I have had an interest in things Mormon since my cousin converted to that faith after marrying a Mormon man. Over the last 15 years or so, my cousin, her husband, and I have had discussions periodically. Once they gave me a Mormon book designed to introduce the neophyte to their basic beliefs. I found the book very interesting. They used a lot of the same scriptures that Catholics use to justify church authority. They are right. The Bible does teach Church authority; they just have applied the verses to the wrong church! Another time, my cousins gave me a video, which portrayed their histories and struggles in the early years, including stories of martyrdom. I found the video to be sentimental and a whitewash of the era.
Anyway, for the past couple of years, Mormon missionaries have come knocking on my door every three months or so. I don't know if they are simply targeting this area or my cousins have told them to stop by, but I seem to have fresh-faced boys calling themselves "Elders" knocking pretty regularly at my door.
I always invited them in until I learned that they were uncomfortable. I am a widow and these boys are not supposed to come in to a lone woman's house. So now I invite them to sit on my front porch, and I offer them a soda or a cup of cold water, and cookies, when I have them.
They are always very appreciative of the treats. Hospitality goes a long way in the world, including the apologetics world.
The first thing to do, according to former Mormon Thomas F. Smith, is to get them to give you their first names. Missionaries will introduce themselves as "Elder Smith" and "Elder Doe" and they want you to call them that.
Usually, I have to ask them more than once to get their first names. Once I had a particularly difficult time getting their first names. Exasperated, I said, "I understand that in your church you are called Elder, but you are not my elder and if we are to have a discussion we need to be on respectful terms." They gave me their names.
What's Your Authority?
My usual approach with missionaries, be they Evangelicals, Jehovah Witnesses, or Mormons is to ask them to prove to me why I should listen to them in the first place. This works fairly well. Usually, they say, "Don't listen to me, listen to the Bible." This leads us into a discussion of where the Bible came from and helps me to show the importance of Church authority.
Mormons will agree about church authority. In fact, they have a saying, "Protestantism doesn't have a leg to stand on. Either the Catholic Church is true or the Mormon Church is true." This belief by Mormons that either their church is true or the Catholic Church is true makes young missionaries especially curious about the Catholic Church. They come to the apologetics table with at least a grudging respect for the Catholic Church; after all, we have a leg to stand on. That's why well-catechized Catholics have a real opportunity to dialogue with and evangelize Mormons.
Since Mormons believe that the very early Church was true, whenever I talk to missionaries, I always ask them just when the Church apostatized. From their literature, I know they say that the Church apostatized immediately after the death of the last Apostle. One time, the missionary repeated that to me and I replied, "Then you are saying that St. Polycarp who learned the faith from the Apostle John and was martyred was an apostate and also all the other early Church fathers who learned from the Apostles."
The boy was astounded and backed off saying, "Well, yes, there were early Christian martyrs who were faithful."
"So, when did the Church apostatize?"
He was stumped.
But after awhile, I wasn't happy with my apologetic approach of "explain why I should give you a hearing." They would always try to steer the conversation to some pat, prepared argument that I was ill-equipped to handle. I have tapes which teach you how to explain why various Mormon arguments are wrong, but, honestly, I don't have the time or the inclination to study and memorize those arguments.
Touch the Heart and Reach the Mind
I needed to find a way that worked for me to try to reach these earnest, but errant souls.
Last summer, there was a knock my door.
I answered it and was surprised to see two young men there. They introduced themselves as Elder "Smith" and Elder "Doe." It was hot, so I asked them if they would like a cup of water. They said, "Yes." As I went to my fridge and scooped ice into a couple of paper cups, I prayed. "Oh Lord, help me to talk with them rightly. I really need your help, I don't know squat."
As I stepped onto the porch with the water, I said, "I know from prior visits you are not supposed to come in when a woman is alone, so we can sit on the porch and talk."
They took their cups and arranged themselves on the porch. I made a mental note to maybe get some chairs out there.
I decided to take the initiative.
"Before we get started, I need to tell you something straight out. If you start quoting scripture to me or a prepared speech, my eyes will glaze over, my mind will freeze, and I won't be able to follow you and we can't talk at all. If you want to talk to me, then we have to talk together like human beings."
I paused and stretched out my hand.
"I'm Catholic, my name is Kathy, what's yours?"
In turn, they shook my hand.
"My name is Darren."
"Mine is John."
Wow! They didn't even try to get me to call them Elder!
I remembered what a wise homilist once said. "When you meet someone new, don't ask them what they do. Ask them where they came from. How many are in their families? How many brothers and sisters do they have? Get to know their personal lives." The priest said that was a great way to get people to really open up.
So I did this with the missionaries. They told me about their hometowns and their families. At one point, Darren said that he had strayed from his faith during his high school years, but eventually had come to believe it.
"Why do you believe in the Mormon faith?" I asked.
"Because I feel it's right," Darren replied.
"Is that what you base your faith on, a feeling?" I asked.
"Yes. Well, more than that…" he looked a little confused.
"What?"
"Well, you look around and you can see that there is design to the world, you know that there is a God," he said.
"That's true," I agreed, "but why do you believe in the Mormon faith?"
"I feel it's true."
Now that they had had a chance to share some of themselves and their faith with me, they gave me the same courtesy.
"That's not enough for me. I know that Mormons ask you to read The Book of Mormon and see if you get a burning feeling. I could never base my faith on a feeling."
The two of them looked genuinely surprised.
I continued, "I have an aunt who gave me a book called History of the Origin of All Things. On its cover page it claims "Given by the Lord Our God" and then a few lines down it says "Revised by Him." I guess 84 years later God's work needed revision. By the way, this book was written around the same time as The Book of Mormon. My aunt believes it faithfully. When I ask her why, she says its because she feels its true. And she is passionate about it. When I try to point some inconsistency out to her about it, she just gets worked up and says she knows it's true."
This seemed to trouble the two missionaries.
"What do you base your faith on?" Darren asked.
"Well, first we have to define faith. How do you define faith?" I asked them.
Paraphrasing Hebrews 11:1, John said, "Faith is believing in the unseen."
"That is a part of faith, but it's not a sufficient definition," I replied.
"Then how do you define faith?"
"Faith is believing in something that someone has told us but that we wouldn't know on our own. When you go into the store and look at a can of beans you have faith in the label. You have faith that beans are actually in the can, but you don't know it. You didn't actually see the beans being put into the can and sealed up. Still, your faith is well-placed because can labels are pretty reliable."
I paused for a moment to let that sink in and then I continued.
"This is real faith, but it's not infallible. A can might be mislabeled — indeed, that happened to me once and it was a very strange feeling to open a can of peaches and see green beans. A lot of religious people are going to be surprised after they die, too."
They nodded in agreement.
"When we speak of religious faith we are speaking of a divine faith. Catholics define this type of faith as believing what God has told us. And how does he speak to us? Through the Church."
"How do you know God speaks to you through the Catholic Church?" asked John.
"When Jesus walked the earth He taught that He was the Son of God and backed it up by His miracles, especially the Resurrection. Jesus personally established the Catholic Church as testified in St. Matthew's Gospel. The Apostles and early Christians bore personal witness to Christ, and they handed down what they saw through the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church teaches the same today as it did yesterday. Testimony and consistency is essentially why I believe what I believe. I do not believe because I read a book and waited for a feeling."
I wanted to involve them more in the conversation, so I asked, "Darren, when you used the argument about belief in God from design, you were not using your feelings, you were using your mind. Reason is a gift from God; He wants us to use it."
"I agree with that," Darren said.
"You were using one of Saint Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God. Have you ever heard of Thomas Aquinas?
"No, I haven't," replied Darren.
"Neither have I," said John.
"You are using Catholic arguments for the existence of God; you should at least read Aquinas and the other early Church Fathers."
"Who are the early Church Fathers?" asked John
"They are the great teachers of the early church."
"I would like to read them, how can I do that?" he asked.
"Just go on the Internet. Use Google and type in Church Fathers. You will find a ton of information."
We didn't really discuss this further. We discussed a few other things like prayer and contemporary miracles. Since I had said that testimony was important to me, they asked about the testimonies in the introduction to The Book of Mormon. There eleven men claim to have seen the original golden tablets on which The Book of Mormon was given to Joseph Smith. They asked if I had read those testimonies.
"Yes. But I understand that most of them took back their statements."
Darren quickly replied, "They left the Church but they never renounced their testimony."
Having no deep knowledge of this incident, I simply said, "Their statements would not be sufficient for me to put credibility into the Mormon religion. The only Apostle who renounced Christ's testimony hanged himself. The others were all martyrs for Him."
"I don't wish to offend you, but the Catholic Church is resplendent with miracles and holy men and women down through the ages, despite her sinners. I invite you to seriously consider the Catholic Church, it is your heritage."
"How is it our heritage?" John asked.
"The LDS faith came out of Protestantism which came out of Catholicism."
We had reached a bit of an impasse. Before they went their way, I wanted to touch on one more important subject.
"Before you leave, would you mind telling me one more thing about your faith. What is the Mormon conception of the Cosmos? Who is God?"
They looked uncomfortable. Talking with a non-Mormon about their belief in more than one God is not in their plan.
John said, "We believe that God is the father and the creator of all this."
"God is the creator of everything?"
"Yes."
"I am happy to hear you say that, that you believe in just one God. I have heard other things about your beliefs. So, if I understand you correctly, God did not have a creator Himself?"
"No. He had a creator."
"Then He's not God. God can't have a creator."
Then I spread out my five fingers and pointing to my baby finger I said, "You are saying that this is god and he was created by (pointing to my ring finger) this god and that this god (pointing to tall man) was created by this god and that this god (pointing to my index finger) was created by this god and so on and so forth so that it goes on forever. You have a series of gods with no ultimate source. So none of them exist."
Darren said, "But God is never beginning and never ending."
"Yes," I said, "but God can't have anything greater than He is. If He is created, then the creator is greater than the creature. God is the uncaused cause. That is the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Even the great Greek philosophers knew that."
I wanted to end on a positive note with them and not sound triumphalist. I commented to them that there is much that Catholics and Mormons agree on, like Church authority. I pointed out to them that I had read a letter their President Hinckley had written and that it read like a papal encyclical. I didn't want to offend them, but I honestly believe their leader was copying the style and content of Pope John Paul II.
Amazingly, they didn't get defensive at all and John admitted, "That might be true."
I put Darren and John's names up on the list in our Adoration Chapel and in my prayer journal. I admire their willingness to go out and evangelize. I pray that they will find the truth and that at the end of life, they will not have opened a can of peaches and gotten green beans.
