I found this link on an exmo board I frequent, and I decided to go ahead and post my experience here. Clicking on this link takes you to a site on the web where you can ask a question of a “Live” missionary.

So here was the basic quandry I posted. For the record, here is the truth about me: I was bapitzed as a child, went through and got my endowments, left the church, and now I am a Catholic convert, fully baptized and confirmed. Brother was baptized LDS as a child, committed suicide, and has had his endowments done for him. But that’s not quite the angle I used with the missionaries.

I didn’t think that I would get an honest answer from them if I told them I was an exmo. So I told them I was a Catholic convert (true), and my brother had committed suicide (also true). Everything else was “embellished” a bit. Here was my scenario I wanted answers to:

My brother accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior in college and was baptized non-denominational Christian (embellishment). Then he got into drugs and committed suicide. According to the Christians, he did take Christ as his lord and savior, so he is saved. According to the Catholics, he was not in a state of grace when he died, so he is condemned. But my Mormon aunt had his name sent to the temple and he was baptized for the dead.

So is he saved now? Did the baptism erase the sins of the suicide (or, in the actual case, does the initiatory clean him every whit)? And all other sins?

If this is the case … does that mean that a person can live any way that they want as long as they are baptized in the temple when they die? What is the incentive of living a good life if there’s the option of knowing that all I have to do is be baptized after I die to be redeemed?

I like being a Catholic, but I could have my aunt submit my name to the temple when I die, so all of my bases are covered. If the Catholics are right, I’m saved. If the baptists are right, I’m saved as I’ve been baptized and believe in Christ. If the Mormons are right, I’ve been baptized when I was dead so I’m good to do there too. And all of my sins are washed away to boot!

In theory, I could live my life any way I wanted as long as I made sure that my aunt submitted my name when I died.

Now, the Missionary first sent me some links about what happens when you die. Then he said that all those who have not received the gospel will have that chance when they die. But apparently, because I had talked to him, I had that chance to accept the gospel and if I rejected it, then that was my chance on earth. It doesn’t matter what happens in the temple if you’ve had a chance to accept the gospel on earth and then rejected it. He also offered to send me missionaries to talk with, but I politely declined. I said I don’t feel comfortable with that, but thank you anyway.

He tried to explain the Baptism for the Dead quote in the KJV, but I whipped out my NAB bible, which when read makes MUCH more sense about the whole of the passage than just that one snippet from the LDS KJV. The passage is not about baptism for the dead, but discussing Christ’s ressurection. It’s quite clear in the NAB I have, both with the actual translation as well as the notes accompanying the scriptures, that the baptism for the dead is not what the scripture is about at all.

Then he asked me if I had ever read the BOM, and said yep, aunt gave it to me (embellishment), and I read it all, prayed about it – nothing. He showed me some scriture in Ether about test of the faith. I said wait a second, the scripture in Moroni says nothing about testing of faith. It says pray and you’ll get an answer. I prayed – nothing. So I converted to Catholicism.

He asked why I converted, and I said peace. I found peace in that church like no other place I’ve ever been. I said I tried reading the book, I tried praying – and nothing. So I went with the Catholics, I felt like it was the right thing to do so I joined.

And then he sent me a link to the Mormon.org baptism for the dead site that somehow got sent over and over and over, until I closed the window down because I get no response from him.

So yeah, I didn’t get the answer I was hoping for. It seems like this is an unanswerable question. And it took FOREVER for each response from the missionary. I’d love to see that “call center” for the chats. If it is even a live person, it could have easily been a bot.

According to the promo I saw for the show today, TDS correspondent Samantha Bee will be doing an expose on the Mormon church, and she interviews one of the ladies from the PBS special. And you should watch it anyway – TDS and TCR are quite excellent shows.

Since before Easter, I’ve been attending the Tridentine Mass. I’ve made some stickers to put in my missal so that I can follow along better, but I’m waiting on my husband to print them out all nice so that I can put them in my missal before next Sunday. I’ll take pics and post when I get the project done.

I missed church yesterday because I was traveling. I went to go visit my mother in Arkansas. I got a mini-lecture from Mom saying, “Well, you don’t want to go to church, and your brother wants to go to church but his wife is very anti-religion so he’s been watching some televangelist. I guess I’m the only one that’s left.” I wanted to go, “Um, I go to church a LOT, just not the Mormon church.” But I’m not quite ready to tell her I’m Catholic yet.

A good friend of mine has been attending the Latin mass and she’s slowly getting the hang of things, too. That makes me happy.

GUIDE TO BAD HOMILIES

I’d like some input from our readers to help identify the features of what makes a bad homiliy. This way, next time you hear a bad homily, you can say, “Oh, that was a #3 on the Official Guide”.

So, here are some features I’ve identified so far …

1. JESUS WAS NICE – YOU BE NICE TOO

This is the homiliy we usually hear in our suburban parishes. Love = quiescene / Fighting for what you love = evil. If this theme describes what you’re hearing … it might be a bad homily.

2. WWW.HOMILIES-R-US.COM

Beware of homilies that start with anecdotes about cute crap. “A boy at camp whose mother sent him cookies …” “There was a woman who found she had a terminal illness …” Anything with a Reader’s Digest flavor to it is probably from www.homilies-r-us.com, which is what I call the clearing house for shallow thinking sermons that fit easily into a template. If your priest sounds like he’s beginning his talk with a canned anecdote … it might be a bad homily.

3. DON’T GET IT WRONG, BUT DON’T GET IT RIGHT ENOUGH. This is very common. The priest doesn’t say anything wrong or heretical per se, but he makes a huge implication about the nature of the Faith in what he leaves out of his homily, in what he does not say.

So, for example, if speaking on Our Lord’s commission to the apostles at the end of the Gospel of John (“Feed my sheep” “Someone will lead you, Peter, where you do not want to go”), a bad homilist will focus on how important it is that we must care for the poor, and leave it at that. True enough, but what about Our Lord’s promise to Peter that in feeding his sheep and tending his flock he will be persecuted? There’s an edge to this reading that a bad homilist will always cut away, giving us the gelded interpretation.

This is akin to discussing “King Lear” and saying, “a daugther should be nice to her father”. Well, true, but that sure leaves a lot out.

If your homilist Doesn’t Get it Wrong, but Doesn’t Get it Right Enough … it might be a bad homily.

4. SHECKY GREEN PRESENTS

If your homilist tells more jokes than Heny Youngman with a fiddle … it might be a bad homily.

5. IT’S ALL ABOUT ME

A quote from a homily I once heard: “My mother suffered. My grandmother suffered. My grandmother made my mother suffer. My father suffered. My father made my grandmother suffer. My grandmother made my father and my mother suffer. Our house was filled with suffering.” Note to homilist: we are not your therapists, and that’s way too much personal information.

The corrolary to “It’s All about Me” is “It’s All about the Musicians”. And we all know what that message sounds like.

So, if your priest or deacon sees the Gospel as a Rorschach of his dysfunctional background … it might be a bad homily.

6. SLOWNESS = PIETY

This infects all of the liturgy and not just the homily. It’s the mistaken attitude that going … really … slowly … means you’re being … really … pious.

If the homily and the Lord’s Prayer both take the same amount of time, 40 to 45 minutes each … it might be a bad homily.

Full text of blog post

So why is it so hard for me to mark in my nice, pristine Catholic Bible and missal? Am I afraid I’m going to break it?

What I really want is a Sticker set, but for the Latin missal. I want there to be stickers for Stand, Kneel, Sit, Genuflect, Audible Priest, Respond here, etc. So I’ll have a nice, pretty Missal, without lots of scribbles. But with the notes I need. I tried to make some yesterday, but my printer is out of Magenta, so everything came out an odd shade of blue. I’m thinking I’ll bring a pad of Post-it notes and make notes where I should put stickers, and then make some custom labels after I get a new ink cartridge for my computer at home.

But all of my Mormon scriptures are scribbled like crazy, especially my old Seminary scriptures (which I still have btw). If I scribbled on it, I knew I had studied it. I often put notes in the binder.

It just occured to me that I would have no idea how to “scripture study” as a Catholic.

So here’s another way to think of it. You go to your priest with your espoused, and say, “I want to get married.” He says, “Do you love each other?” We say, “Yes, we do.” He says, “Fantastic! You must have love! Without love, your relationship will collapse. Before all else, love each other. Keep this love as your focus, and you will remain happy throughout your days, and endure to the end.”

But what if no one teaches you cleaning or housekeeping skills? Or budgeting? Or fidelity and loyalty? Or patience and kindness? What if the only thing they said you needed for a healthy relationship with your spouce was love, but you knew that there were so many more levels to a truly deep relationship? Would that guarantee failure? Yes, it takes love to be able to clean up after a sick child, or a working spouse. It also takes love to have patience with a spouse who might not be doing things exactly as you would hope. But love is the foundation, but the phrase “All you need is love” is quite misleading. Love is needed, most definitely, but other things are needed as well. There is so much more to a happy relationship other than love that can enhance and deepen the relationship, making it more satisfying for all parties involved.

I desire to know more than love. I get the Love concept. I’m not saying that it can be overemphasized, but I’m just saying that there are so many other aspects of the gospel that also help to strenthen our relationship with God other than simply Love. I’m also not saying I don’t need to learn about it. But I need to learn about in ways that will help me make tangible changes in my life.

For example, the homily at the TLM I went to on Sunday was about patience. It talked about how lack of patience can turn into the sin of pride. By working on having patience, we realize that we are not God and that things will come to fruition when God is ready for them to come to pass. But this is tied into Love, because we must love God and desire not to sin. This doesn’t mean that Patience is more imporant than Love. But learning about Patience and the importance of patience as a virtue will help me make tangible changes in my life that will bring me closer to God in many ways.

THAT’S what I mean by “Teach me more than God Is Love”.

I wandered around Salt Lake City’s “Temple Square” for about an hour while my friend got married inside the Temple, into which I, as a non-Mormon, was not allowed.

“Hello! Welcome to Temple Square,” the attractive pair of South American girls said, simultaneously. They were ‘sister missionaries’, serving their ‘mission’ in the US as tour guides in and around the Temple complex.

I guess my aimless shuffle and the iPod nubs sticking in my ears identified me as a non-Mormon. They asked me where I was from, et cetera, and asked me what I thought of their Temple.

..

They looked a little confused. “That tells you something, though, right? Christ said that you shall know a tree by its fruits. My life is very blessed, I have so many friends and my family is strong and happy, and it’s on the strength of this testimony that I bear witness to the truth of the Gospel.”

I was deeply jealous of the sense of community they all seemed to share. They seemed like genuinely happy people, close families and happy marriages, good friends and a supportive extended social network.

My rebuttal, in my head, was fierce: “Most of my friends think I am a little on the scary side. They worry about my unhealthy obsessions. My family goes to church but few are very serious and several have fallen away completely. I have lost several beautiful girlfriends because of my insistence on non-compromise as far as religion goes. The people in my church are for the most part intellectually lazy and morally loose, and they are nearly all unfriendly and cold. Where their personal prayer-life exists at all, it is often only a few notches above rank superstition. The history of my religion’s hierarchy is largely one of utter depravity and powermongering. If I hear about my Church in the media, it is sure to be an embarrassing and enraging story of abuse and negligence. I go to church alone, and I leave church alone. I suffer all this because I’ve taken great pains to research every religion on the planet, including yours, and I’ve decided that the teaching of the Catholic Church is true. I didn’t get any new friends when I made this decision, no one greeted me at the door, I didn’t magically become a better person, and my family is just as screwed as it has always been. So don’t talk to me about strength of personal testimony.”

My actual response was more tempered: “Well, ‘nice’ is nice, but it’s not exactly the same thing as ‘true’, is it?”

They smiled wanly and offered me a Book of Mormon.

I declined.

Today I went to the Novus Ordo at St. Thomas Aquinas in Dallas. It was pretty much the best Novus Ordo I think I’ve ever been to as far as liturgy and celebration goes. They had Gregorian chant, the priest was reverent, they rang bells during Eucharistic prayer, and they even have a communion rail.

The homily was ok for what it was, considering that the scripture reading was Love One Another. Now, I am all for teaching what the scriptures read, but I’ve been Catholic for a year and I’m already sick of the God Is Love/Love One Another homilies. Even really good God Is Love/Love One Another homilies. I get that part. We get a derivative of “Love” every other week. Move beyond the Prologue of the Catechism. Please.

Sorry, it shouldn’t be a peeve. It really was a good homily for what it was. I enjoyed hearing about the parish and the family that they consider themselves to be. I wish I belonged to a Catholic family like that. The few times that I’ve visited that parish, I’ve heard about the tight family that is there, and it makes me long to be a part of a family like that. I’ve also heard that sentiment from a very popular Catholic blogger who happens to go to that parish.

This past week, I watched both segments of the PBS Frontline special on “The Mormons.” (If you haven’t watched it, you can see it in its entirety on the PBS site.) It was really interesting. It had some very faithful teachings, and some bits that I’m amazed got on the air. I thought it gave both a very interesting perspective on Mormon history as well as an accurate feel of the culture behind Mormonism.

We were watching this episode, and there was a section in the act about Missions where the little children are singing “I hope they call me on a mission.” My husband said, “Did you ever sing that song?” And I chimed in with the children, “I hope by then I will be ready … to TEACH and PREACH and WORK as missionaries do!” He found that terribly amusing. But there’s so many things that are part of me and my history that are just … useless trivia now.

Like at church today. We open up the book to sing the opening hymn at Mass today, and the song is “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.” I was like, wait, I thought this was a Mormon hymn? But then the notes were all different. But the lyrics were the same. I think that the LDS arrangement is MUCH lovelier than the version in the Gather hymnal.

Watching the special on The Mormons reminded me of how much I gave up by being a Mormon. Some of the ex-Mormons talked about missing the ties and the culture of Mormonism, and I could relate to that. I used to revel in that “in the world but not of the world”, peculiar people feeling. Being Mormon made me unique. Special. I was persecuted as a child, and even as an adult, by people who just didn’t understand. I wore my CTR Ring with pride – I’m even wearing it in my senior pictures! (I still have it in a jewelry box around here somewhere.) And in my mind, that made me a better person.

But I haven’t found that identity as a Catholic. I haven’t found the Parish that I want to commit to, although I think it might be the Latin Mass community here in Dallas. I’m not for sure, though. I haven’t made any friends there, and doubt I will unless they have a function of some kind or other, which they don’t seem to do often. They even talked about how protestant and Catholic and other Christian experiences were centered around the individual, whereas the Mormon experience revolved around family and community. And that’s true. Well, it’s my individual experience with God, not so much my individual experience with the Church. But you get the idea.

I don’t go to church because I feel pressured by my family or by my home teachers or by my community. I go to Mass because I am happy when I am there. But it is somewhat isolating.

Even the Temple scenes and the way that they talked about the Temple in the documentary made me sad. Even when I’ve seen the rituals, and the handshakes, in a book commonly available at Barnes and Noble, even when I know where ALL of the Masonic symbolism comes from and know that it is false, I still sometimes miss the Temple. I miss feeling special because I was “worthy”. I miss playing dress-up, with everyone in white. I miss the serenity and calm in the Temple. I don’t miss the Celestial Room. I was always lonely in there. I cried most of the time, begging God to please help me find my helpmeet, so that I would have a companion to sit with in the waiting area before the ceremonies begin. So that I would have someone to pull me through the veil.

Maybe it’s the idea of what was so great that I miss, not the reality. Sure, I could walk into any Mormon church in this country tomorrow and be able to go exactly to where I needed to be. I could sing the hymns and know what was going on. But would I be happy? Would I be able to feel the communion with God that I feel as I kneel before the Tabernacle before Mass, preparing to partake of the holy eucharist? Nothing not even close.

I know that I made the right decision by leaving the Mormon church, and I also know I made the right decision to become Catholic. It’s just that sometimes I remember that there will always be part of me that’s Mormon, at least culturally.

So in my other online identity, I seem to have created an arch nemesis of sorts. Long story short, she thought I should have told her about a management decision made about my other web site, and I didn’t think I had to tell her about this decision. While I didn’t consider us BFF by any stretch of the word, I did chat with her about some rather personal things, specifically about my brother’s suicide. She has taken these things and twisted them against me in criticism and in an attempt to manipulate me.

Now, our aquaintenceship ended with a series of e-mails that basically had me saying I did nothing wrong, and her saying that yes I did and that I was horrible and shallow and all kinds of nastiness. I sent a “final” e-mail, stating my view of the events, and saying that I was formally ending the friendship. To which she responded very bitterly. Since saying my peace and providing closure on my end, I have made no attempt to contact her, I have said nothing public about our feud, and have done my best not to provoke her.

But she has taken to slamming me on her “friends-only” blog. On top of that, she doesn’t realize that one of the readers of her “friends-only” blog is a very good friend of mine. So every time she says something horrible about me, which is about every second or third post, my friend returns and reports. I’m not doing anything to attack her in any way, she just likes to take things that I do and insult me about them, behind my back where she thinks I can’t read them.

I admit that maybe I didn’t treat her with as much respect as I should have. But I don’t ever think I did anything to give her the impression that we were as good of friends as she thought we were. I certainly did nothing to incur her wrath. And other than discussions with two friends, I haven’t mentioned the conflict to anyone else. Whereas she feels the need to say horribly nasty things about me to her “inner circle” on a regular basis.

Now here’s the thing. No one likes criticism, and I don’t either. I especially don’t like that she does it in her blog, which is still read by multiple people even though it’s “friends only”. But at the same time I feel hypocritical because I go to my friend and tell her what was said about me by this woman and we deconstruct it and remind ourselves why she is so very wrong about me. Every time she attacks me in her blog, over things she perceives as wrong, it makes me seeth for days.

Now, I know that she’s bitter, and that I did nothing wrong, but I’m feeling so torn. I know the “Christian” thing to do would be to try to play nice and to apologize for the slight (which I *did not* do). But I know that all she’d do is turn it around and use it against me. Picking up a rattlesnake gets you bit, that kind of thing. If I sent her a letter trying to call a truce, she would send me a horrible e-mail calling me nasty things, then post it in her personal blog and say even more nasty things about me. Which would be more than I could tolerate.

But I also feel so hypocritical. I sit there and pray my Divine Mercy chaplet, and pray for the holy souls in pergutory, and yet I let this anger fester. I know that there is nothing I can do that will take away the bitterness that this person has for me. I just have to wait until she decides to hate someone more than she hates me. But every time I hear her saying something horrible about me, the wound opens right back up.

I’ve even confessed this bitterness, multiple times, but every time I think things have finally calmed down and I move on, I find out that she has found another way to say horrible things about me.

I need to tell our mutual friend not to let me know what is being said about me. That way I’m not hearing the bitterness. But on the other hand, I feel like I’m keeping tabs on the enemy if I know what’s being said about me.

None of it really matters, honestly. It’s just frustrating and annoying, and I just needed to vent a bit.