Thirteen years ago I would have hardly imagined the turns my life has taken.
I grew up in a moderately religious home of Presbyterian parents. They attended church regularly and took their children along. Like most adolescents, I rejected their religious views in favor of a “broader” outlook. Years of searching and experimenting culminated in my re-acknowledgement of Christianity. While a freshman in college, I began an intensive study of Christianity, intending to find the “true church.” C. S. Lewis and Thomas Merton’s writings led me toward Anglo-Catholicism. I didn’t join any denomination but, having decided that Protestantism didn’t have a leg to stand on, began an investigation of Catholicism.
My studies led me to read the Fathers of the Church and Church history, as well as accounts of converts to Catholicism. After many months of reading and preparation, I was received into the Catholic Church. I became a regular attendant at Mass and began a discernment of God’s will for my life. Five years of study and prayer led me to the conclusion that God was calling me to religious life.
During this time, however, my parents divorced, leaving me with a sense of community and family missing from my life. With that baggage, I began investigating religious orders, intending to apply for admission. Careful investigation led me to a small Franciscan community living a relatively monastic life. I spent a year there, trying to discern if God was calling me to that life. With the help of my spiritual advisor, I concluded God wasn’t calling me in that direction, and at the age of twenty-four I left, with the community’s blessing, to pursue secular life.
Leaving proved to be quite a shock. It had never entered my mind, when I applied for admission to the Franciscan community, that God would call me to anything but religious life. Trying to adjust to being back in the “real world” sent me reeling, emotionally and spiritually. I fell into a deep depression, wondering why God had apparently led me to religious life only to have me thrust back into the world. I attempted to fit back into the lay life, but my personal immaturity and lack of patience proved my downfall.
Thinking that a physical relocation would help, I worked, saved my money, and moved cross-country to a place I had never been and where I had no friends or family. I intended to make a new start but was struggling with deepening depression and a drinking problem that spiraled out of control. In this frame of mind I made my first friends, who turned out to be Mormons. I was quickly introduced to their missionaries, sat through their discussions, and, after several short weeks, decided to join their church.
Why did I do it? I needed community, a sense of belonging, and a surrogate family. These Mormonism amply provided. I wrote in my journal at the time that I realized I was idolizing family and relationships. I knew deep down what I was pursuing was wrong, but I felt compelled by depression and the need for friendship. The Mormon argument that it was the “restored” church held little sway for me, but I consciously suppressed doubts I had about its validity and decided to join anyway, in spite of what I knew to be true.
I quickly became part of their community of young, single adults. When they found out that I had spent time in a Catholic monastery, my new Mormon friends began asking me to speak at their meetings. My ego basked in their attention. I spoke at “fireside” meetings in several locations, describing the road I had taken to Mormonism. But the information I passed along about the Catholic Church to my eager audiences was knowingly false. I deliberately led people astray. Looking back, I’m aghast at the tactics I used. Perhaps subconsciously, knowing that since Mormons deliberately passed along false and misleading information about their church, I thought I could employ the same tactics regarding the Catholic Church.
But I was still suffering a deep sense of rejection by the Church upon leaving the religious community. After all, I had given my all, only to be thrust, unprepared, back into secular life, with scant job prospects, a broken family, and no real friends. Mormonism provided me with all of these but the price I paid was high. I hoped and prayed that someday my doubts about the Mormon church would find resolution.
I was relatively happy in Mormonism for a few years, always suppressing my doubts about its origins and its validity. I went through the Mormon temple ceremonies after being in the church for a year. I served in many callings and attended the temple at every opportunity. After five years and much prompting by my Masonic father, I decided to join Freemasonry to try to bring some kind of healing in our relationship. I had heard about the similarities between the rituals of Freemasonry and those of the Mormon Temple but dismissed the accounts as anti-Mormon rhetoric. My initiation into Freemasonry was the beginning of the end of Mormonism for me.
When “anti-Mormons” talk and write about the similarities between Freemasonry and the Mormon temple, most Mormons dismiss it out of hand. Mormons are instructed by their leaders to keep Temple ceremonies “sacred”—that is, secret. They’re not for non-members to know, and known only by the small percentage of Mormons who have been initiated into them. Mormons are taught that the ceremonies are the highlight of their religious life and that they’ll have spiritual experiences beyond compare within the temple walls. Many Mormons are ill-prepared for how different Mormon temple rituals are from their ordinary church practices. Temple ceremonies have been modified over the years, however, to accommodate some of the concerns expressed in internal surveys. Funny how “revelation” works.
The Mormon temple ceremonies teach the initiate secret handshakes and passwords that are supposed to enable the member to “pass by the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, signs, and tokens pertaining to the holy priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell” (to quote Brigham Young, the second Mormon Church president). Freemasonry teaches lessons to the initiate using the symbols of geometry and stone masonry. The Masonic symbols of the square, compass, and level are used on the “garment of the holy priesthood” in Mormonism, ostensibly holy underwear that Mormons are bound to wear “day and night” throughout their lives.
Freemasonry casts the initiate in the role of “Hyrum, king of Tyre,” the supposed chief architect of Solomon’s temple. Freemasonry also uses the same secret handshakes and penalties, being for masons the way by which a mason would recognize another mason. Suffice it to say that when I experienced the similarities between the Mormon temple and Masonic rituals, my faith in Mormonism began to fall apart. I had attended literally hundreds of Mormon temple sessions, performing proxy ritual work for my non-Mormon ancestors, so the rituals were well known to me. Experiencing firsthand the similarities began a long investigation into Mormon origins.
To make a long story short, my investigations taught me that Mormonism’s claims were in complete contradiction to the evidence. As I continued to gather evidence from both Mormon and non-Mormon sources, the whole structure fell apart.
Mormon claim: Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and martyred for his faith.
In reality: Joseph Smith was arrested for “money digging,” wore a “magic talisman,” committed adultery with women as young as fourteen, “married” the wives of other men, defrauded hundreds of people in a banking and land speculation scam, was a Freemason, and was killed in a gun battle after giving the Masonic distress signal to the crowd below.
Mormon claim: The Book of Mormon is true and was translated by the “gift and power of God” and is “the most perfect of any book.”
In reality: There is no archeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon (in fact, all archeological studies prove the Book of Mormon quite false). Large portions of Isaiah are found in the Book of Mormon, along with many other verses verbatim or slightly rewritten, together with similar stories (dancing girls and beheaded prophets, writing on the wall, etc.). In fact, Joseph Smith put his face in a hat, and looked in a “seer stone” to “translate” the non-existent plates. There have been over four thousand revisions to the most perfect of any book since it was first written. Though most have been for spelling and punctuation, a few were theologically significant or “politically correct.”
Mormon claim: The temple ceremonies were revealed by God to Joseph Smith.
In reality: The temple ceremonies are adaptations of the rituals of Freemasonry and contain elements particular to its practice in nineteenth-century America. Joseph Smith was made a Mason by the grand master of the Grand Lodge of Illinois prior to his “revelations” of the temple ceremonies. The vast majority of male members of the LDS Church in Nauvoo, Illinois (the one-time headquarters of the Mormon Church) were Masons, including Joseph’s brother, Hyrum. Since they were originally formulated, the temple ceremonies have undergone major revisions, most notably in the removal of blood oaths.
Mormon claim: The Mormon Church teaches the “Restored Gospel.”
In reality: The Mormon Church teaches nothing like the gospel as taught by the Apostolic Church. The Apostolic Church didn’t fall into apostasy. The records are plain that the apostolic teaching and authority passed to the bishops of the Church and to the successor of Peter in particular.
Mormon claim: A prophet of God leads the Mormon Church.
In reality: The Mormon “prophets” are notorious in changing their minds. Brigham Young, for example, taught that Adam was “our God, and the only god with whom we have to do,” a teaching later spurned by church presidents.
Mormon claim: The Mormon Church is the “One, True Church.”
In reality: A hard claim to live up to when you teach a completely different gospel than was taught by Jesus himself and by those who knew and succeeded them. If there were a complete apostasy and loss of authority, there could be a need for a restoration, but there never was an apostasy. The gospel taught by Christ’s Church is the same “yesterday, today, and forever.”
After several years of study, I decided once and for all to leave Mormonism and to return to the Catholic Church. I formally resigned my membership last year and have been received back into the Catholic faith, “which comes to us from the Apostles.”
I learned much moving into, through, and out of Mormonism. I learned about the need for people to have healthy, fulfilling relationships in the Church. I learned that any human need can be idolized to the point of getting in the way of our relationship with God. I learned that just because someone is “nice” doesn’t mean he’s right. And I learned that high-control groups like Mormons prey on the weak and the needy. When I first encountered Mormonism I was confused, depressed, friendless. Mormonism offered a magical fix to my problems but at the expense of my salvation.
While I love and admire many Mormons, I find it tragic that they seem content to attend meeting after meeting, performing ritual after ritual, never encountering God in human form-Jesus Christ. That’s the real tragedy of Mormonism.