Redo old Mormon Confessions?

[auntreerah]

Lutherans have valid baptism. It can be almost 100% assured that you are validly baptized. In this case, yes, you would have to confess all your sins that you remember from your entire life. This can be a very long process and is called a “general confession.”

thank you all for your answers!!! i will look up general confession in my copy of the catechism. (I have been studying while i wait for rcia!)

 

[bilop]

It might not be.

Many LDS were formerly some sort of protestant. It is possible that the OP was baptized in a protestant church before becoming LDS. If so, the protestant baptism is valid.

If the OP was baptized only in the LDS church it is not valid. The Vatican has specifically ruled on this.

That is why we were seeking clarification.

OK. Do you have any idea what the Church’s reasoning was? The Dubium is a bit terse.

God Bless

 

[bilop]

See also this article:

zenit.org/article-1975?l=english

Thank you!

 

[SuscipeMeDomine]

I was christened a Lutheran as an infant and baptized in the name of the father and the son and the holy ghost as a mormon when i was 15. will i have to re-confess if i am not required to be baptized again? 51 years of confession is going to take a while!

Yes, as others have stated you will need to go to confession. But don’t worry. Priests are used to meeting with people in the same situation and there won’t be any problems.

OK. Do you have any idea what the Church’s reasoning was? The Dubium is a bit terse.

God Bless

This may help explain: ewtn.com/library/theology/mormbap1.htm

 

[YoungTradCath]

thank you all for your answers!!! i will look up general confession in my copy of the catechism. (I have been studying while i wait for rcia!)

You’re welcome. General confession isn’t in the Catechism. At least I don’t think it is. It is just a confession of all your life’s sins. But you can still read about confession in general in the Catechism.

 

[Edmundus1581]

Yes, as others have stated you will need to go to confession. But don’t worry. Priests are used to meeting with people in the same situation and there won’t be any problems.

This may help explain: ewtn.com/library/theology/mormbap1.htm

Agreed.

When I entered the Catholic Church I had to re-confess sins which I had confessed as an Anglican. My priest helped me prepare for this, and I spent a week or two thinking about it, but it wasn’t an arduous process, and the confession lasted maybe 20 minutes.

The Catholic Church is not saying that there was no merit in the other confessions, because of course any time we humble ourselves and confess our sins we are doing good, however the other part of confession is absolution by a priest in communion with the Church, from which he gets “jurisdiction” to reconcile the sinner with the Church. By baptism we become part of the Catholic Church, and the Church restores sinners through the apostolic ministry. The sacrament of baptism can be administered outside the visible communion of the Catholic Church, but the sacrament of reconciliation cannot.

From The Catechism.

1444 In imparting to his apostles his own power to forgive sins the Lord also gives them the authority to reconcile sinners with the Church. This ecclesial dimension of their task is expressed most notably in Christ’s solemn words to Simon Peter: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."45 “The office of binding and loosing which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of the apostles united to its head.”

 

[Deo_Gratias42]

thank you all for your answers!!! i will look up general confession in my copy of the catechism. (I have been studying while i wait for rcia!)

You might not find it.

Basically you confess all your mortal sins in number, kind, and any circumstances which change the nature or gravity of the sin. This is done since one’s last valid confession, or in your case, since the age of reason.

LDS “Confession” isn’t like Catholic Confession. The LDS “confession” is the bishop helping the person make amends and to make up for the sins to the people they hurt, with the assumption that God automatically forgives their sins. Also, LDS “confession” has no Seal, so if you confess something really bad or illegal, the bishop can, and is obligated at times, to report the person to the appropriate authorities. The kicker with LDS “confession” which makes no theological sense and is complete error is that if you commit these sins again, your old sins return.

Now in the Catholic Church, when you make a proper Confession with the proper intent on amending your life, when the priest pronounces the words of absolution, your sins that were red as scarlet are made white as snow. The eternal punishment due to your sins is gone. You still have to make up the temporal punishment, but your sins are forgiven and wiped out. Catholic Confession is also protected by the Seal of Confession, which is absolute. This means that regardless of what you confess the priest CANNOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE reveal your sins. This includes under the pain of death. It’s really quite an awesome thing that sadly, not enough Catholics make regular use of.

 

[batman1973]

Woo-Hoo! Another Mormon coming to Christ! Welcome! If you get a chance, stop by the non-Catholic religions board. We chew the fat on old Joseph’s Myth quite often.
(I am a former LDS and RLDS)

 

[Bookcat]

Basically you confess all your mortal sins in number, kind, and any circumstances which change the nature or gravity of the sin.
.

“that change the nature” - change the “kind” (nature…or better “species”).

There is not a requirement to confess circumstances that effect the degree of the sin only that which changes the kind.

 

[Bookcat]

Of interest: jimmyakin.com/2006/09/a_reader_writes_1.html

jimmyakin.com/2007/03/specific_confes.html

 

[Fone_Bone_2001]

Was the baptism in the LDS church?

In what church were you baptized?

It might not be.

Many LDS were formerly some sort of protestant. It is possible that the OP was baptized in a protestant church before becoming LDS. If so, the protestant baptism is valid.

LOL, pay attention, guys. He said he had been baptized Lutheran in his infancy well before those two replies:

I was christened a Lutheran as an infant and baptized in the name of the father and the son and the holy ghost as a mormon when i was 15. will i have to re-confess if i am not required to be baptized again? 51 years of confession is going to take a while!

thank you all for your answers!!! i will look up general confession in my copy of the catechism. (I have been studying while i wait for rcia!)

Welcome home! Praise be to God Who has brought you to His Church.

1ke did a great job answering your questions, so I needn’t say more.

Then why is their baptism invalid?

OK. Do you have any idea what the Church’s reasoning was? The Dubium is a bit terse.

Yes, I know why Rome made that judgment.

Baptism, like all Sacraments, isn’t magic. Yes, the right words are necessary, but it’s not *about *the words themselves. It’s not the repetition of certain syllables that makes the form valid, it’s the meaning behind those correct words.

Mormon teaching on God is radically different from orthodox Christian teaching, so when they say “I baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” they’re using the same words but with absolutely different meanings.

They believe that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three distinct beings united in will. God the Father, in Mormon teaching, has a physical body, and a wife, the Heavenly Mother. God the Son - Jesus - is literally the biological son of God the Father and the Heavenly Mother. Furthermore, “God the Father” was once what we are now, and he achieved godhood in much the same way devout Mormons can.

So, as you can see, the words have completely different meanings. They might as well be baptizing in the name of the Tomato, the Potato, and the Radish for all the good it’ll do.

 

[BrigidKildare]

Hello and congratulations! I left the Mormon Church in 2009 and after much studying, became Catholic in 2011. I applaud your courage:thumbsup: For those questioning the re-baptism, even though the Mormon baptism does say “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”, the Father and Son of Mormondom is not the same Father and Son of Catholicism. God is eternal and did not rise up to godhood, as the Mormons claim. Therefore, the meaning is not the same - it is not the same god. I totally understand the truth of needing to be truly baptized. In answer to your question, I was assured that my sins of before were washed at my Catholic Christian baptism, so there is no need to reconfess your sins. However, you can if you want to. It is wonderful to actually hear those words of forgiveness - does wonders for your soul. Again, welcome fellow traveler.:tiphat:

 

[thistle]

Then why is their baptism invalid?

God Bless

Because their belief in who the Trinity is is different and wrong.

 

[Burdensome1]

Permalink: zenit.org/article-1975?l=english
WHY MORMON BAPTISM IS INVALID

Sect´s Concept of the Trinity Differs from Christian Notion

VATICAN CITY, JULY 17, 2001 (Zenit.org).- Prompted by questions about Mormon practices, the Vatican recently confirmed that the sect´s baptism is invalid.

Last month the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith noted the invalidity of the Mormons´ baptism given their misconception of the Trinity and, consequently, the identity of Christ.

Father Luis Ladaria, a theologian at the Pontifical Gregorian University, explained today in L´Osservatore Romano the Church´s view about Mormon baptism.

“The baptism of the Catholic Church and that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the theologian said, “differ essentially as regards faith in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in whose name baptism is conferred and, at the same time, in regard to Christ, who instituted it.”

Father Ladaria pointed out that even non-Catholics can administer baptism validly, as the minister of the sacrament is, in fact, Christ himself. But the baptizer must do so in the name of the Trinity and “with the intention of doing what the Church does,” he added.

Joseph Smith founded the Mormons in New York state in 1830. He was inspired to find the place were golden tablets were placed, which expressed the revelations of the prophet Mormon, written by him and his son Moroni. Mormonism is a “sacred history” rewritten in America, in which God revealed the “latter-day saints.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith´s response is based on research requested by the U.S. bishops.

Father Ladaria said the formula used by the Mormons for baptism states that, “having received Christ´s mandate, I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

But there is no real invocation of the Trinity, the theologian said, because, for the Mormons, the “Father,” “Son” and “Holy Spirit” are not the three persons in which the one divinity subsists, but three gods who form a divinity.

The term divinity itself has no “substantial” content, because, according to this Mormon concept, divinity has come into existence given that the three gods have decided to unite and form the divinity to bring about the salvation of man. This divinity and man share the same nature and are “substantially the same,” according to Mormon belief.

Such divergence in doctrine implies, Father Landaria said, that the Mormon minister does not have the intention, when baptizing, of doing what the Catholic Church does when it confers baptism.

 

[Actaeon]

Then why is their baptism invalid?

God Bless

Intent. Sacraments involve proper form, proper matter, proper minister, and proper intent.

For baptism, the proper form is “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”.

The proper matter is water.

The proper minister is the priest, with the extraordinary minister being any layperson.

The proper intent is a bit more difficult, but the church has ruled that coming from the LDS church this is invalid, and therefore the sacrament is invalid.

OP,

The question here, since your LDS baptism was invalid, is whether or not you were baptised BEFORE you joined the LDS church (you mentioned that you were “christened” in the lutheran church, but did that include baptism)? If you were baptised, which church?

If you HAVE been validly baptised, then you will need to “reconfess” all of those sins, because the LDS ministry does not have valid orders and therefore are not proper ministers (meaning their “reconciliation” is invalid). Even if you DO need to be baptised, however, note that some RCIA programs have catechumans go to reconciliation BEFORE Easter Vigil, and therefore you MIGHT need to do your first confession before being baptised (at which point you would ALSO need to reconfess as many of your sins as you can remember).