How to Evangelize Mormons

[gazelam]

Wait, so who banned black folks from the priesthood? Was it Brigham Young or God? Are they one in the same?

Some good Mormon quotes on black folks:

That last one’s a doozy.

Isn’t there some sort of saying about not throwing stones when you live in a glass house?

Here is an excellent article regarding US Catholic Antebellum racial attitudes straight from the very Catholic University of America. See cuomeka.wrlc.org/exhibits/show/fcc/fcc-intro/background–whites-and-blacks-

Part 1…

Black Catholics comprised a significant portion of the American Catholic community at the time of the American Revolution. Soon after Pope Pius VI named him superior of the mission church in the newly established United States of America (1785), John Carroll reported to Roman authorities that approximately three thousand Catholic African slaves lived in the state of Maryland alone, with some residing in Pennsylvania as well.

A slave owner himself, Carroll permitted two of his slave women to serve as baptismal sponsors for both black and white infants and willed that his manservant, Charles, be given to one Daniel Brent on the condition that Brent manumit Charles within a year of Carroll’s death. Carroll was not alone among the American Catholic religious in owning slaves. In the State of Maryland, the Society of Jesus owned a large number of slaves who worked on the community’s farms. Realizing that their properties were more profitable if rented out to tenant farmers rather that worked by slaves, the Jesuits began selling off their slaves in 1837.

Members of a number of women’s religious orders often brought their slaves with them upon entering convents. While relations between the sisters and the slaves were generally peaceful, the historical record includes one incident of slaves poisoning two Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in 1848. The motive of the attack is unclear, but one sister died and the other never regained her health as a result. Catholics in the United States not only owned slaves but defended the institution of slavery, even assailing those who worked to abolish it. Orestes Brownson, one of the leading Catholic intellectuals of the pre-Civil War years, exhibited widely held attitudes on slavery and race when he wrote in Brownson’s Quarterly Review in 1857:
**
We say distinctly that we are strongly opposed to all efforts made in the non-slave-holding states to abolish slavery where it legally exists. . . . We do not agree with the abolitionists that slavery is malum in se [evil in itself], and that one cannot with a good conscience be a slave-holder**. . . . As a general rule, we believe the slaves are treated with kindness and humanity, sufficiently fed and clothed, and not over-worked.

During the first years of the American Civil War, American Catholic bishops continued to voice opposition to abolitionism, often exhibiting openly racist attitudes. In 1861, Archbishop Hughes of New York wrote in The Metropolitan Record that by making Africans slaves, Europeans and Americans had saved them from the “butcheries prepared for them in their native land.” The Irish-born Hughes also thought abolition smelled too much like an English plot.

Although they clash with modern perceptions of civil and human rights, proponents of nineteenth-century Catholic views on race and slavery grounded racist arguments in Biblical passages, pronouncements of various Church councils, the writings of various Church fathers, including Ignatius of Antioch, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and a number of Papal statements, including Pope Paul III’s Sublimis Deus (1537) and Gregrogy XVI’s In Supremo (1839). Many American Catholics supported proslavery positions with the claim that Jesus frequently used masters and slaves in his parables without condemning the institution of slavery itself. Saint Paul, in his writings, supported the rights of kindly masters to the obedient service of their slaves. Others argued that slaves were rational humans who, by possessing souls, should be permitted to marry and develop a stable family life. Along with food, clothing, and proper housing, masters had the duty to provide their slaves with religious education and the ability to practice their faith.

There were, however, Catholics that objected to aspects of slavery, and some attacked the institution itself. Pope Gregory XVI, for example, wrote in his Apostolic Letter, In Supremo Apostolatus (1839):

We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. . . . We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices abovementioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse . . .

 

[gazelam]

Part 2…

Another outspoken critic of slavery was Archbishop John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati, Ohio. In an 1863 Catholic Telegraph editorial Purcell wrote:

“When the slave power predominates, religion is nominal. There is no life in it. It is the hard-working laboring man who builds the church, the school house, the orphan asylum, not the slaveholder, as a general rule. Religion flourishes in a slave state only in proportion to its intimacy with a free state, or as it is adjacent to it.”

Though verbally and physically abused within the church, African-American Catholics slowly began to establish religious organizations and orders in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1829, Mary Elizabeth Lange, who was born in Cuba of Haitian parents, founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, Maryland. Soon after receiving papal approval, the Oblate Sisters established a number of schools and orphanages for African-American children. Thirteen years later in New Orleans, Louisiana, Juliet Gaudin and Henrietta Delille founded the Sisters of the Holy Family. The next year, 1843, saw members of Baltimore’s Haitian Catholic community gathered to establish the Society of the Holy Family, the first African-American lay organization in the United States. Unfortunately, the society was short-lived, disbanding after two years, partially because members of the Archdiocese of Baltimore refused to let the society hold meetings in Calvert Hall, a building owned by them.

Although African-American Catholics began establishing lay organizations and founding women’s religious orders, an essential element of religious legitimacy and satisfaction eluded them: clergy from their own community. While there had been African-American Catholics around since before the founding of the United States, historically only white priests tended to their spiritual and corporal needs. Though the Vatican promoted the importance of African-American priests, the American hierarchy, exhibiting commonly accepted racial attitudes, considered African-Americans poor prospects for the priesthood. These attitudes forced the first African-American priests to pursue their formational studies and ordination outside of the United States.

One of six siblings, five of whom took religious vows, the first African-American priest, James Augustine Healy, a light-skinned son of an African-American mother and Irish-immigrant father, was ordained in 1854 in Paris, France. Father Healy went on to become the second bishop of the Diocese of Portland, Maine in 1875. His brother, Patrick Francis Healy, joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Liege, France in 1864 and became the president of Georgetown University ten years later. A third brother, Alexander Sherwood Healy took on his vocation in 1858 in Rome, Italy, but his career was cut short by an early death. The Healys’ two sisters, Josephine and Eliza, respectively joined the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph and the Congregation of Notre Dame. Eliza later became the convent superior.

It seems to me that we just ought to be glad that such disappointing attitudes are no longer in vogue in either of our Faiths in the USA.

 

[Horton]

Isn’t there some sort of saying about not throwing stones when you live in a glass house?

Still can’t answer a simple question. When confronted with a truth about the LDS you revert to this common tactic. Let’s not discuss the question at hand which was,

Wait, so who banned black folks from the priesthood? Was it Brigham Young or God? Are they one in the same?

let’s just try to prove it was justified because the Catholic Church had an opinion regarding slavery in the 18th & 19th centuries. Now that I’ve mentioned this, you will find other quotes and articles regarding the Catholic Church and slavery, but will not respond to the question above.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Still can’t answer a simple question. When confronted with a truth about the LDS you revert to this common tactic. Let’s not discuss the question at hand which was,

let’s just try to prove it was justified because the Catholic Church had an opinion regarding slavery in the 18th & 19th centuries. Now that I’ve mentioned this, you will find other quotes and articles regarding the Catholic Church and slavery, but will not respond to the question above.

Not to mention posting a quote from a Pope who denounced enslavement of Africans. Then trying to compare regional Southern American views to Brigham Young’s teachings as a claimed prophet speaking for God.

Let alone, trying to tie African slavery in the Americas to ancient slavery practices. Mormons will defend anything having to do with their institutional practices, without thinking about what they are defending.

 

[Stephen168]

Isn’t there some sort of saying about not throwing stones when you live in a glass house?

Slavery disappeared during the rule of the Catholic Church; the “dark ages.” AND blacks were never banned from the priesthood in the Christian Church, ever. Slavery only returned after the rise of political power of the nation state. During this time it continued to be condemned by the Church, contrary to the actions of some Catholics.
So you can stop throwing stones, and answer the questions you have avoided:
“who banned black folks from the priesthood? Was it Brigham Young or God? Are they one in the same?”

 

[Vonsalza]

Isn’t there some sort of saying about not throwing stones when you live in a glass house?

As my “house” is the Catholic Church, there is no stone that I need to fear.

Could you just answer the question, please? I’ll restate:

Wait, so who banned black folks from the priesthood? Was it Brigham Young or God? Are they one in the same?

To your next “point”-

Here is an excellent article regarding US Catholic Antebellum racial attitudes straight from the very Catholic University of America…

I wasn’t aware that the 19th century Catholic Church was predominantly American.

I’m sure the Bishops in Africa would have liked a word with any American Catholic that defended slavery.

It seems to me that we just ought to be glad that such disappointing attitudes are no longer in vogue in either of our Faiths in the USA.

It was never “in vogue” for Catholicism. You just need it to be in order to shore-up a weak, logically invalid “counter-attack”- style defense for Mormonism’s otherwise indefensible claims.

BTW, you still haven’t told me where all our “Seer Stones” are per Joseph Smith. I’d honestly like an answer to that.

 

[CourtingTex]

Is the real intention to have a better relationship, with say someone like myself, who only seeks to continue building goodwill ---- being a former Cathiolic and Anglican?

Believe or not some of us are comfortable being in Catholics or Protestants presence in Mass, other settings that are open to anyone

Evangelizing myself ---- is not how I view my relations with folks I have known prior to leaving Catholicism and the Anglican cause and being who I am, which I submit, speaking for myself, the restored Gospel has only convinced me to be a better persoin (not arrogant or self righteous)

 

[Tarquin]

Here is a quote from a LDS scholar:

In one particular area of study I am in a position to offer unique testimony. I have been concerned for sixty years with the topic of the Book of Mormon in relation to the scientific/scholarly picture of ancient America. As a result, I say that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Mesoamerican record, derived ultimately from a native book written in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. More than four hundred elements of the book’s text are written in a manner and display content that cannot be accounted for except by supposing its Mesoamerican origin. Of all the theories of origin for the Book, the only acceptable explanation for how it came to be published in English in 1830 is that offered by Joseph Smith, puzzling though the details may be. No nineteenth-century person could have known enough about ancient Mesoamerican civilization to account for the depth and breadth of the “Mesoamericanisms” the scripture contains. I have documented this position by reference to an extensive archaeological literature. Details are presented in several books, including An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book, 1985), Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life (Research Press/FARMS, 1998), and Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book (in press, 2010).

Yes, they are driven by spiritual sentiment rather than by logical positivism. This scholar affirms that his testimony is based on spiritual manifestations. His “scholarly testimony” is the result of studying the Book of Mormon and studying Mesoamerica while already convinced that the Book of Mormon is true:

I knew of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon from the manifestations of the Holy Spirit to me throughout my life as an active Church participant and leader, to which I add my “scholarly testimony.” My years of study of the archaeology of Mesoamerica, in the field, of endless pages of relevant scholarly writings, and of critical consideration of the book itself have affirmed that it is authentically ancient and deserves careful consideration as a truthful record.