Was just listening to Mormon General Conference (wife is LDS)

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And the talk was basically bragging about how other Christians don’t typically make the kind of sacrifices that the LDS reguarly do (although the speaker granted that there may be some individual Christians who serve lifelong missions or religious vocations), that no organization can compare with the LDS Relief Society, etc. Are they kidding? The people in my own parish prove that false. Christians of all stripes devote their entire lives to serving God and sacrifice for others. Maybe the LDS speaker was confusing telling their members how to serve (visit the families on your list, serve a mission or face social stigma, never turn down a calling, pay your tithing or you can’t attend your child’s temple marriage) with true service that comes from the heart and does not need to be compelled. Sometimes it seems that the Mormons are living in their own little bubble.
Hi, nevadaborn, God Bless you!:heaven: I will pray for your dear wife and for you. Just me, but I wouldn’t listen to a Mormon conference. If my spouse was Mormon, I’d find something helpful to do around the house if he insisted on listening to it: pray the Rosary and keep inviting him to Mass. All humans are capable of good, decent acts of charity. Our Lord Christ, Who founded our Catholic Faith, gave us a beautiful Church. As part of the Body of Christ, as Her Bride, we can often encourage spouses of different faiths to inquire more. This does take gentleness and compassion. I’m sure you will find a way to make your wife feel welcome to do so. Many blessings to you both.
Kathryn Ann
 
That’s the problem with having a church run by amateurs (because there are no trained clergy in Mormonia); they don’t learn that every thought they have isn’t necessarily correct. It is amazing, though, that anyone could make a statement like that of “Apostle” Oaks if one actually had read Luke 18:11-14 :
The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Very good remark. But you have to consider that mormon and generally people that convert to mormonism have a “new age” attitude, and expecially they want to feel better.
If they end up feeling better they take this situation as a consequence since their path is right. (they have extremely elementary analogies).
Generally if you convert to Christianism you end up feeling worse since the deeper you enter in contact with the Lord the deeper you feel you are just a sinner even in your good day.
 
Generally if you convert to Christianism you end up feeling worse since the deeper you enter in contact with the Lord the deeper you feel you are just a sinner even in your good day.
That is a highly pessimistic view of Christianity and oversimplifies the spiritual experience IMHO.

Many of the greatest Saints were comsumed with Joy for the Lord.
 
I just wrote this elsewhere, if it helps:

Thus people became convinced of their sins, were baptized, and fell into sin again, were convinced that their first salvation and baptism did not take, then got re-saved and baptized repeatedly in an endless cycle. However, in Catholicism, repairing one’s life is a slow process. Such issues as addiction, compulsion, sinful sexual habits, and rationalization mean that the gradual refining of the conscience, to bring it into line with His law, may take a long time, and many visits to the confessional. Otherwise, one may fall into such traps as judgmental attitudes, scrupulosity in an intact area of the conscience, self-condemnation, and neglect of such areas as the need for professional counseling and/or medication.These are often the results of having done things our way, rather than God’s way, but they are not resolved by an obsession with baptism. Once done the right way, it is always done (Eph 4:5).
There are echoes of this obsession with baptism for the remission of the sins of the individual in the Mormon practice of proxy baptism for the dead. People with homosexual feelings may become compulsive about this ritual, hoping for a miracle. Early Mormons did practice baptism for healing, so this belief does have a foundation in past practices. This confusion about baptism has its roots in the teachings of Alexander Campbell and his disciple, Sidney Rigdon, who was an early convert to Mormonism, and became a leader in the movement very soon after.
 
I watched the last part of the women’s conference…huge gathering of 20,000 plus women…

And the president of the Mormon Church got up, and ended his talk with…‘obey…’ and the look in his eye, was obey, you better or else…then he sat down, and was eyeballing them…but it gave me the impression it was a manner of control…because he knew they could jump at any time…
 
That is a highly pessimistic view of Christianity and oversimplifies the spiritual experience IMHO.

Many of the greatest Saints were comsumed with Joy for the Lord.
I won’t call it pessimistic. It is feeling the truth of our reality. The truth of the fall or the original sin if you want.
Many greatest saints as you say were consumed with joy but all of them were also consumed with the feeling of this reality that brought them to the saintity.
Remember St. Francis saing to if I remember well his name was brother Leo, he deserved to go to hell. I guess the incredible deep feeling of his human state brought him to open so much his heart to the Lord. But he experienced also the greatest joy of “true” love.
 
I guess the incredible deep feeling of his human state brought him to open so much his heart to the Lord.
This is grace rather than condemnation.
 
We lived in South Salt Lake and I worked downtown. It was really a perfect location because we were about 20 mins from almost everywhere in the Valley. We moved back up here in late 2009 (job transfer). We moved from Spokane, WA and then when we moved back moved to Coeur d’Alene, ID.
Coeur d’Alene is very beautiful. We drove through there last summer. I would have loved to stay and eat but we had to keep on movin’.

I need to ask this and since you are the closest thing to a Mormon here on CAF I hope you don’t mind if I ask you - Why do they talk in a sing-songy voice at GC? I have also heard many mothers talk to their children in this way while shopping at Walmart or Target.
 
This is grace rather than condemnation.
Yes of course is a grace. But the grace of feeling the truth. Feeling that you are condemned without Jesus Christ.
Then depends what kind of emotive response we give to words.
A saint said: this life has been given you for repentance. Don’t waste it for vain fruits.
Of course we can desagree. But a saint is not pessimistic. He is pessimistic of the human nature without the saving Grace of our Lord.

But if the subject is interesting we should open a tread.
My dissertation was considering mormon position and the dangers of having a certain position.
You certainly welcome mormon position having a certain attitude and of course a certain Christian theological ignorance.

TexanKnight say well when say thewy try to ipnoze.
They loose the questioning of sin and being condemned. In one beutiful answer here in CAF a member said to a mormon user (I guess was Parker D if I remember well) that the way mormon see things is like Jesus came to save humanity from a lesser degree of exaltation.
There is an exaltation of the human state. Human has the power he achieve to have with his own behaviour. And even God cannot refuse his salary.
For a mormon good is good.

For a Saint or a father of the Church I am sorry I don’t remember his name but I remember well his statement: good not done well is not good.
This is absolutely unconcevaible for a mormon.
 
Yes that was Dallin H Oaks. He’s one of the higher LDS General Authorities that is sometimes in the news for saying things he probably ought not. He’s the one that was brought to the fore either last year or 2010 for saying that the struggle against gay marriage for Christians was equivalent to the struggle for civil rights for blacks.

I noticed that! When I was still a mostly TBM and moved to UT in 2008 I didn’t have a ticket for conference so I went down and waited in line starting at about 6:30am. It was COLD! There were already about 40 people in line ahead of me. I didn’t get in that session so I ended up watching the first two Sat sessions in the North Temple Visitors Center and the Priesthood session in the theater of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. What part of the Valley do you live in?
I read this online one day and it has stuck with me ever since. It was a talk by apostle? Oaks. He was at some conference in the midwest the night before Easter, the day we Catholics celebrate the pinnacle of our liturgical year. Anyway at the begining of his talk he said that Mormons do more for Easter than any other Christian Church, although, you have to really stretch to call Mormons Christian. I almost fell off my chair. He’s a very smart man (former Utah Supreme Court Justice) so I’m pretty sure he knew he was putting one over. I was raised Mormon and converted to Catholicism four years ago.
This was Easter in the Mormon church. Wake up Sunday morning, get Easter basket, go to church and hear a talk or two about Jesus. That was Easter. No Lent, no Holy week, no Palm Sunday, no telling each other HAPPY EASTER for eight weeks after Easter. This is so telling about Mormons also. I saw online a talk by apostle? Oaks given another Easter morning. His talk was completely about Joseph Smith. I think I saw the word Jesus once. Unbelievable.
 
I think you missed nevada’s mentioning of social coercion in the matter. While the Mormons laud their supposed “Free Agency” to do all these virtuous acts, it’s hard to be a truly free agent when Dad is priming you to serve a mission from the moment you’re 5 years old; telling you to put aside a bit of your birthday and Christmas money each year for it, Mom telling you how you’ll never find a nice temple-worthy woman to marry you if you don’t serve a mission, seeing your parents temporarily lose their temple recommend due to financial straits, all the while sitting in on a semiannual General Conference for 18 years of your life where you’re indoctrinated into believing that you have this privileged membership in God’s elite who do all these wonderful things that non-Mormons either don’t do, or don’t do as well.

When I was still a Mormon it would always befuddle me how some Christians said Mormon worship services aren’t truly “worship”, and I never understood the truth of this until I left the LDS Church and sat in on the services of other denominations. Patting yourselves on the back and giving your egos a good stroking isn’t “worship”.
Everything about Mormonism is PR. They employ one of the largest and most prestigious PR firms in the world. They spend a lot of money on it. I live here in the middle of Mormondom and every time there is a natural disaster in the world the Mormon Church is always Johnny on the spot, which is commendable. But, the planes to haul the goods aren’t even located before all of the news agencies are notoified to the exact time they are to be loaded and take off. Every time this happens you see a five minute spot on every local channel showing the planes being loaded and taking off. So much for doing your alms in private.
 
I read this online one day and it has stuck with me ever since. It was a talk by apostle? Oaks. He was at some conference in the midwest the night before Easter, the day we Catholics celebrate the pinnacle of our liturgical year. Anyway at the begining of his talk he said that Mormons do more for Easter than any other Christian Church, although, you have to really stretch to call Mormons Christian. I almost fell off my chair. He’s a very smart man (former Utah Supreme Court Justice) so I’m pretty sure he knew he was putting one over. I was raised Mormon and converted to Catholicism four years ago.
This was Easter in the Mormon church. Wake up Sunday morning, get Easter basket, go to church and hear a talk or two about Jesus. That was Easter. No Lent, no Holy week, no Palm Sunday, no telling each other HAPPY EASTER for eight weeks after Easter. This is so telling about Mormons also. I saw online a talk by apostle? Oaks given another Easter morning. His talk was completely about Joseph Smith. I think I saw the word Jesus once. Unbelievable.
Sigh …This is exactly the sort of stuff that really annoys me now. Do more for Easter? :banghead:

Or how about the classic “we don’t need to make a big deal about Easter because we celebrate Christ’s resurrection every Sunday.” As if for centuries the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have not professed Christ’s death and resurrection in the Eucharist every Sunday.

“Therefore, O Lord,
as we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion,
the Resurrection from the dead,
and the glorious Ascension into heaven
of Christ, your Son, our Lord,
we, your servants and your holy people,
offer to your glorious majesty
from the gifts that you have given us,
this pure victim,
this holy victim,
this spotless victim,
the holy Bread of eternal life
and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.”

“Having beheld the resurrection of Christ, let us worship the holy Lord Jesus, the only Sinless One. We venerate Your cross, O Christ, and we praise and glorify Your holy resurrection. You are our God. We know no other than You, and we call upon Your name. Come, all faithful, let us venerate the holy resurrection of Christ. For behold, through the cross joy has come to all the world. Blessing the Lord always, let us praise His resurrection. For enduring the cross for us, he destroyed death by death.”
 
“We are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song.” Pope John Paul II

I’m looking forward to the ringing bells and alleluia at Easter Vigil.
 
I’m an African American Latter-day Saint 👋 Just had to share that :).
If I may be so bold, why have you joined CAF? Are you interested in learning more about Catholicism or is more about countering what you view to be misrepresentations of the LDS faith (or both)?
 
If I may be so bold, why have you joined CAF? Are you interested in learning more about Catholicism or is more about countering what you view to be misrepresentations of the LDS faith (or both)?
$1 wager its a former Catholic.
 
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