No

You may have noticed that some of my comments have disappeared. It’s my blog, and I will do what I want on it. I don’t feel that Mormon proselytizing on my blog is what I want to share with my readers. If I wanted to share the Mormon religion with readers, I would send them that direction. While I share Primary sources often, I always show both sides of the story, and I am very selective with what I share because I know how confusing that the Mormon logic can be.

But that’s not what has happened. A few Mormons on the Internet Tubes have taken it upon themselves to defend the Mormon church to the point of calling me a liar, saying that their church is the “true gospel of Christ” and spewing the Mormonspeak that makes my skin crawl to this day. There’s canned phrases and ways of speaking that are so distinctly Mormon, and I can read through the double-talk. But Catholics without this background knowledge may not be able to comprehend the style and may become confused by the lies, and I refuse to subject any of my readers to that.

There are plenty of places for people to learn what Mormons teach exclusively from the Mormon perspective. This is not that place.

This blog is my blog, and I write it to help Catholics understand more about the Mormon religion from an ex-Mormon Catholic perspective. I did not write this blog so that I could spend my time arguing points that will never be satisfied on either side with True Believing Mormons. I’m tired of it, and I’m not doing it anymore. This does not let me grow spiritually, and it only frustrates me and pulls me away from the Christ that I want to know more intimately with each passing day.

I am willing to have discussions about points on the blog about Mormonism, but let’s face it. This is MY blog. MY journey. I have a perspective that most True Believing Mormons are not going to like. Because I say that my belief is that Joseph Smith was a fraud, that the Book of Mormon was a creation of his mind and is not a history of any people, and that the Mormon church is not the way to God. My Catholic readers will understand this. My Mormon readers, not so much.

And no matter who the Mormon is, the argument always degenerates into one of three arguments:

1) You know in your heart it is true, but you’ve sinned and want to live a sinful lifestyle.
2) Someone hurt you, didn’t they? You know it’s true but you were hurt and are taking it out on the church. Why do you have so much bitterness?
3) Why do you attack us? Why do you hurt us?

To answer these questions:

1) I know in my heart that it is false, and I do my best to live as sin-free life. My confessor would attest to that except for that whole can’t-share-a-confession thing he’s got going on. I pray every day, I go to Mass every Sunday, and sometimes during the week. I do an examination of conscience almost every night, and do my best to focus on my weaknesses and eliminate them. Plus now I can drink Starbucks and Coke with a clear conscience! Even to this day, I feel a little guilty drinking a Coke. I think I always will. Thanks a lot, Word of Wisdom!

2) Yes, someone hurt me. A lot of people hurt me. And I allowed myself to be subjected to humiliation and degradation over and over and over because for a long time I believed in the Mormon church. I allowed myself to be treated in such a poor manner because I believed what I was told, that it was true. I did. I’ll admit it. And it hurt like hell when someone yanked the foundation for my entire life right out from under me. Once those blinders had been lifted, once I saw the truth, I could never go back to “faking the lies”, no matter how hard I tried.

When I left, no one called. No one came by. I didn’t see any “Visiting Teachers” or “Home Teachers”. My name’s on my Ward roster and has been since my brother died in 2002. Wanna know how many times I’ve had visitors from the church? Guess?

I remember so often being told, “If a soul is lost because you didn’t fellowship, because you didn’t do your Visiting Teaching, because you didn’t share the Gospel, it’s you YOUR conscience, and you will be held accountable!” Feelin’ guilty yet? If you don’t get through to me, it’s YOUR SOUL in danger! It’s YOUR responsibility! The horror! I know I always felt like crud when I didn’t do my Visiting Teaching. What if *that* was the soul that was my best friend in Heaven and I didn’t talk to them about the Gospel? (I watched too many Saturday’s Warriors/My Turn On Earth roadshows as a kid). And what if I didn’t reach out to that inactive? What if I promised to keep them faithful in heaven? And I failed. It was *my* fault.

Why am I bitter? Because I was lied to for years. I was lied to during my whole life. The church that you love so much gave the priesthood to a man who insisted that my father, dying of Stage Four Pancratic Cancer and bedridden in hospice at home, come to the stake center to get his Temple Recommend because the !$&*ing Bishop refused to come to our home. My dying father, wanting to die with the Temple Recommend so that he would be worthy to enter heaven, had to have my mother call the Stake President and SCREAM at him to get someone to come over to my father to have his interviews.

I was lied to. I was made to feel worthless as a 27 year old single woman because I was not married, because I was a “special spirit” and I was single for a LONG time because I refused to date outside of the church and I couldn’t find anyone to go out with me. I was Mormon for most of my late 20’s. Guess how many dates I went on? Go ahead. I’ve got a moment. That would be ZERO. Do you know how worthless, and how horrible that made me feel? That I wasn’t good enough for one single Mormon man in the entire DFW area?!

TWO MONTHS after leaving the church for good I found a wonderful caring man who didn’t give a FLIP what kind of underwear I wore. I guess I wasn’t *that* bad after all. Just the Mormon boys thought so.

My whole life I was never good enough, never pretty enough, never spiritual enough. No one mourned me leaving the church. After three months of essentially being homebound from agoraphobia, I reached out to my bishop, only to be belittled, mocked, criticized. This Man of God made me feel worthless and I vowed right then and there that it would be the last time I would allow a “priesthood” holder to make me feel bad.

I gave thousands of dollars worth of tithing to this church. My mother has tithed on her Gross Income her whole life and now she lives on Social Security, money she ALREADY tithed on, and she feels the need to give 10% of her teeny tiny income to this church that treated her husband like dirt when he needed them the most.

So yeah. I’m bitter. But did I leave the church because of that? No. I left because after all that abuse that I subjected myself to, and begging and pleading, I never received the answer that I begged for. In spite of all of this horrible treatment by multiple people in multiple wards, I was faithful for a very long time. Because I wanted it so bad to be true. And it wasn’t.

So am I bitter? Oh, a touch. But trust me. You haven’t seen bitter. You wanna see bitter, I got some sites I can send you to.

3) Why do I attack you? I don’t even know you! I don’t know you from Adam. (And, btw, for those of you who never make it through the temple, the Adam in their Creation video is HAWT! But not as hot as the Lucifer. Go figure.) But you take every criticism that I give over the hundreds of horrible experiences that I had as a youth, a teen and a young adult as a personal attack to your faith. It’s not.

I learned as a Mormon to journal. This is my journal, trying to help other Catholics with theirs. Or not. If I’m supposed to help a Catholic, or an ex-Mormon Catholic, God will send them to me and I will say the right things.

I bear this witness to you that I believe the Book of Mormon to not be the word of God, except those parts which were lifted straight out of the bible. I do not believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I believe Gordon B. Hinkley to be a kind man, but he leads a church based on the lies of a charlatan. I believe the Book of Abraham to be a fraud. I believe that while there are some “great” aspects of the church, such as their welfare program and their ability to weather storms as a coherent group, I do not believe that these positive aspects outweigh the fact that this church leads people away from the true Christ.

And that’s all I have to say about that.