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In preparation for the currently ongoing papal conclave, I decided to read the official rules currently in force, UNIVERSI DOMINICI GREGIS, issued by John Paul II in 1996. The document contains this provision (emphasis added):
Seems simple enough right?
Whoops.
Here I was, a schmuck, reading the canonically promulgated apostolic constitution as if it mattered, as if the supposed men of God involved in this 2000-year-old institution might care about established procedures.
Sure, Francis could have changed the rules, as many popes have done throughout the centuries, but he didn’t. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and neither did anyone else with influence within the Vatican either. How am I supposed to take this seriously if the cardinals and popes don’t even take it seriously?
I wish Christianity were true. I really do. It would certainly make my dating life easier. I’d have a sense of purpose in life, defined rules of virtue to follow, but it just doesn’t make any actual sense. The inconsistency I cited above is relatively minor, but it is illustrative of what one finds everywhere when one digs into the claims of Christianity and treats them with the truth-preserving tools of logic. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and Vatican II, Matthew 24:34, these are fundamental truth claims that can’t be handwaved away like the finer points of ecclesiastical law.
Obviously, as a Mormon (member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whew) I think you're actually on the right track. It's so blindingly obvious that the Catholic church is bumbling along, with zero internal consistency, for centuries and centuries. It shows up all over. Even today, Catholics are very loud about a number of major issues, but very small numbers of actual Catholics actually agree with their own church's doctrine, much less practice it, and that's even before you look at any history at all. Don't get me wrong, I respect Catholics, I get along with many, I still view the religion as an overall net good, etc. but their doctrine is a mess. I genuinely extra respect the Catholics who attempt to pull the doctrine together into a coherent whole, but I just don't see the hand of God guiding them.
Now, doctrinally, to me, this all goes away quite neatly when you give up on the idea of the Catholic line of authority being unbroken. Clearly they strayed, it's self-evident, so my own faith has the nice idea of needing someone to restore and clarify things and have a modern guide/prophet. I'm not saying that people don't find any inconsistencies in Mormon doctrine, there's a people component to be sure, but it's several orders of magnitude less. I strongly reject this idea that doctrine is developed by groups of people hashing it out. Council of Nicea? Convened by Constantine, he basically says I don't care what you produce as long as it's something unifying, and once you do, we'll burn the writings of dissenters and exile anyone not with the program. All this to say you should meet with the missionaries :)
As a Protestant, I agree with you that the papacy is no guarantor of doctrinal fidelity. But the core question is this: The pope is said to be the vicar of Christ – is he? Flawed historical assertions and doctrinal contradictions count as evidence against the claim, but the claim itself is true or false and should be addressed as such. (Whether this is the right forum to go deep on that question is a separate issue.)
The same is true of claims about the president of the Mormon church: Is he a true or false prophet? Having a true prophet may be useful, but that doesn’t determine whether Joseph Smith and Russell Nelson qualify. Flawed historical assertions and doctrinal contradictions count as evidence here too. And I think it’s audacious to say that the LDS score well.
What about the Mormon history of pre-Columbian America, which doesn’t jive with any historical source or archeological finds? Or the book of Abraham, whose source manuscripts turned out to be Egyptian funerary texts once we could read hieroglyphs? Or the edits to the Book of Mormon regarding the nature of the godhead? Or the doctrines which were said to be unchangeable but were nevertheless changed, like plural marriage?
I believe that the idea was to have an apostolic guidance for the church as a whole but persecution, deaths, unauthorized doctrinal changes, undue pagan influences, power grabs, a view that the Second Coming was imminent, and the gradual loss of divine revelation made the church fundamentally changed and eventually bereft of authority. Perhaps some city bishops had some legitimate authority for a while, but the connection that e.g. the Bishop of Rome would have any actual special sway over the church as a whole is highly suspect, as was especially the consolidation under Constantine. The later "sins" of the Catholic church are some evidence, but not the primary evidence. I agree that to the extent historical matters should be considered in coming to spiritual conclusions, that history both theological and otherwise are fair game for examination - though my comment was more about the theological history of the Catholics than their more political/historical acts.
Getting a little off topic I guess, but in terms of Book of Mormon history, the position has long been (and is mildly supported in-text) that the people there were simply one of many living side by side. Archeologically speaking, we simply do not have anywhere close to a comprehensive survey of all peoples who lived in Mesoamerica. Among the Maya, for example, we've only excavated about 1% of the sites and of those sites only 10% of what's there, approximately. The Book of Abraham I feel was used as a starting point for inspiration on Abrahamic writings rather than a true transliteration, though admittedly there are decent reasons to think otherwise I certainly wouldn't begrudge others for believing. A few edits to a single section don't really change anything about LDS in-text our out-of-text teachings on the Trinity. Many Old Testament prophets were polygamists, so clearly it's compatible with Christianity, yes? It's I believe a plausible or even likely reading of the history that Joseph Smith was forced into accepting plural marriage (obviously it brought nothing but trouble) as part of the "restoration of all things", i.e. re-treading parts of earlier pre-Christ Christianity as part of the doctrinal point that the gospel (Christianity broadly from Adam to now) is now in its ultimate and most complete form (though some allowance is made for new knowledge, teachings, and practices to be either restored or newly given). At least under this model of Christian history, there's far less confusion over having to litigate and reexamine each and every piece of modern practice and belief - Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise - for accuracy. Study is helpful for understanding true religious principles, and might be a rewarding activity, but it is not the cornerstone of doctrine, nor is there a need for major political activism to influence church leaders at the church-wide level.
Returning back a little bit to the original point, it's amazing to me that anyone would read the Epistles of Paul and come to any conclusion other than that there were serious doctrinal misunderstandings by new converts everywhere, on top of the rampant persecution, on top of the behavior problems, on top of the cultural difficulties popping up as many new members tried to blend their previous beliefs into the new religion. The vibe is that there's definitely a bit of a mess out there, yeah? Paul was obviously, I think everyone agrees, capable of correcting misunderstandings and offering some excellent guidance, but there were only so many people like Paul, and fewer by the year. And there's little evidence as far as I'm concerned that anyone satisfactorily took his place, much less the Bishop of Rome, though a few bishops tried to a limited extent.
I don't have any particular beef with the Mormons--if anything, I admire them on a cultural level. But my understanding is that the current leadership is pretty committed to burying anything that makes the faith stand out from the undifferentiated mass of non-denominational Christianity generally.
Really, writ large, the history of Mormonism has been a history of retreat from anything that made it interesting or unique. The continued existence of Fundamentalist Mormon polygamy (in remote cities across the western United States) is clear evidence that the LDS church could have survived a steadfast refusal to conform with the demands of the U.S. government on that score. But the LDS chose growth (and financial stability) over their own revealed doctrines. More recently, the church took a strong stand in favor of traditional marriage with California's "Prop 8," only to retreat almost entirely from the issue within less than a decade (about half of Mormons today approve of same sex marriage, in complete disregard for their own history and teachings). Indeed, for most of the 20th century the LDS indulged in quite a lot of blisteringly anti-Catholic rhetoric, and mocked the wearers of crosses and crucifixes ("if they shot Jesus, would you wear an AK-47 necklace?")--only to take up the cross and incorporate "holy week" into their worship services in the 21st.
Of course the Mormons are not alone in any of this; the Great Awokening has shifted the ideological landscape a lot, such that the boggling inanity of stuff like "Queers for Palestine" has become de rigueur. But the LDS church seems to be speed-running the history of Christianity in reverse, starting as a sect of innovative and progressive doctrines (open canon, anti-slavery, apotheosis, polygamy, theocracy, miracles) then gradually reverting to a blandly Protestant cultural mean (no more polygamy, replacing "translation" with "inspiration" in explanations of the Book of Abraham, literally whitewashing their own history by painting over artwork in their temples), then landing on their own implementation of an infallible papacy (in the form of a well-heeled corporation sole).
This... probably sounds more critical than I intend it to be. Mormons are as good as any, and better than many, at building communities. Their doctrines have never been any more ridiculous than those of Catholics, or Jews, or Muslims (and if a ridiculous doctrine produces a valuable outcome, is it actually ridiculous?). North America would certainly be a more interesting place today if the Rocky Mountains had become a polygamist Mormon Theocracy, as the sect once planned. But the way history is unfolding, I would expect the LDS to be culturally and theologically indistinguishable from, say, progressive-ish Methodist congregations, within a century or two. The LDS will eventually ordain women and wed gays because their open canon gives them an excuse to do so, and their demonstrated preference is for continued growth and prosperity, not adherence to revealed doctrines. Indeed, Conquest's second and third laws of politics seems to apply:
I have seen the LDS do more in the last 20 years to appease its critics than to cater to its own existing membership (or teachings!). There is a commonplace that one should have an open mind, but not so open that one's brains fall out. Likewise, Mormonism's open canon was in the 19th century its evident strength, but in a world of mass media and "social justice" that same open canon has become a clear organizational liability. I am skeptical that recognizably religious Mormonism can long survive the--good, even perhaps noble--intentions of its corporate leadership.
Whether that is good or bad (or matters at all) is a separate question, of course. That parousia failed to occur promptly at the turn of the millennium came as a serious blow for many apocalyptic sects--this is, I think, an underappreciated aspect of the cultural changes that have happened since. I knew so many Christians, circa 1999, who clearly harbored serious hopes, verging on expectations, that 2000, 2001 at latest, was going to be the year the heathens burned. Churches have been forced to adapt (most have failed to do so), and the Mormons are no exception. The idea that Restorationism (of which the Mormons are an important, but not unique, example) results in "far less confusion over having to litigate and reexamine each and every piece of modern practice and belief" does not, I think, hold up to the test of history.
This isn't really possible, is it? I've been on a bit of a rabbit hole chasing down what Mormons actually think for the last few months (it's really hard to find, which is odd for a "church"), and from what I can tell their claim of even being "Christian" at all is a bit of an intentional linguistic trick.
Mormons believe in somebody they call Jesus, but they believe he was a guy who came to The United States of America about 2000 years ago and met with people living there at the time. The core of their religion is that there was a group of Jews who sailed to North America several thousand years ago, split into two groups which formed large, continent scale societies, and then went to war. There was a guy, Mormon, who wrote down some revelation on golden tablets, hid them, and then eventually an angel came to Joseph Smith in 1850 and told him where to find them.
Again, it's a bit tough to actually find what the Mormons believe. I think the mormons try to hide this on purpose because of how it comes across to people not familiar with it.
Well that's an accusation I've never heard before. Usually we hear the opposite. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. A good place to start is Mormonism 101, but churchofjesuschrist.org has essentially all of our teachings, including very esoteric stuff.
Yeah man, those links are exactly the problem that I'm talking about. Those links reference somebody with the name Jesus, but what they fail to mention is that they're talking about an entirely different person (who just happens to have the same name) as the person that Christians are talking about when they say Jesus.
Stuff like this:
https://news-gu.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/mormonism-101#C8
No it isn't. There is a historical person who actually existed named Jesus, and he did not write a testament called "The Book of Mormon". This isn't a debate about theological interpretations, it is a historical fact.
It doesn't. It contains some things written by Joseph Smith in the 1830s in what he thought looked roughly like ancient egyptian.
Yes this is true, but what they're not mentioning on this page is that it was written in the 1830s by Joseph Smith.
This stuff is just frustrating to me. If you want to claim Joseph Smith as some prophet and start some new religion about it, then go for it. But just stop lying to people.
The rest of this page is the same sort of sophistic hand waving and not worth going through point by point.
I find Jesus writing a book that nobody's heard of not inherently goofier or ahistorical than rising from the dead. Or having communion wafers turn into his flesh. Of all the weird things people say about Jesus, writing a book that isn't in the historical record is nowhere near the top of the list of "things secular historians don't think are true about Jesus".
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You asked for what we believe. That link describes what we believe. Nothing is being hidden.
Well, no, we believe they're the same person. You can argue they're not, but that's not our belief, which is what you asked for.
Yes, we agree on this. I think you misunderstand what a testament is. Jesus didn't write the New Testament either.
OK. You asked for our beliefs, you have them.
OK. It sounds like when you say "it's a bit tough to actually find what the Mormons believe" what you mean is that it's a bit tough to track down the apologetics addressing contradictory evidence. For that I'd invite you to check out https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/. Or, again, just ask me. You're not going to see every piece of evidence for and against a claim addressed in a post called "Mormonism 101".
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