Now that rubs the Christian Church the wrong way, keeping sacred secrets. Christians keep no secrets of faith to be imparted only after baptism or confirmation, study continues in those revelations already made to the apostolic Church, but it certainly isn’t secret. If anything, most practising Christians can’t stop from pushing Bible Study.
Mormonism is a gnostic religion, teaching the secrets and initiation rites in much the same way as ancient secret religions such as Mithraism did. They have a secret of salvation that no one else does, not keeping that secret has consequences, such as explaining otherwise “secret” and “private” elements in Church practise and religious formation. People get excommunicated for revealing and questioning those secrets; the Church keeps a tight control on the requirements of salvation for members, and dangles the carrot, but more often uses the rod.
Christian practice has always been that God’s revelations are open to public and personal conscientious scrutiny, far more in Catholic members than Protestants. And, that as the generation of apostles died out, and the next generation of leaders came to prominence in teaching, that revelation was sealed and nothing new need be said to what Jesus and those apostles had already. The Church defines dogma, builds on doctrine to make the practical working out of that dogma possible in people’s lives, and administratively can be held to account when its leaders turn aside and misuse and do not follow the teaching as they teach it.
Catholics have known their bishops, priests, and leadership in general have “carried on” and committed illegal acts all through the history of the Church; some worse than others, but they are not threatened with excommunication, nor loss of salvation simply because they reveal the truth of someone’s actions. That is reserved to those who actually mislead in teaching. Because the Holy Spirit guides it, the Church always, inexplicably at times, corrects for that. And those who have been forced into silence know that God will vindicate them, since the Church of itself is pure and incorruptible, even if it’s membership, being all too human, is not.
So far as I know, Mormon leadership in the First Presidency and Quorum of the twelve, etc. cannot be held to account by individual Mormons when their actions contradict basic morality. How many Mormons had proof that a Quorum member, a First President or Stake President had been carrying on affairs with others not their legal wives, abusing their children, embezzling funds and kept quiet in lieu of having themselves either stripped of their “Temple Recommend”, or actually being excommunicated? Mormons are far more restrained in actions through their leadership as opposed to the conscience than Christians, and they pay the price for surrendering that freedom, not to the Holy Spirit, or Jesus, but to President whatshisname and bishop whozits.
That is not the usual circumstance, and you also know that one of the edicts of wearing temple garments is that they are not to be shown to the world because of their sacred nature. Mormons are never directed by their leadership to use their temple garments to witness their faith. Quite the opposite, they are told to keep them covered and to not talk about them.
