Mormon missionaries are knocking at the door. Some people, including many practicing Catholics, are irritated by the sight of these smiling, well-dressed young men who call themselves members of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” But another way of looking at the situation is to see those visitors as an opportunity.
After all, we are called through our baptism to share our faith with others. And while most folks we know probably become uncomfortable with anything that seems like “proselytizing,” here are a couple of people literally asking to talk with us about faith. Why not respond with a generous spirit?
The Initial Approach
If we want to engage them in a productive conversation, we must be aware of their strategy. Mormon missionaries will talk about their faith in very familiar language and very general terms, especially in the beginning. You’ll hear about the importance of faith in God, salvation in Christ, and family life.
This encourages hearers to become more comfortable with what they have to say. They would not get far, after all, if they opened with, “Hi, we’re Mormons. That means we reject the notion of the Holy Trinity and the divinity of Christ, but do, on the other hand, embrace the potential divinity of all people, the idea that God the Father has a physical body, and a book besides the Bible that contains God’s revelation to humanity.”
Don’t be fooled, then, by the familiar language. Recognize up front that many of their beliefs are radically different from essential teachings of orthodox Christianity. This will not be like talking to a member of, say, a Protestant denomination.
Given the opportunity, the gentlemen at your door will most likely lead you into a discussion that includes the following topics. You need to be familiar with their thinking and the important responses that Catholic history and teaching can offer.
Religious Experience
First is what we might call the argument from religious experience.
Mormons will tell you that the satisfaction and peace they experience when they read the Book of Mormon and live its teaching is how they know it to be true. This is always accompanied by an enthusiastic invitation to you to read the Book of Mormon, with the promise that if you do, you will surely know for yourself the same truth that they know.
We’ll talk about the Book of Mormon in a moment. But this insistence on personal religious experience as primary evidence is a problem.
Martin Luther had a profound religious experience on which he based his thinking (but Mormons would deny it was a real one). So did St. Augustine. (They would deny that one, too.) And so, presumably, did the terrorists who flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001 (and almost everyone, including many Muslims, would deny the authenticity of that “religious” experience).
Obviously not all religious experience is equally valid. So how do we judge the validity of our experience?
Explain that this is why God gave us the Church from the very start, and why He protects the Church from errors of faith. Certainly God can move in us, speak to us, and teach us in a very personal way. But our inner experiences are also open to the influence of things like self-interest, wishful thinking, or just plain confusion. Examining these experiences in the light of the Church’s teaching and the discernment of her pastors is an essential step in judging their truth and value.
The Book of Mormon
Second, the missionaries will focus on “The Book of Mormon.”
The subtitle on the cover of the Book of Mormon calls it “a second testament of Jesus Christ.” Mormons place it on the same level as the Bible as an authoritative revelation of God. As we’ve noted, your Mormon visitors will want to give you a copy and invite you to read it.
Their request provides a good opportunity to discuss the question, “Why read the Book of Mormon?” When they tell you that it’s God’s message to the world, just as the Bible is, ask them, “But how do we know it is? How can we be sure?”
After all, would we trust anyone who hands us something and says it’s the Word of God? Ask them, “If I wrote out something right now and handed it to you and said, ‘Read this, it’s the Word of God,’ would you believe it?”
Then explain that the reason we know the Bible is the Word of God is that it comes to us through and from the Church. The Bible’s table of contents was not written in stone by the finger of God.
Rather, as many early Christian writings began to be recognized for their importance, it was the teaching authority of the Church, exercised through bishops and popes, that discerned which represented God’s unique and authoritative Word to humanity and which did not.
Those bishops are the successors of the apostles. They form a chain that goes all the way back 2,000 years to the men whom Christ himself appointed to lead the Church and to decide such matters.
Point out to your visitors that when they pick up a Bible and believe it to be the Word of God, they’re trusting in the judgment of these Catholic Church leaders from many centuries ago. In fact, the decisions were actually made by these leaders at a time, according to Mormon teaching, when the authentic Christian Church had disappeared from the earth.
It’s inconsistent, then, for them to accept as Scripture a book designated as such by men they believe were not authentic representatives of Christ and His apostles. On the other hand, the Book of Mormon does not carry this indispensible seal of approval.
The Great Apostasy
Third, Mormon missionaries will speak of the Great Apostasy.
They won’t mention it right away, but this topic will come up sooner or later. Like Catholics, Mormons believe that Jesus founded a Church and entrusted to the Apostles the authority to lead and teach in his name.
Unlike Catholics, however, they believe that the Twelve were unable to pass on this authority to others, because it was necessary for all of them to be together, forming a “quorum,” for that to happen. According to their teaching, after Matthias had succeeded Judas (see Acts 1: 15-26), no one else received that apostolic authority before the Apostles dispersed and later died.
Consequently, Mormons believe that the authentic Christian faith as it was originally taught by Christ and understood by the Apostles was soon distorted, contaminated, and lost from the earth. They call this development the Great Apostasy.
That’s the reason, they say, Christ had to appear to the founder of Mormonism, young Joseph Smith, in upstate New York in the early 19th century. Mormons believe that through Smith, Christ restored the Church, authentic Christian doctrine, and the authority to teach it to the earth.
The problem with this belief, of course, is that Jesus promised Peter that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church (see Mt. 16:18). For the Church to disappear from the earth for almost two full millennia would surely seem like major victory for Satan.
The New Testament also speaks of the Church as “the pillar and foundation of truth,” (1 Tim. 3:15). Could that statement be considered even close to the truth if the Church were unable to withstand even the initial challenges to passing on its sacred teaching in the first century?
Finally, the Apostles themselves, who were in the best position to know what Jesus taught and intended for his Church, did not share this conception of the passing on of apostolic authority. We know from authentic historical records that they laid hands on people, that the “quorum” was not an important consideration, and that the Apostles themselves, the men they laid hands on, and the wider Christian community all recognized in this ritual the passing on of apostolic authority to lead and teach the Church.
Other Teachings
Other significant Mormon teachings are worth considering as you craft a Catholic response — for example, the idea that a group of Israelites made their way to the Americas in ancient times, or the teaching that each of us existed in heaven with God long before He decided we were ready to be sent to earth for our lives here.
Nevertheless, these teachings typically come up only in later conversations with Mormon missionaries. The ideas we’ve outlined here are more foundational to their faith.
Accentuate the Positive
Your Mormon guests will almost certainly be genuinely respectful and kind. They seek to win converts not by demolishing the beliefs of others, but by introducing what they understand to be a better alternative.
So be respectful in return. An aggressive verbal attack will arouse the same kind of response in them that it would in almost anyone: either defensiveness or a desire to make a quick exit.
Several aspects of Mormon thinking and living are indeed admirable. Above all is their willingness to engage in courageous methods of evangelization. They knock on doors. If we Catholics were more convinced of the “good news” of our own faith, we might well be doing the same.
Mormons appreciate the importance of truth in a way that most people today, even many Protestant and Catholic Christians, do not (but should). Few Mormons would make insipid comments such as this: “What’s important is that we’re all sincere in our beliefs, and what’s true for one person may not be true for another.”
They are acutely aware that we can’t all be right in what we believe (because no truth can be contrary to another truth). They know that if the content of their faith is true, then it is vitally important that others come to understand it.
A final reminder: Don’t expect missionaries to come suddenly to their senses and renounce their Mormon faith in your living room.
The goal is to plant seeds, offering thoughts that they might consider and perhaps investigate further after they leave your home. Then leave it to the Spirit to do the cultivating.
(This article was originally published in The Catholic Answer, January/February 2008 issue.)
