My child is a freshman in college, she's been dating her mormon boyfriend for a little over a year, and she's being pulled into this group. She has said he's not pushing her into it, but she has been in contact with missionaries down in San Marcos.

I've been trying to talk to her about it, but she's always put me off, never been truly willing to engage. I'm very worried and I'm looking for help to get her to see the light, and to understand she's only being shown the carefully crafted marketing presentation.

Has anybody else dealt with this? What worked?

I'm very well informed about LDS, the history, the practices, the secrets, the absence of evidence, and the conflicts in its scripture. She has said I'm always talking about the negative things. The two things I've really brought up are the polygamy, and inherent racism that is built into the core doctrine with the cursed black skin. I'm just the messenger, it's the message itself that is negative.

I'm desperate for help with this. I've gotten her to finally being conversation, but I fear she may already be too far gone.

I am not Catholic, but my wife is and we've raised our children as such.

As someone who was raised catholic but joined the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in my 30s, I'd be happy to share my experience. There are lots of misconceptions about our beliefs.

I'll start with the Articles of Faith.

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

2 We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression.

3 We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

4 We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

5 We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.

6 We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.

7 We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.

8 We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

9 We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

10 We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.

11 We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

12 We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.

13 We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of PaulWe believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.




Key points of difference from the Catholic doctrine that I see are:

original sin (resulting in baptism at 8 rather than as an infant)

the authority of the respective churches (lDS president/prophet vs Catholic Pope). The Catholic Church doctrine is that the Papal Authority has been passed down from Peter. The LDS Church doctrine is that at some point that authority from Peter was lost and that the authority was restored when the apostles Peter, James, and John appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to restore the authority.

We believe in the godhead where The Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are one in purpose but are different personages vs the Trinity where The Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit share the same Devine essence. I personally think much more is made of this difference (by both sides) than should be and we should focus on the common belief in Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

dermdoc said:

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desperate_parent said:

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My child is a freshman in college, she's been dating her mormon boyfriend for a little over a year, and she's being pulled into this group. She has said he's not pushing her into it, but she has been in contact with missionaries down in San Marcos.

I've been trying to talk to her about it, but she's always put me off, never been truly willing to engage. I'm very worried and I'm looking for help to get her to see the light, and to understand she's only being shown the carefully crafted marketing presentation.

Has anybody else dealt with this? What worked?

I'm very well informed about LDS, the history, the practices, the secrets, the absence of evidence, and the conflicts in its scripture. She has said I'm always talking about the negative things. The two things I've really brought up are the polygamy, and inherent racism that is built into the core doctrine with the cursed black skin. I'm just the messenger, it's the message itself that is negative.

I'm desperate for help with this. I've gotten her to finally being conversation, but I fear she may already be too far gone.

I am not Catholic, but my wife is and we've raised our children as such.

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Tough situation. At that age, the more you confront her with the truth, the more rebellious she will be. Would it help for her to go talk to her priest and let him tell her the truth about Mormonism? Can and will your wife talk to her? Sometimes females can relate better than males with stuff like this.

i will pray that the Holy Spirit will convict her of the truth of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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I asked her if she had considered talking to her priest yet, I think we can get her to. As you alluded to, she may already be in a position where any challenge or differing thought could be seen as an attack.

One big obstacle right now is that she's talking to missionaries, and believes they are highly knowledgeable. I know they are still naive children given impressive sounding titles, and they are very limited in what they're allowed to say and reveal, and they basically have a script. As an example, when she asked them about polygamy, the answer was to insist it was only the sealing and not a sexual marriage, even though the mormon church acknowledges at least 11 wives of Joseph Smith that were a sexual relationship. It's made more difficult because the missionaries are not lying to her, they just do not know. The lies to children that are parroted to the missionaries are being passed on to her.

The grandiose and inflated titles are doing their job of conveying the sense of authority. The fact that the church will anoint children to the priesthood completely deflates the meaning of priest.

-deleted at your request-

CrackerJackAg said:

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desperate_parent said:

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My child is a freshman in college, she's been dating her mormon boyfriend for a little over a year, and she's being pulled into this group. She has said he's not pushing her into it, but she has been in contact with missionaries down in San Marcos.

I've been trying to talk to her about it, but she's always put me off, never been truly willing to engage. I'm very worried and I'm looking for help to get her to see the light, and to understand she's only being shown the carefully crafted marketing presentation.

Has anybody else dealt with this? What worked?

I'm very well informed about LDS, the history, the practices, the secrets, the absence of evidence, and the conflicts in its scripture. She has said I'm always talking about the negative things. The two things I've really brought up are the polygamy, and inherent racism that is built into the core doctrine with the cursed black skin. I'm just the messenger, it's the message itself that is negative.

I'm desperate for help with this. I've gotten her to finally being conversation, but I fear she may already be too far gone.

I am not Catholic, but my wife is and we've raised our children as such.

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I would not focus on the dated racist and polygamy aspects.

Sounds out of touch.

I think tough part might just be your own history. Raising a kid Catholic but not being Catholic yourself and not having a united family on that front sends the message that you can willy nilly just sort of do what is best for you and it's all the same.

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I can set the polygamy aside, that really came up because she mentioned she had asked about that. It's also not central to the religion, it was really just a cult leader taking the next step that all cult leaders take. Collect money, collect power, collect women.... It does highlight the deception that Joseph Smith was capable of, and continued to engage in up until his last days.

The cursed black skin is hard to set aside. The is quite literally foundational core doctrine of the book of mormon. It isn't an outdated policy, it's core doctrine. Outwardly, it was partially set aside in 1978, but was still taught up to 2013. The fact that they have now disavowed it highlights the problem even further. How can the revelations of their prophet, and core facets of the "most correct book on earth" be set aside because it has become inconvenient?

desperate_parent said:

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It reinforces my concerns to see you what you posted, and what you left out, the biggest and most critical differences that render mormonism wholly incompatible with Christianity at a fundamental level. I will not go into detail, I'll just ask you to not to continue on this thread.

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I did mention godhead vs trinity. Not sure I understand what you mean by differences that render incompatible with Christianity and am open to dialogue about that. Faith vs works? Open vs closed cannon?

My intent was not to convince anyone of what to believe but rather provide you with perspective of what your daughter is experiencing.

If you want to try to convince your daughter to not join the LDS church, it would probably be beneficial to have a discussion based on understanding what she is learning rather than a bunch of anti-Mormon propaganda that mischaracterizes the beliefs. If all you do is mischaracterize the beliefs, she will likely dismiss you and ignore any valid points you may have.

It was not my experience, but I know several converts that were cut off from their families because of their conversion. I just hope this doesn't irreparably damage your relationship with your daughter.

But as you wish, I will stop commenting.

Quote:

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I would focus on the correctness of her Faith, Tradition and Church she was raised in.

I'm not sure how to overcome the argument she will obviously about why you didn't convert.

It's not a dig. I think you are in a tough position and up against a boyfriend that, if she is really into him, has a stronger conviction in his Church than you do in the one you raised them in.

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That's fair. It may be that it's one church vs another in her mind, as opposed to one gospel vs another.

There's the built in self-defense that mormons claim it to be the original church restored, not sure how to get through that without putting focus on the gospel and the scriptural incompatibilities. Even the polytheistic nature of mormonism is hidden from view, and somewhat denied, despite children's songs about it.

It's harkening back to Arianism. Pretty much all of Europe and North Africa subscribed to this for the first few hundred years.

Outside of the Orthodox, at the time, Pope pretty much all of Europe was this way.

CrackerJackAg said:

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It's harkening back to Arianism. Pretty much all of Europe and North Africa subscribed to this for the first few hundred years.

Outside of the Orthodox, at the time, Pope pretty much all of Europe was this way.

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It's so much beyond Arianism. According to mormonism, God was once a man, and he was elevated to god hood. Just as his father was before him, and his father before him..., and just as any faithful believer will be one day. Joseph Smith went into detail about this nature of God in the King Follett discourse. There was debate about this in the early 1900s, with one idea being that God was the first one or if it was an infinite line, the latter was accepted as doctrine

The song "If You Could Hie to Kolob", makes reference to this, could you ever see where the first Gods began? "Kolob" being the star where God's planet is. Kolob was first mentioned in the book of Abraham.

If you could hie to Kolob
In the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward
With that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever,
Through all eternity,
Find out the generation
Where Gods began to be?

This is directly conflicting with Christianity. The Christian God is, always has been, always will be, and is unchanging.

Mentioning the existence of these things is considered "anti", a safe guard term to prevent self-reflection and introspection.

Catag94 said:

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I think I'd ask her to take some time for herself to densely pray and to think about her own beliefs. What is in her heart? What is Jesus saying? If she clears her mind and heart of all distractions, she will hear Him.
How would Paul encourage her if she asked him?
What, if any motivation is there for her to change?
What is the source of it?
Does she feel like she truly knows herself?
It's her choice how she lives, but because you love her, not just in this life but for eternity, you want her to have the wisdom to simply follow Jesus and not a man, a particular religion, or anything earthly.

She should promise herself that she will not be coerced, even by her own young emotions.

Don't try to sell her like those marketing materials. Just ask her to trust Jesus and her objective self.

I'll pray for her.

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I will look down this path, as you and others have suggested.

We did ask was was intriguing to her.

She mentioned the idea of a living prophet was neat. The timing is fortuitous, with the very recent death of Nelson, we talked about the selection of the next prophet. This is a big sticking point for my wife, though we didn't express it. The audacity of man to think we can choose who God's prophet will be.

She also mentioned feeling a bit isolated in the first few weeks of college, and running into missionaries on campus.

I've made clear, though perhaps it's not fully believed, that I'll support her no matter what, I just want her to be informed. One constant theme among ex-mormons is the lack of informed consent. Several talk about how they felt lied to, surrounded by secrecy, and many only revealed when it's sort of past the point of no return. As an example, the temple ceremonies are not spoken about, once they're in there, and they're starting to see, they can't really back out at that point. The worry about social shaming keeps them there.

I feel like I'm brain dumping on this thread. I am not challenging or arguing against any advice, I am looking for it, it's just difficult to remain quiet about the insidious nature of this group.

I appreciate the feedback from everyone

Children grow up and become adults who sometimes wander and stray from the faith walk they grew up in. This is more common than many parents would admit.

As a loving parent of 6 older adult children and 2 young adult children, all of whom attended Catholic school, mass on Sundays, received the sacraments up through confirmation, and various youth ministries- not all of my "kids" are still in the church. We are still a very tight family and gather often enough that we genuinely enjoy the time we have together. I am very grateful for that!

I say all this because, my "kids" are working their way through life and their spirituality. We have a family chat called "La Familia" in which from time to time, I send them articles related to the faith to keep them informed. None have left the church formally, they just don't attend mass every Sunday if at all. We agreed sometime ago that we would go back to St. Mary's (the church they attended while in Catholic school) for Christmas and Easter mass. My wife and I remember the times we took up a whole row in the church with the little ones. Those were good times. Now we pray for them to find God in their lives. We will always pray for them, that is a parent's obligation.

Some time ago, when I found out the older ones were not going to church while in college, I prayed to God to help me understand what we did wrong. I know we made a deliberate decision to send them to Catholic school in order to pass along the faith and give them a good academic foundation. We went to mass every week, we participated in the various parish activities, they attended religious education classes on Wednesday and Sundays. I felt like we did our jobs.

God helped me understand, through scripture particularly the parable of the sower (Mt 13:1-23) that not all will listen to the word of God. Our job as parents is to keep sowing and watering the fields in the hope that the word of God will take root and produce fruit.

It sounds to me that your kid is just now starting down a path with someone she cares deeply about. Hopefully you can all agree to seek the truth about God and his will for your lives. As long as the truth is the goal, they will come around and maybe come back to the church.

Will pray for you and your family!

PabloSerna said:

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I don't agree with the OP on asking you to not post, however, out of respect for him and his situation, I too will not push this point. However, I would like to elaborate on some concerns Catholics would have with the LDS if you are willing to? I will start a new thread.

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That's more what I had in mind. I didn't want a side track to overtake

All of this rings true to me. Talking more with my wife, we have concern that she's walking this path because of a boyfriend, not because it's in her heart. She began this with secrecy and deception, and that continues. It's come up heavy because we've learned she's been operating in secret at college to a degree. Can this be good to walk this path with deception? He has been to church with us one time in the spring, that was after several months of trying to get him to reciprocate her efforts to attend with him.

I've never heard her express belief in the book of mormon, only in how nice the people are, which is something I think most can agree on. I've never met a mormon that was not a nice person.

As a Confirmation teacher I dealt with this on different occasions. We had a fellow parishioner who had left (more like fled froml) the Mormon Church. Our team would have him teach a session on the LDS beliefs and history. He had family that were in high rank, and he knew the subject matter quite well. We found him to be the best way to address the question. Perhaps if you could find someone who has left the LDS church, they could be very informative and helpful in dealing with your daughter. I also believe that your priest would be a great help. In the mean time, I will keep you and your family in my prayers.

My wife and I understood early on that we are a mirror of the church to our children. We keep the doors open. I know that the church's position on things like abortion, the pill, and male priesthood challenge their millennial minds- but that is a good thing. We still talk and that is because we don't shut the door.

I've told all 8 of my kids that we have passed along the faith as a gift- passed down from our parents, that was passed down from theirs and so forth. However, they have to walk this path on their own and believe in God with their heart not because mom and dad say so.

I encourage them to explore whatever spiritual trend they or their friends come up with- authentically. It should be a search for the truth and not some superficial experience. Sometimes you can drive them away with fear. We don't fear the truth.

redcrayon said:

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This might help.

https://cesletter.org

There are several ex-Mormons with great YouTube channels that might be of help.

I'll pray for your family.

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I've read it through and through, as well as videos from several ex-mormons. A lot of it I already knew, there are some things that were new to me as well. We sent the CES letter along to her last week, as well as some videos from ex-Mormons (an ex-member talking about her experience as a missionary was one in particular). In particular it's trying to convey that the missionaries aren't well informed, and there is a lot more than what they're allowed to tell her. Almost without exception, ex-members lost their faith after learning more information about the church and it's "deep doctrine", a term used by members to describe doctrines and teachings that are not commonly known anymore, but are very much part of their faith.

I want her to be informed of these things. Statistically, the veil will come off at some point and she will see enough to cause her to discard it, I would rather her become informed from the beginning, instead of a crushing blow later in life. I believe the retention rate past age 25 (28?) among millennials is < 40%, and falling year to year. The internet has made it near impossible to keep information hidden from view, and LDS starts to fall apart as one learns more about it.

One difference I've seen throughout, is that Christians always welcome more investigation into the gospel, the church, its histories, and its truth, and to verify what is found against gospel. LDS members view investigation and verification as "anti-mormon", despite former leaders claiming to welcome it.

Mark Fairchild said:

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As a Confirmation teacher I dealt with this on different occasions. We had a fellow parishioner who had left (more like fled froml) the Mormon Church. Our team would have him teach a session on the LDS beliefs and history. He had family that were in high rank, and he knew the subject matter quite well. We found him to be the best way to address the question. Perhaps if you could find someone who has left the LDS church, they could be very informative and helpful in dealing with your daughter. I also believe that your priest would be a great help. In the mean time, I will keep you and your family in my prayers.

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That's a good thought, a lot will describe leaving as "escaping", perhaps an ex-member can help her to understand some of the things that they found impossible to accept any further. I cannot imagine the internal conflict one must go through, understanding that if they choose to leave, their entire social world and community might turn their backs. Even if not all, there would be enough to leave one feeling abandoned and isolated. A message from someone who has faced that and left anyways could be quite impactful.

CrackerJackAg said:

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It's harkening back to Arianism. Pretty much all of Europe and North Africa subscribed to this for the first few hundred years.

Outside of the Orthodox, at the time, Pope pretty much all of Europe was this way.

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That's...not true.

By the time of the Council of Nicea, only a very small, trivial number of Bishops backed Arius.

The early church did grapple with a variety of ways to properly define the nature of the Trinity, but Arianism was a late derivation with a relatively short lifespan.

Out of curiosity, what are the deep dark secrets you keep referring to? My only knowledge of Mormonism is from South Park.

Silent For Too Long said:

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CrackerJackAg said:

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It's harkening back to Arianism. Pretty much all of Europe and North Africa subscribed to this for the first few hundred years.

Outside of the Orthodox, at the time, Pope pretty much all of Europe was this way.

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That's...not true.

By the time of the Council of Nicea, only a very small, trivial number of Bishops backed Arius.

The early church did grapple with a variety of ways to properly define the nature of the Trinity, but Arianism was a late derivation with a relatively short lifespan.

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Yeah, if you believe the composition of the Bishops accurately matched the attitudes and beliefs of the still predominantly pagan areas of Europe I'm not sure what to tell you. At that time, Christianity was a city only phenomenon, and even then represented only a very small portion of the population.

I think your first chance to really understand the composition of the area is once the empire in the west fell and you've had time for Christianity to work its way through the population.

Paganism still has a substantial foot hold.

Every single one of the German successor states were Arian. This was throughout all of Europe and North Africa.

The Pope was an Orthodox island until the conversion of Clovis.

It was not until the conquest of Justinian and Belisarius that Orthodoxy was established to the West.

Arianism never really went away