weren’t prepared to also read some of the FAIR-LDS or other Mormon apologists’ rebuttals against such sources.

Likewise, the Mormons have voluminous materials about their own history–it’s a bit dated but Joseph Fielding Smith’s two-volume “History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” comes to mind–but these are often sanitized and gloss over the contradictory accounts of Mormonism. Best book to read if you can get it: Hugh Nibley’s “An Approach to The Book of Mormon”. Except for a glaring factual error–Nibley was a victim of a common urban legend of the 1950’s that glass decays like organic matter–this is a book which will startle many readers into a second appraisal of the Book of Mormon as a literary work. (However–I do NOT believe the Book of Mormon is in any way a valid representation of the facts of history). And no: the golden plates are NOT buried in Salt Lake City: Joseph Smith himself acknowledged that an angel carried them away to be returned 'in the fullness of time".

Incidentally–the Book of Mormon is not the only ‘inspired’ work used by the LDS Church. It isn’t even the most important: the doctrines of the B of M seemingly contradict later doctrines of the LDS faith. The chief sacred book of the LDS Church is the Doctrines and Covenants. They have another, much more slender volume called the Pearl of Great Price. Even these must be interpreted by the First Presidency of the LDS Church–which has 12 Apostles and a Prophet, all of whom trace their ‘restored’ apostolic lineage back to angelic manifestations of John the Baptist and to the Apostles Peter, James, and John, who restored the ‘keys of the Priesthood’ to the LDS Church. In a twist on Roman Catholicism: ALL male Mormons over the age of 12 belong to one of two categories of priesthood–and adult Mormons are EXPECTED to marry to enter into the fullness of heavenly glory.

I’m probably nearly out of space but Mormons have a really interesting interpretation of Matthew 16, the passage used by Catholics to support their view of the Papacy. Ask if anyone is interested . . . .
 
The Book of Mormon, for the person who asked, purports to be an account of multiple waves of immigrants from parts of the Old World to the American subcontinent. The earliest emigration–recounted almost exclusively in the Book of Ether–details the Jaredite peoples, who fled to the New World after the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. This group of people destroyed themselves in continual civil wars sometime around the year 279 BC and only remants of them were found by other peoples of the Book of Mormon. Another group of refugees fled Jerusalem after it’s capture and sacking by Babylon; about AD 500, these would join the main body of people about which the Book of Mormon concerns itself.

The vast majority of the Book of Mormon details the times and travails of the family of the godly and visionary Lehi, as they fled Jerusalem just prior to it’s Babylonian captivity. This family wandered in the ‘wilderness’ for a considerable period, continually fighting among itself, before building a ship under Divine guidance and being brought over seas to the American continent, approximately 600 BC. (Estimated dates for many details in the Book of Mormon can be found in the lower-left corner of each page of the book). After arriving, a final quarrel parted Lehi from his two oldest sons, Laman and Lemuel, who formed the people-group known collectively throughout the Book of Mormon as “Lamanites”. Actually, there are dozens of tribal groups mentioned, so this is a simplification. Lehi’s third son and fourth sons were obedient to him, and their families formed the people group known most commonly as “Nephites”–again, a collective term for numerous tribal divisions. Nephi, like his father, was a visionary and a prophet to the people; after him, various other prophets supposedly arose, only a few of whom are actually included on the ‘plates of gold’ which became the Book of Mormon.

God supposedly appointed the Lamanites to be a goad to the Nephites, to keep them a faithful and godly race. Any time the Nephites slipped into disobedience, the Lamanites were permitted to afflict them. When the Nephites were successful, they often had great success in convertng Lamanites. The bulk of the Book of Mormon alternates between speeches, exhortations, and sermons to the Nephites or to the Lamanites, or it recounts a falling-away of the Nephites or their restoration. III Nephi (NOT written by the same Nephi who was Lehi’s son) is an account of Christ’s post-resurrection visit to the Nephites as some of His ‘other sheep’ mentioned on the canonical Gospels. Ultimately, about 400 AD, the Nephites fell into irrepairable apostasy and God allowed them to be utterly destroyed. Only their last remaining prohet–Moroni–was allowed to survive long enough to hide up the record of their existence. It was the glorified Moroni who first appeared to Joseph Smith and suppsedly revealed to him the locaton of the plates.

It is not claimed today that Native Americans are purely a semitic race descended from the Lamanites, but they intermarried with and absorbed the Lamanites. Indians do not practice Judaism because Laman and Lemuel rejected their ancestral religion in favor of paganism. There is some anecdotal but little or no ‘hard’ evidence that the events of the Book of Mormon are historical. Even the evidence of genetics disfavors the story.
 
Mormonism- what a wacky religion. If people believe abortion is something that should be legal, they will believe a crack-pot like joseph smith as well. there really is no limit to what ridiculous things people will believe. for instance, the cathars of the 12th or 13th century Europe believed that reproduction and matter was evil. they would kill themselves or have someone else do it to become martyrs or confessors. remember the hale-bop comet cult?

I heard a really good discussion on non christian groups by Fr. Pacwa. He said to read “no man knows my history” written by a mormon. she found that joe smith use to be a salesman and would sell scams. he claimed to be able to find silver mines by looking through a peep stones and he was arrested for this and for destroying a mormon run newspaper press. also, he married a women who was currently married and her daughter. he had around 40 or so wives.

my point is, mormons, like anyother cult, do not use logic. it’s entirely based on feelings or testimony or a buring in their bosom. by the way, the pearl of a great price was found to be a complete lie. they found the original egyptian papyrus in nyc in 1965. also, moronism, JW, and islam were all started by salesmen. they all believe in a different spirit, Jesus, and gospel. to them, Jesus is a creature and not God but a god, heaven is something like winning a prize, and the Holy Spirit is a force.

Ask mormons if the Catholic church fell into apostasy to prove it and point out that if it is wrong to change doctrine, like the church supposedly did, how does that fit with the changes there religion went through, i.e. no more polygamy, blacks as priests, etc…

also watch out for the mormons like rod of iron. he’s not worth debating as he and all other mormon apologist are not willing to hear reason.
 
rod of iron:
Why would someone look on the Catholic Answers web site to learn about the LDS church? Should a person look on the LDS web site to learn about the Catholic church? Neither approach makes any sense to me. If you want to know what the Mormons believe, you should go to their web site, and after reading their site, compare what they believe with what the Bible teaches. Not all of the beliefs of the LDS church are different than what the Catholic church teaches.
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In most cases this would be true and fair. However, it is my experience (I live in a heavily Mormon area) and that of others that what a Mormon tells you about his faith may not be what their church teaches. For example, I have heard Mormons outright deny that Mormons believe in a multiplicity of Gods or that good Mormons can “progress” to be the God of their own world. But both of these concepts are i*ntegral * to the Mormon belief system.

I don’t believe that Mormons think they are lying when they misrepresent these things, but I think they acknowledge that their beliefs are hard for most people to accept all at once and thus they keep them esoteric (that is, hidden until an initiate is ready to hear them). However, deception is still deception, and the only way the unsuspecting can learn about these esoteric ideas is from trusted, relaible sources, such as Catholic Answers. Thus, my references above. 🙂
 
Catholic Deacon Steve Seever, was on the Journey Home last night and this morning. He was a Mormon and his discussion with Marcus Grodi was very interesting. He said that some Mormons belief that 144,000 (not exact number…but the one in Revelations) only will be gods and that they must have multiple marriages to achieve this goal. He also said that many Mormons do not know what their church teaches in full. Guess that is somewhat like our poorly catechized Catholics!

The Journey Home will re-air Saturday night - 5 p.m. east coast time…8 p.m. pacific coast time.

God Bless
 
About Quinn: he is as credible to Mormons as is Hans Kung to Catholics. He was once widely read by the Saints, he’s scholarly, and LDS liberals may still appreciate some of his works, but mainstream Mormons generally discount him. He was excommunicated for some of his later work. which the LDS Church felt was likely to create confusion among the faithful.

Mormons do not see Matthew 16:18-19 as a promise that the ‘gates of hell’ will NEVER prevail against the Church. Rather, because they believe the ‘rock’ upon which the Church was to be built to be the rock of faith–they felt the Church only remained on the earth so long as true faith remained. With the Great Apostasy and the persecutions of the late first century and continuing, faith was lost and had to be ‘restored’ by the direct power of God. Hence, Mormons are as fascinated with Apostolic Succession as are Catholics–they just trace their ‘succession’ back to 1829 or so, when Apostles holding the Keys of that succession were allowed to come to Joseph Smith and a few followers and restore it. James Talmage, a classic LDS writer of about the same era as GK Chesterton and CS Lewis, has written about this in topic “The Great Apostasy”. See also his other two great works: “The Articles of Faith” and “Jesus the Christ” for a good overview of LDS theology.

Chances are that at least some of you visiting with LDS missionaries could ask about their ‘priesthood line of authority’: many Mormons carry their lineage of succession in their Scriptures. It is one of two things which Mormons carry about with them with great pride. This and their recod of Temple endowments, and their Patriarchal Blessing, which amounts to a chapter or so of latter-day Scripture addressed personally to them from God.

It is important to realize that ‘personal revelation’ is far more important to Mormons than evidence. Everyone is entitled to some measure of personal revelation, depending upon their station in life. As non-Mormons, you are entitled to pray and receive personal revelation that the Book of Mormon is true, the LDS Church has a Living Prophet and true Apostles, etcetera. A baptised Mormon father or mother can receive revelations on behalf of their own families, to the degree this does not interfere with ‘free agency’, another vital concept in Mormon theology. Appointees to various Church offices are entitled to a measure of revelation on behalf of those they serve. A patriarchal blessing is received once in a lifetime, at an LDS temple–which is NOT synonymous with either the usual LDS Meetinghouse NOR with the Mormon Tabernacle from which the Choir sings. It is similar to the blessings bestowed in Old Testament Scriptures, as from Abraham upon Issac, Isaaac upon Jacob, etcetera.

However, revelation must also be ‘received’ by it’s intended in order to be validated: my ‘revelation’ on your behalf must be prayed over and accepted as such by you, or a problem exists. Either I am receiving false revelations or you are not in harmony with the Spirit. Normally, rank pre-eminates: as your Bishop (like a pastor), my ‘revelation’ should be received by you humbly, since it is most likely that I and not you are in harmony with the Holy Spirit. This does NOT give me license to excercise ‘unrighteous dominion’ however–if my ‘revelation’ clearly violates other revealed truth, for example, it would be I who would be in trouble. I could not make an untoward suggestion as a ‘revelation’ to a female member under my care for instance. Nor, as a husband, could I employ ‘personal revelation’ as a foil against my spouse, though allegations abound that it is attempted at times. (This seems to me an inherent bias against tradtional ‘patriarchal’ Christian-style households in general, and not a criticism exclusive to the LDS).
 
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