[music] Marcus Grodi: Good evening, and welcome to
'The Journey Home.' I'm Marcus Grodi, your host for this program. Welcome back,
as I think I said, even in my last program, that often, you know, very often our guests come
from the more usual suspects, if you will, but sometimes
we have those guests that come from
the Christian groups that some might even consider borderline Christian or not. We'll talk a bit about that
in our program tonight, because our guest tonight,
Dr Rachel Lu, is a former Mormon,
or Church of Latter-Day, you know, how the whole
long line goes. Dr Rachel Lu: The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints. That's right. So, we all look forward to hearing that, because when they knock
at our door, we're not always sure what the theology is or how different they are. So, Dr Lu,
it is great to have you join us on the program,
Rachel. It's really great to
have you on the program. Thank you so much
for having me. It's exciting. And just to let
the audience know, that as we're sitting
here very relaxed, you have a part of your family
in the next room, right? Yes, my one-year-old son made this trip with me. So, yeah, hopefully, he'll enjoy the time away. Yeah. The staff is out there taking care of him. I think he is
asleep right now. He is asleep right now. Very good. Well, then,
let me back off and invite you
to start us on the journey,
if you will. Thank you. So, I was born into
a Mormon family. My father is
a conservative legal professor, and my mother
was a stay-at-home mom, in my childhood. She later went on
to get a PhD in history and has published work
in that area. But in my childhood, she stayed at home
and took care of me and my four siblings. And I lived
in a very Mormon world in childhood. I did go
to public school, but the Mormon Church was really the center
of our lives in lots of ways, right. We were constantly
at the church for holiday parties, or sporting events, or service projects, all sorts of things. I also have an extensive
Mormon family, right. I have 17 aunts
and uncles and 30-some first cousins,
all Mormons. And we were aware through our childhood that this sort of
Mormon involv... our family's involvement
in the Mormon Church was multigenerational. I have volumes,
still on my shelf, of family history. A lot of my relatives came over in sort of
the late 19th century, so it's like
about four generations back, seems to be when many
of my ancestors came here. That's when
the Mormon Church was sending missionaries through the,
all through the Old World. So, I had great, great
grandparents in Sweden and Denmark and England... <i>Had they</i> become
Mormons over there? Who became;
and at that time, the missionaries
would convert people and they were all
sort of gathering in Salt Lake, right? So, at that time, then the people
who converted would come to join
the Saints in Utah, and then sort of spread through the Mountain
West region. So, both of my parents came from this very lengthy
Mormon background, and that was my life, that was my heritage,
right? In my early childhood it would have been
just almost inconceivable that I would not spend
my adult life as a Mormon. <i>Wow. So,</i>
their whole world view, passed on
for generations, would have been all
through the lenses of the Mormon Church? Yeah, and the stories
that we, again, that I still have, that I was familiar
with as a child, it's interesting,
because they always begin with the conversion
to Mormonism, right? They don't even say
what the person, you know, what
the person's family was before they became
Mormons, right? It always begins with, 'The missionaries
found them. They converted to
the one true faith. They joined the Saints
in the Salt Lake Valley,' And then the story
moves onward from there. So, yeah, I mean
that really was the story of our family. And you mentioned
the little phrase, 'the one true faith.' So, growing up,
what did you think about the rest of us? I mean; we would
occasionally get lessons in church that would
nominally deal with little aspects of sort of mainstream
Christian theology. I remember getting lessons on why there was
no Original Sin, why the Trinity was, you know, a silly doctrine,
or whatever. But even in those days, I think that was
probably more true, like 50 years ago
and less true now. I was, you know,
I was a child in the '80s. Even in those days, we just really didn't
focus on it that much. We focused a lot on how Mormons were special
in our identity, in our morality,
in our community life, and so on and so forth. And I guess we just felt like other people weren't lucky enough to
be Mormons yet. And that was kind of; we were the elect,
I guess, and that was kind of,
that was kind of it. <i>So, your </i>focus wasn't, 'We're not one of them.' Your focus was, 'What
a blessing it is to be us.' I think that's right. Yeah, I didn't look at the rest
of the world with contempt, and I don't think
most Mormons do. I think most of us
feel like we're; felt like, you know, we were called to help
the rest of the world. Of course, Mormons are
very aggressive about that, right, bringing the faith
to the rest of the world. But, at the same time, I mean, many people have this experience
with Mormons, and this was my experience
in childhood. Mormons are eager
to sort of serve the world in all kinds
of ways, right. I don't know
if you know the story of the Mormon Battalion
in San Diego. <i>No.</i> So, the Mormon Battalion, I didn't read the story
right before, so I hope I don't get
any of the details wrong, but basically,
they were a military group, Mormons that were recruited I think to help fight in the, in the
Spanish-American War. And they, they kind
of missed the war. They ended up marching
into San Diego after, you know; and the people
in San Diego, you know, not having
done any fighting, the people in San Diego
heard that this, this army was on the way, this army of
religious zealots, and they were terrified. And when the Mormon
Battalion, but which was sort of true. It was an army
of religious zealots, but it's okay because they were
an army of Mormons. When they arrived
in San Diego, they helped build
public works. They, you know, they basically
spent several months just sort of
serving the community, helping build things up. And then they all
just kind of went. So, there's a museum to the Mormon Battalion
in San Diego. And basically by the end, the residents of San Diego
sort of begged them to stay. Like, 'Stay longer, Mormons.
Help us more. Build up our defenses more. Build up our
buildings more. Fix our roads.' And Mormons
are like that, right? I mean,
everywhere they go, they're very communitarian, they are very oriented
around helping, so they want to spread
their idea of the Gospel, but they also just want to
serve the world generally. And I think that was the
attitude that we had, right? 'We've been blessed.
We're the elect. We have the truth, but it's now our job to do whatever we can
for the world.' <i>You know,</i> I think
about a lot of us who had really very little
connection with Mormonism, we learned about it
from other sources like you and I
were talking about 'A Study in Scarlet'
of Sherlock Holmes. <i>Yeah, yeah.</i> That's all about that. But also,
I was thinking that, you know, maybe you don't
realize this, but not 10 miles away,
a writer lived named Zane Grey, who wrote
"Riders of the Purple Sage' which is about the Mormons. Uh-huh. You know, the secret group, you know,
coming on their knees. So that was
feeding the fear that you're talking about that people had
about the Mormons. Right, right. In some of
those older books, they feature,
they're like the Nazis of the Indiana Jones
movies or something
like that, right? They end up being these, these dark, clandestine,
cultish figures, right? That's not
most people's experience of the Mormon Church. Or yours? Certainly not mine. No, definitely not. It was, I mean, it was a wonderful community
to grow up in. And, um, you know, obviously, no real family meets the sort of
South Park [The Simpsons], you know, hilarious image
of, you know, sort of Flanders-esque, playing family games
all the time or something. But, you know, I don't think
my family was so far away within the real world. My parents set an excellent
model of marriage. And I think,
the community in general was wonderfully supportive. So, I mean it was
a wonderful way to grow up. And it's actually
hard to remember exactly when that began
to change, right? The pinpoint, the moment
when it began to change. And I'm actually
almost a little bit, it's a little bit
embarrassing this part of the story, because it's such a trope in kind of
like secular humanist de-conversion stories
to remember, you know, Sunday school, and the hard questions
you asked the teachers they couldn't answer, and how you
started wondering whether it was all a lie, and that kind
of a thing, right. But that is kind of
how I remember it. That, at some point, I started wanting
more information, a deeper understanding, and I just wasn't
very satisfied with the answers
that I was getting. You know,
Mormons really do value learning and study, and they encourage
people to do that. But they just don't have what we have
in the Catholic Church. They don't have this lengthy
intellectual history. They don't have worked-out philosophical
underpinnings for all the things that they,
that they say. And so,
if you reach a point where you're
asking questions they don't feel like
they have good answers to, what they tend to do
is encourage you to seek religious
experiences that confirm whatever it is that you're having
trouble with, right? So, occasionally,
I was told that the spirit
of contention was of the devil, right? But more frequently, I was encouraged just
to pray about it. You know, if I was asking
a bunch of questions, and it didn't seem like I was
satisfied with the answers, I would just be told,
'Pray about it. Listen to the still
small voice. You'll feel a burning
in the bosom.' That's another Mormon phrase
they like. I had one teacher,
one of my bishops, sort of a, you know,
the ward authority, really urged me to start
"sharing my testimony". That's a thing
Mormons do, right? It's kind of an open mic, where everybody gets up and talks about what
they believe, right? So, he basically
was saying, "Well, you need
to stand up in front of the microphone and tell us all
about what you believe. And then you're going
to have this feeling, and that's going
to confirm for you that the Mormon Church
is true, and that's what's going to bring it all around
for you." And, for me, this was just even more deeply troubling, because it just seemed so obviously
inappropriate to me to respond to
intellectual concerns by seeking affirming
emotional experiences, right? How is this an answer to
the problems that I have? And there are
a lot of things that I could point to that were
giving me troubles. And once you get
into this kind of hermeneutic of doubt,
if you will, lots of things seem
problematic to you. Right? But I guess, if I had to
sort of narrow it down to two major things that were
giving me problems, I would say one was kind of a historical
ecclesiological concern, right, which is a big thing,
I think, for a lot of people
when they start to have problems
with the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church,
their self-identity, right, is, I mean, they actually have
an authority structure that is at least
superficially a little bit similar
to what Catholics have. They believe
in religious authority. They have their own
priesthood, right, which is supposed
to have actual, you know, efficacy
to do things. But they say that Jesus Christ
founded the Church, then within a few
generations, the true faith was lost in the Old World,
at least, right? It continued a little longer
in the New World, they think. They talk about that
in the Book of Mormon. But then it was just
completely lost from the face of the earth. They call that
the Great Apostasy. This period in which
the true faith wasn't on the earth at all. And then it was re-founded
in the United States in the Second Great
Awakening period by Joseph Smith. And the true faith
was restored. And true authority
was restored. And hooray! Now we have the
true faith again. And it just was
really hard for me, once I started
thinking about it, to make any sense
of that story. Why would God have
done things that way? That's just so bizarre. He sends Jesus to found
the true faith, and then it just dies, and then doesn't come back
for centuries? That's just so strange. And why would He have left
all of these people in the interim
without real faith? And also, what was going on
with all of these people who considered themselves
Christians, right? Well, my father
used to read to me from 'The Little Flowers
of St Francis' when I was a little girl. I really loved that. Actually,
it was funny later because I can't
actually recall knowing a single Catholic in the first decade
or so. I must have, but I just, I can't remember
a single person that I was aware
of being a Catholic, except maybe St Francis,
right? <i>I was going to say,</i>
your dad's reading that. <i>I knew St Francis.</i> Our guest is Dr Rachel Lu. I mean, that blows me out that he's reading to you 'The Little Flower
of St Francis'. Yeah, yeah. Well, he, my father,
he's interesting. He's someone who himself, I think,
at various points, struggled
with Mormon theology, and kind of quietly
exposed us to a lot of things, which comes up again
a little bit later in my story. But, but yeah. So, I mean, I started really having problems
with that, right? Like, why would God have
done things this way? There are also, you know, the Book of Mormon has a lot of stories
about sort of, you know, armies rampaging all over the
American continent. It actually talks about
them learning to smelt metal and stuff like that. And I was thinking, 'Doesn't it seem like there should be
a little more archaeological evidence
than there is of all of these events? This just seems
really bizarre.' So, so that was
one of the things. It seemed to me like the
historical ecclesiological story of the Mormon Church just didn't make
a lot of sense. What was going on
in the Middle Ages? Why would God have
done things this way? Why does this story
in the Book of Mormon not seem to have
much supporting evidence, and so forth? The other thing that was really problematic to me; so, I had my secular
humanist moment before, you know, asking my Sunday
school teachers questions. Maybe this was like my
evangelical Protestant moment. When I got
into high school, I started doing a little
class that Mormons do. They call it seminary, but it's sort of like
a Bible study class for teenagers,
but it's daily. We would get up
at 6:30 every morning. We would be there
at the church for this Bible study class,
so pretty intense. And I started reading
the scriptures, the Mormon scriptures, but the Bible and the Book
of Mormon quite regularly, and I just found myself
increasingly bothered by the interpretations
that I was getting from my teachers. They just didn't
seem right. Often, I didn't have
an alternative theory, really, but just what
I was reading and what I was being told
didn't seem to match. And it became increasingly
troubling to me. There were many examples
I could give, but one is maybe,
was especially troubling, and then also became
especially important later on in my story. Mormons deal with
the Book of Genesis, because they don't believe
in Original Sin. So, when they taught us about
the story of Adam and Eve, they say, or at least
this is what I was taught, that God doesn't
actually command Adam and Eve not to eat from the fruit of the tree
of good and evil, sort of on pain of sin. He just kind of explains
the consequences to them of eating from that tree, with the idea
and even hope that they will choose
to do so, and thus enable, you know, the human experiment
to begin. In a way, it's almost like
a happy interpretation of the 'Felix culpa'
idea, right? Like, it was
the 'Felix culpa'. And so, it wasn't
even a 'culpa', because it was 'Felix,'
or something like that. So, that's how
they interpret it. Which, you know, you can
see how they get there without believing
in Original Sin, and liking to see
human existence as this kind of, you know, happy school of virtue,
sort of, which is the way they tend
to see human life. Um, but when
I read the story, it just, it just
didn't compute, right? I mean, reading the story
in Genesis, this is not
what's happening, right? God gives them a command, they break the command,
and He punishes them. That just seemed
really clear to me. I didn't believe
in Original Sin, right? If you had said,
"Oh, you know, do you, you know, maybe
Original Sin is true?" You know, I nominally
was familiar with it. But guilty babies? Eh, it didn't sound
plausible, right? So, it wasn't like
I went from there to affirming something in mainstream
Christian teaching, but I was just
really troubled by it. It seemed clear to me that my teachers
were telling me something that could
not possibly be the correct interpretation. <i>There</i> would have had
to have been a lot of Scriptures
throughout where you're reading it,
the clarity, but then there's always an
alternative way to take it. <i>Yeah.</i> It would have been a continual
troubling problem. Yeah, yeah. And it's really hard to know what to do when you feel like there's something more
that's going on here. And I want to
understand what it is. And it just doesn't
feel like the people entrusted with instructing me
know what it is. But it is
especially troubling when it really
seems like those people are giving you
the correct institutional
answer, right? I mean, it's one thing
if you say, "Well, you know, whatever, you never know
what you're going to get from a particular
Sunday school teacher. Look, there's all these
resources out there, and they can help you." It didn't seem like
there were all these
resources out there. It seemed like
they were telling me the official
Church position, but I just found like, felt like I couldn't
really believe it, right? And so, I mean, for me, getting to the end
of my high school years, I was just
deeply troubled. I didn't want to leave
the Mormon faith. I mean I didn't have
some, you know, wasn't eagerly anticipating
the opportunity to, you know,
shake the dust of my benighted Mormon
past from my feet. <i>And</i> <i>it</i> <i>was not</i>
like you were drawn to something else either. No. No. You didn't have
any other option. You just, yeah. There was no other option that I was particularly
attracted to. My world was
still very Mormon. So, the idea of leaving
the Mormon faith seemed kind of traumatic, but at the same time
I didn't really know if I could stay, right, because this is
a community oriented around belief, and increasingly,
it seemed like I didn't really believe,
right? So, can you spend your
whole life pretending? That doesn't seem
right either, right? So, I was just
very troubled by the time I finished
high school, figuring out what to do. As a young Mormon
in high school, did you ever
get confronted with the challenges to the history
of Joseph Smith, and his whole,
all of that? Did that ever reach you? Was that ever an issue about what kind
of a person was this real founder? And all those
skeptical questions about the founding
of Mormonism? I don't think
I encountered those in my teenage years. There are a lot of
questions about that. So, for instance, the story of Joseph Smith's
first vision, right, when Joseph Smith has his own
religious journey, right, he feels that none
of the churches are true. And, you know, he's going
to different churches, trying to find
the true one. He feels like none
of them are right. He goes out and prays
in the woods and supposedly sees
this vision of the Father and the Son, both bodily, right, two people
standing side-by-side; these two
white-robed figures standing side-by-side, who tell him that none of
the churches are true, and he needs to be the founder
of the true faith. So, that's the story that's included in the Mormon
Scriptures now, of Joseph Smith's
first vision. And, you know,
all Mormon children know it. That's definitely an
important founding story, but actually the story
of the first vision was written multiple times
by Joseph Smith, and changed somewhat
over, you know, the institutional
version now really actually isn't what
he originally recorded. I didn't know any of that
in my childhood, though. I started learning
about that later on in sort of college
and beyond, when I was doing
more systematic research on Mormonism. Didn't encounter
any of that. So none of that
reached you at the point. Okay. All right. So, there you are. You're finishing up
high school, and you've got
these doubts. You didn't go to the
mission field, then? No, no. I mean, actually, women can't do that
until 21. And by the time I was 21, there was no question
of me doing that. But I; it is
actually interesting. I mentioned that my father
has a kind of; he's still
a practicing Mormon, but he's, he's circumspect,
you might say. He has a familiarity
with a lot of the sort of things
in the Christian spectrum. And in my, the summer following my senior year
of high school, he actually took me to a bunch
of different churches. I think he understood that my problems
with Mormonism, at this point,
ran pretty deep. And I think he wanted
to make sure that I did know that
there were other options besides just, you know, leaving religion
altogether, right? He preferred to see me
find a church of some sort, rather than just become
some hardened secularist. Praise God for him. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. He was a huge influence, certainly in my life. Although, none
of those churches that we went to; we mostly went to
Protestant churches, and none of them really, there weren't any
particular magical moments in those churches, but it did at least sort of crack
my mind to the idea that there are
other churches out there. And it's not
really a choice between being Mormon and just leaving
God altogether. The Catholic Church
wasn't one of those options? Well, so, because
I actually started as a freshman at Notre Dame
in that fall. <i>Oh!</i> And, because he knew that I was doing that, I think he just
focused on that. That happened
because he got a job there. So, it was
very straightforward. He got a job at
the law school there. So, I was able to get a free education
at Notre Dame. That's not a gift that
you return to sender. And so, I matriculated
as a freshman at Notre Dame, still with almost no
experience of Catholics at all. I have, it's really funny, even looking back at 18, and thinking,
'What Catholics did I know in my life prior
to starting at Notre Dame?' And the only people
I can think of is this kind of
clingy couple, in my high school, that always seemed
to be like making out
under the bleachers. Somehow it sticks in my head
that they were Catholics. And I'm like, 'Why do I
even know that about them? Why do I remember that?' The only people
I can think of that somehow I seem
to remember were Catholic. So, almost no exposure
at all to Catholics, or more Mass, or Liturgy, or anything about
the Catholic Church, until I started as a freshman
at Notre Dame. And, in fact, I ran away
from my very first Mass, in freshman
orientation weekend. It's kind of
a funny thing. You know, it was one of
these huge Masses in the basketball
arena, right, with thousands of people. All the freshmen
and their parents, returned students,
faculty, one of these kind
of deals. And I slipped into
the back, you know, as you do when you
don't have any idea of what's going on, and you don't want to make
a fool of yourself, right? So, I'm sitting
in the very back of some, some row there. <i>And you don't want</i>
to be in the front row at your first
Catholic Mass. No, you don't. But, but apparently, somebody wanted me to be
in the front row, because partway
through the Mass, somebody comes and taps
me on the shoulder and whispers something that I don't really
understand, but includes
the word 'Gifts'. <i>[Marcus laughs]</i> So... <i>I was just thinking</i> <i>that's probably
what'd happen.</i> Yeah! So I'm like, 'I don't.'
You know, I sort of, you know, 'I don't really; I'm sorry,
I don't follow.' And the person says, "We just need you
to help carry things." So, it's a sign
of what it's like to be a Mormon that it did not
even seem strange to me that they would be; I just figured
they needed some sort of menial chore
done, right, you know, sort of setting up
for the lunch or something like that, because there was, you know,
a lunch afterwards. Oh, they probably just
needed a little help setting something up
or whatever. It didn't even
seem strange to me that they would be
tapping students on the shoulder
to get them to help prepare
for a lunch, right? I mean, that's just how
Mormon culture is, right? It's a voluntold culture. Everybody in the
community helps. The idea that I
would just be drafted to go help set up for one? Okay, fine, sure, you just
need somebody to help you. Okay, fine. So, I follow
the person out. And I'm brought down
where this, you know, very
professional woman is putting people
in lines. And she brings me
this huge gold dish, with what of course
I now know were unconsecrated hosts. And I go, 'Oh!
No, no, no. I mean I know almost
nothing about Catholicism, but I know that there's
something special and holy or whatever.
And, 'no.' And she starts explaining how we're supposed
to march in, go all the way up to the stage,
and all this stuff. And I say, "I'm sorry.
I didn't understand. I'm not Catholic. I've never even
been to Mass before. Clearly you should
ask somebody else." And the woman says,
"Really? That is so wonderful. You know, I think
this would just be such a phenomenal way
for you to participate in your first liturgy. And this is just
such a special thing." And I'm standing there and, 'This person
is not hearing me. There is no way
that my very first Mass at Notre Dame, I'm going to
accidentally commit some kind of sacrilege. And all of my,
you know, new classmates are going to remember me as like the person
who disparaged the faith at their first Mass. There's just no chance.' So I put the dish down on, I don't know,
a stool or a table or something
that was nearby, and I just
literally ran. There was a door over there, and I just ran out
of the building, did not come back,
because, yeah, it was. So that was my
first Mass, right, that was the level
of Catholicism that I was at when I started
at Notre Dame. Did you, did you
fairly quickly get to know some Catholics
that first year, or was that, what was
your Catholic experience in that first year? So I, I quickly
found myself in a Foundations
of Theology class, taught by Dr Randall Smith, now at the University
of Houston. Sorry, Thomas Aquinas
in Houston. And, I remember,
it was funny because he started out
the class. I was pretty jaded about religious education
at this point, you know, given
my previous experiences. I remember him starting
the class by saying, "We really want you all to explore your faith
in this class. You know, I want you to
ask the tough questions." And I actually
remember thinking, 'Heard that before!
Ha Ha! Wait till you hear
my tough questions.' He was completely sincere, but I, you know,
I was not accustomed to expecting that,
right, from people who claimed they wanted to
hear all of our questions. But the first book
that he assigned us was a little book
of actually homilies by this crazy character named Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger called "A Catholic Understanding of The Creation
and The Fall." That was our
first assigned book. So I took it home,
and I started reading. And just windows
opened on my world. It was an
amazing experience. It was just
within a few pages, I could immediately tell that I was just
dealing with someone totally unlike any
of the religious teachers that I had ever
had before. It was, it was nuanced
and it was circumspect and it was wise, and he took
the text seriously, but he wasn't, you know, backed into these
sort of bizarre, dogmatic corners that
sometimes biblical literalists seem to be backed into. And I was just
absolutely enchanted. I read the entire book
at one sitting. I remember microwaving
popcorn afterwards, because I had missed
the dinner hour, because I didn't want to stop
reading the book, right? And it was just clear that this was a new
chapter in my life, reading that book. All right,
let's pause there. And we'll come back
with good ol' Ratzinger, you know, Pope Benedict. What a great, a man
you can hang your hat on. <i>Yes.</i> Is the way I feel, in our present world. Those of you watching, I want to remind you of the Coming Home Network
our website: chnetwork.org. Our present guest,
Dr Rachel Lu, a former Mormon. If you go to our website, you'll find lots
of conversion stories, and you'll find, you could
search for the word Mormon, and come up with all
the conversion stories on our website
of men and women who at one time
were Mormon and have become Catholic. So, it's a great
place to go to explore your faith. And those of you
that are looking to explore The Faith, I highly encourage you
to check out our website. So, we'll see you
in a moment with more of
Dr Lu's story. [music] [music] Welcome back
to 'The Journey Home.' I'm your host, Marcus Grodi. And our guest is Dr Rachel Lu,
a former Mormon. And I've rudely
interrupted you in the middle
of your theology class. So let's pick up there. You just had this
beautiful experience of reading
Cardinal Ratzinger. Yeah, yeah, and I felt that that was
sort of opening a new chapter in my life, and I think that was,
that was accurate. It was, the class itself
was really wonderful; Dr Smith,
many other students have had good experiences
with him. He does really love to
just get in exchanges with students,
to answer questions. So, the class in general
was really good, but after that I went on and did a philosophy and theology major
at Notre Dame. And, you know,
to some people, I didn't become
a Catholic, though, at Notre Dame. I spent
my whole time there being one of those people who, you know,
goes to Mass and is involved
in liturgical stuff, and reads all
the Catholic books, and all, but, "Oh no,
I'm not actually Catholic." Lots of people end up
doing that, right, for different reasons. I think in my case,
one reason was just that, yeah, I wasn't quite ready
to cut the cord with Mormonism yet, right? I mean, you could sort of
be a Catholic geek without having to actually
take that final step. Another reason was, given how difficult it was
leaving Mormonism, I wasn't really eager
to take on further obligations to another
community immediately, right? I sort of understood that getting out
of a community is no small thing, right, so you probably
should think about it before you get into one. And also, though, my experiences with Catholics
at Notre Dame were kind of varied. There were many aspects
of it that perplexed me. So, I had some
Catholic friends. My roommate, a woman, well, now named
Kimberly Lawler. A good friend of mine,
Maria Morrow, the wife
of Jeffrey Morrow, who's been on your show, was a good friend
of mine in college. They were positive
influences. They could explain things. You could ask them
Catholic questions, and they could
suggest answers. But a lot of the Catholics
that I knew called themselves Catholics, but didn't seem to know
very much about Catholicism. They didn't seem like it was
that important to them. That's very hard for a Mormon
to understand, right? Mormonism doesn't
usually work that way. You're in or you're out. If you're a Mormon, it's a big deal
to be a Mormon. So, it was hard
for me to understand why there were
so many people who called
themselves Catholics, but this didn't
seem to be a defining aspect
of their life. I was going
to ask you a question. When you're in
a lifelong Mormon world, Mormons are known
for very moral values, family values. In general, the Mormons you know
live by those values? <i>I mean,</i> of course, Mormons
are sinners like anyone. So, you know, they won't
always do the things that they believe
to be right, but I think
it's interesting, when you look at
sociological studies, right, of the
percentage of people, especially for traditional
sexual morality, because that's always
the lightning rod now, right? That's the most
countercultural aspect of Christianity now, so that's usually a sign of how successful
a church is, that inculcating
countercultural values, if people affirm and live
by traditional sexual norms. Mormons always have
everybody else licked. I mean, just in terms
of the number of people who say, "Yes,
divorce is bad," even though
Mormons don't; they aren't like Catholics; they don't believe
that divorce is impossible, but they still think
it's bad, right? So yeah, divorce is bad. Fornication is
wrong, right? Like, 16% of Americans
believe that, something like that, that fornication is wrong, but the vast majority
of Mormons. So, yeah, I mean, I think we were certainly taught
as young Mormons that the Mormon church
is special. We are set apart. We live in a different way
from other people. And I think they were
pretty successful at inculcating that. And that's
what I was wondering. You came from
that environment, then you go to a Catholic
environment where... Not necessarily
like that. Right. Yeah. And it was really hard
to understand, you know, people who: certainly, the traditional sexual norms
are a part of it. Although, you know,
Notre Dame does actually police
their dormitories, so they aren't like
college dormitories in a lot of places. It was a pretty, pretty
reasonable, you know, orderly dorm life. But they, certainly
lots of people who would say things like, 'Well, you know, I think
my faith is important, but I'm just so busy that I don't have time
to go to Mass,' or something.
And I would think, 'They have Masses
in the dorms. You can roll downstairs
in your pajamas, for 35 minutes
on a Sunday evening, and come back upstairs
and finish your studying. So, how important
can your life of faith be, when that's too much
to ask?' I didn't understand
it, right? It was very
confusing to me. And maybe it's, I mean, I have experienced
more of it now, but it's still a little
confusing to me, right? These very strange people
who say, 'Well, our faith
is very important to us, but we're not going to get
married in the Church, because we really want to have
our wedding ceremony and reception on site, so that our guests
don't have to drive a mile,'
or something. 'I don't think
you know what it means to say that your faith
is important to you.' So, that was
confusing to me. That's not a thing that
you encounter very much in the Mormon Church,
right, people who are
in the Church. Maybe in that sense, we are like the crazy
cultists, right? Like, if you say
that you're in, we expect things from you, and if you don't do
those things, then pretty soon
you're going to feel like you're not in, right? Well, I think right now, there are some
that are confused by some of the things
Pope Francis says, because it sounds
like he's saying, 'Don't evangelize.' But on the other hand, he's trying to say,
'Catholics, get your life together'. <i>Yeah.</i> Live your faith. <i>Right.</i> Live your faith. So, that, just like
you experienced, you go all the way
through Notre Dame. You learn Catholicism. Yeah. But where
was the mandate? Right, right. It maybe was
because our lives, as Catholics,
didn't convince you. Well, it's actually funny, because when I got
to Notre Dame, I was kind of expecting people to evangelize me. I mean, again,
if you grew up Mormon, you figure, 'Well, everybody wants to
convince other people to be part of
their faith, right?' I mean, we were
regularly urged to bring our friends
to church, and tell them
about our faith, and so on and so forth. So I just assumed that people
would be doing that. And when I showed up;
"Oh, you're Mormon. Whatever."
Like, nobody cared, you know, nobody
was trying to persuade. I mean, not nobody, because the people that I had
previously mentioned. Another friend of mine,
Tony Lusvardi, he's now a Jesuit priest, and he was not aggressive, but he definitely,
you know, "Maybe you should
check out this book. Have you really
thought about?" You know, so,
there were a few people who put a little bit
of pressure to think about that, but most people
didn't really seem like they saw any reason why you would even
encourage somebody to change, right? 'So, you're happy
as a Mormon? Then, great!' [laughs] So you, you got through
without becoming Catholic? I did, but by the end
of my time at Notre Dame, I definitely
had the feeling that the religious question had to be resolved. It felt like I couldn't really move forward
with my life until I'd figured out
what I was doing with that. Which, again,
to some people that would seem crazy,
right? Like why can you
not go get a job? But, to me,
it really felt like the thing that needed
to be resolved before other things
could be resolved. So, I joined
the Peace Corps and went to Uzbekistan <i>Wow.</i> There is distance, right? I mailed myself
a huge box of books in Andijan, Uzbekistan, which is where I did
my service. And I taught English
during the day. And then, in the evening, I would sit in my apartment
and mostly read. So, I read a huge
stack of books and thought about it. And it was maybe
a little extreme as a method of getting
some distance, but I think it was
pretty effective. I, over that time,
you know, of course, Uzbekistan is
a Muslim country. So, I, you know, there was no pressure
from anywhere. It was a completely
different environment. I wasn't around my family. I wasn't around my
old Catholic friends. I was really just kind of,
you know, in the desert, in a sense,
working it out. And I read some, a fair
amount of Protestant stuff. I peeked a little bit
into world religions, but I didn't really go
too far with that. I was sort of,
'No, I'm not doing that. I love Jesus. I want to be
where Jesus is.' And in some ways, that does kind of
clarify it, right? 'Well, I want
to be with Jesus, where Jesus is. So, where is Jesus?' Um, over the time that I was doing
all of that reading, I definitely started
to get the sense that people tend to get
when they're doing that, right? That if you want to be
where Jesus is, if you think
that it is important to have a Church, if you think that
authority is important, the roads are all kind of
leaning one way, right? And that did sort of start
to become evident to me. And by the time, so after
the Peace Corps I went to... actually,
in the Peace Corps, I applied to graduate school
in Philosophy. I wanted to study
Medieval Philosophy. And I ended up
at Cornell University. Now, I could explain
the reasons why that was
an odd choice, but I didn't know
anything at that time. So, anyway, I went
to Cornell University, and I showed up at Cornell, not definitely
decided to be, I hadn't definitely
decided to be a Catholic, but I was kind of strongly
inclining in that direction, and in some ways; so, my undergraduate
period was really exciting,
you know, an exciting exploration. My time in Uzbekistan was
kind of peaceful, right, just reading
and processing, and not feeling a lot
of sort of social and other kinds
of pressures. The time, once I got
to Cornell, that was definitely the time
that was the most, sort of difficult
and conflicted, right? Cornell is a very
secular school. I, it's a, um... well, it's a very secular
philosophy program. And most of
analytic philosophy, sort of the mainstream
philosophy is extremely secular. The vast majority of people
there are atheists, right? I was never actually
attracted to atheism. There was really never
a point in my whole journey where I considered, 'Maybe I just don't believe
in God at all.' So, once I got there
and I realized, 'Wow, I'm going
to be working with all of these
pretty brilliant people, because they do get
very intelligent people in analytic philosophy, who don't believe in God, who see most of the, sort of
metaphysical foundation that I would want to affirm as childish
or ridiculous, right? I'm really out
on a limb here. Maybe it's time for me to kind of join the side
I'm on, right?' So I really suddenly, I did suddenly feel
a great deal of pressure to resolve
the question now, right? Like, you've been kind of
fooling around for a while exploring, whatever;
the secret period is over. You really got to do
something about this now, because to be
a kind of vaguely Catholically inclined
person in a secular graduate
philosophy program, that just didn't seem like it was
going to cut any ice. So, I also at that time met a group
of graduate students who were kind of traditionalist
converts, basically. They would get together
and pray the rosary every evening at Cornell, and they, we were in
the Diocese of Rochester, which was not a super great
Catholic diocese. We, you know, the Mass
options in the area were, you know, a little bit, um, oh, you know, lots
of sort of 'yippy skippy' guitar types of Masses
and that sort of stuff. So, they used to drive
out of town to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to go to a Fraternity
of St Peter Parish, and they invited me
to go with them. Out of the blue, I get
this email from, you know, some guy saying,
"Oh, do you want to come to this Latin Mass
in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with us next week?" And I just,
"Sure, why not?" So I went to this
Fraternity Mass, and the thing about, and that began, you know,
over that period, I did get some contact with those
graduate students, and I went to Mass, and I ended up
actually doing my catechesis
at that Fraternity Parish. There, you know, there are
a lot of different things going on in these, in these traditionalist
communities. But the thing that was
really significant for me, I think, was
I came to understand why liturgy was important. Going to those Masses and seeing the reverence
of those Masses, the beauty
of those Masses, the way that they respected
the sacrament, really got me to realize, especially now, right? When I was in
a secular program, when I was feeling
out on a limb, where I was feeling like
I needed some reinforcement; that really helped me
to understand I need a
sacramental life. And that I think was
sort of the final piece that pushed me
over the edge, recognizing from
participation in, or from being present
at those Masses, that I needed
a sacramental life. Is there anything sacra.., I really don't know this; anything like sacramental
life in Mormonism? Um, they have something that they call
"The Sacrament". They pass
bread and water at the beginning of each
Mormon Sunday Meeting. And that's kind of, it just feels
kind of random. I mean, they would
occasionally have lessons on it, but it didn't
really connect with much of anything else. You know, it's just
kind of a carryover from mainstream
Christian practice. <i>So </i>you<i>
had no </i>foundational part of your life
to build on this whole 'sacramental economy'
that's so key to Catholicism? Well, yes and no. So, so, actually,
I think the closest that Mormons have
to something like a sacramental life is what happens
in their temples. So, they do have, they call
them ordinances, right? But they do have this idea. So, in this sense, it is
similar to Catholicism. They do have this idea
that physical, you know, physically performed
ordinances have some kind of efficacy to help with the salvation
of our souls. And as a teenager, "I was baptized
for dead people," I say sometimes. So I, in order to go
through the Mormon Temple, right; so, what happens
in Mormon temples is supposed to be
sort of secret, right? You're not supposed to
discuss it with everybody. I'm not really, you know, I have no temptation
to break this, because I never actually
went through the; so, so they make an exception
for the baptisms. The teenagers are allowed
to come and do what's called
"baptisms for the dead" where you are
vicariously baptized on behalf of
a deceased person, with the idea being that that person can then accept the ordinance that you've done
on their behalf, in the afterlife,
basically. So, we were taken
to Mormon temples, we were allowed to go to one
little segregated part where, yeah, I mean,
basically, you would put on
like a white jumpsuit. And then they would
read a prayer, you know, "I baptize you,
Rachel Smith, on behalf of," and then they would read
the name of the person, and then they would dunk you
under the water. And then they would read
the prayer for another person. Sometimes
you'd get baptized on behalf
of like 25 people or something like that. But that was the only thing
that I did in the temple. So, in order to do
all the other stuff they do in temples, it's kind of an
adult initiation rite, when you reach
a certain point, either usually when you leave
for a mission, or get married, or if you do neither
of those things, at some point,
they just invite you to come and take,
do your adult ordinances. And by the time
I reached the age when I would've done that, I was pretty sure
I wasn't going to be, you know, spending
my adult life as a Mormon, so I never actually did
any of that stuff. But I think that
that actually is somewhat like
a sacramental life. They do actually have
sort of physical ordinances that they perform that are supposed
to be significant. <i>So the idea</i> that the sacrament
really does something, had a part,
had a memory for you as a part of that. Yeah. If there's no
Original Sin, you didn't have
confession as a Mormon. So, how was that, as you entered
into the Church, that new experience of the sacrament of penance and confession
and the Eucharist for you <i>as a new Catholic?</i> Yeah, I was actually
kind of pleased. So, when I was a student
at Notre Dame, the impression
that I got, which I don't think was
actually totally accurate, but the impression
that I got was that confession was a completely
defunct sacrament, like something that nobody
actually did anymore. Which again, I don't think that that was totally accurate,
even then. I mean, people were
probably going to confession and, you know,
not discussing it with me, which, of course,
they didn't have to do. But still, just in common life
at Notre Dame, I didn't hear people
talking about it. I didn't really, it just
didn't seem very present to me as an aspect
of college life. So, when I started going to these traditionalist
communities, where people actually
went to confession, I was kind
of pleasantly surprised. Like, 'Oh, people
actually do this. They really go
to confession.' And it really
made sense to me, and increasingly made sense
to me, over time. I always thought
this whole idea that Catholics
are steeped in guilt because of confession
is completely absurd, right? Anybody who has any level
of self-reflection should feel some guilt,
right, should realize
that they fall short of the standards
that they should be holding for
themselves, right? So all confession
really is, is a, well, it's sacramental,
of course, but it is a spiritually, but also I think,
psychologically and morally healthy way of dealing with the fact that we are not the people
that we should be, right? And it kind of helps you to put yourself
into a kind of moral training
program, right? Every time you go
to confession, you have to think,
'Okay, how am I doing? Did okay on this. Maybe I don't need
to confess about, confess this sin, but not so good
at that, right?' And so, I think that
actually made sense to me right away when I started, you know,
trying to sort of work into life as a
practicing Catholic. Yeah. <i>Yeah. </i>I remember as I was
becoming a new Catholic, and then
getting into the swing of what confession was, and even after
all these years, I'm still learning
how to do that. But I remember confessing
the same sin again, and, you know, when
you're forced to say it, pretty soon
you start to realize, 'Wait a second here. There's something that
needs to be changed in me.' <i>Yep. Yep.</i> And so, there's
the power of that, besides the graces
that are there. <i>And then you do it
and you go,</i> 'Ah, I'm going
to have to put it in again
this next time.' [laughs] What, for you, two things, what would you say, and we've got about
six or so minutes, was the linchpin
that, you know, this is the reason to
become Catholic for you? And what was the biggest
barrier to get over, to entering the Church? I could have named
some theological issues that seemed
problematic to me, but I think, in reality, just finally leaving
the Mormon faith was really the thing that I actually had
to reach the point where I would
tell everybody, 'I'm not a Mormon anymore.' And, you know,
that was actually going to be sort of an
official change in my life. I think that was actually
the biggest thing. Not that anybody
in my family gave me a lot of grief
over it. I wasn't really worried
that I was going to be; I told you that my father
brought me to churches, so obviously, you know, my parents weren't going
to disown me or something like that. But, you know, I think
that this is the thing with conversion stories,
right, that it's sort of similar to like adoption stories. We want them to be
these really happy, inspirational things. And in many ways
they are, right? But there is also,
you know, some grieving
and some brokenness there. And I definitely
had a strong sense of what I was losing. And in that final period, I mean, again,
so, Mormon past, and then, my present
as a graduate student in this secular program, where, you know, of course, when you're in
a program like that, a highly competitive
graduate program, everybody is
thinking about; how are you going
to get a job someday? What kind of a career
are you going to build, and so on and so forth? So, it was not unclear to
me that being a Catholic, you know, might be
kind of an obstacle. Not that people
weren't going to, you know, just like me
just for self-identifying as a Catholic, right? But that the philosophical
commitments involved were totally out of step with what was happening
in my graduate programs. So, even on
a professional level, this was pretty confusing. So, really,
it felt as though I was cutting myself off from so many of
the defining aspects of my previous life. I didn't really have
any clear sense of what my future life
was going to be like. So, that final year, yeah, I mean I really felt no
enthusiasm for it at all. I just felt like
it was a thing that I was obliged to do and that was sort of
clearly necessary, but I wasn't excited
about it when people, you know,
occasionally, "Oh, I hear you're
becoming Catholic." "Yeah, becoming Catholic." I mean, it really, it really wasn't
something that I; I was hoping to feel
sort of inspired or have some
'Come to Jesus moment' where I felt like, "Yes, I've done
the right thing, Lord." But that really didn't happen
in that final year. But I did my catechesis. The poor deacon
who catechized me was so perplexed
as to like, 'Why is this person here? She seems to want me
to somehow talk her out of becoming
a Catholic or something? I don't know. I don't know
what's going on,' you know, poor guy. I was a very difficult
catechumen, I think. But at the end; yeah,
I think I finally said, 'Yeah, I clearly
need to do this.' And actually,
what happened was; so John Paul II died
shortly before. And I hadn't actually
like scheduled; I had finished
my catechesis, but I hadn't actually
scheduled like my baptism. And in traditionalist
parishes, they don't usually do
the Easter vigil baptism. So, I wasn't doing
a traditional RCIA program. I was going through
the Baltimore Catechism, with a deacon at the FSSP. And, so I hadn't actually sort of like taken
the next step of saying, 'Let's do it on this day'
or something. It was all still a little
bit up in the air. And I think it was actually when I was at one
of the, you know, the Masses after,
after John Paul II died. I did feel a little bit,
I felt like, 'I am part of
this Church, right? Like this, this is,
you know, this is my
spiritual leader and I feel like I am...' So, I think
that gave me just that little bit
to actually sort of, just schedule it. And it actually was
really lovely, because we scheduled it, and then they announced
the new Pontiff, I think,
like a week or so before my baptism
was scheduled, and there it was, right? Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who inspired me
all those years ago. So, that was
kind of lovely. What a big completion
of the circle. That, yeah, that
is really neat. Just got
a couple minutes. You know, I think, in what ways I'm thinking, how has your
Mormon upbringing even helped you appreciate
your Catholicism? How was God preparing you
for this Church? Yeah, I mean,
there are so many things about Mormonism that actually are
excellent preparation for Catholicism. One thing
that's funny, right, is that a lot of people, all of the
sexual morality stuff is either an obstacle or the thing that brings them
into the Church. So, either it's a thing
they have to get over, or they realize
that the world is completely
sexually disordered, and who has a theory
that will work out here? Oh, the Catholics
seem to have one. For me, that was just
a non-issue, right? 'Okay, yeah,
that makes sense. That sounds good. Fine.' [laughter] I was very well,
you know, instructed. Mormons instruct people,
you know, sex and marriage
and all that stuff, they instruct adolescents
very explicitly in all of that
kind of stuff, right? So, I was extensively
taught about chastity, and that was just, that was just nothing
for me in getting into
the Church. That was fine. Having a sacramental life, again, I think
it made sense to me, even though
I didn't have one. I can understand why that
would be a valuable thing. I think that was, in that sense,
it kind of set me up. And also, some people
asked and, you know, people skeptical of
Catholicism asked basically, 'Why would you have left
the Mormon church and then gone to,
of all things, Catholicism?' Their idea being, right, 'If you have
finally, like, thrown off one ridiculous
religious authority, why would you immediately
go enslave yourself to another religious
authority?' But actually, I think
there is something revealing in that, right, because it's not that I hate
religious authority. I just sort of felt like I didn't have
the right one, right? So, there was a sense
in which that structure prepared me to think about
ecclesiological questions in a way that was
ultimately productive. Finally, they do really, knowing the Bible
is a good thing, right? I mean, I did learn
my Bible stories, and I knew all of that
when I came into the Church, so that's something
I really value, too. Well, Rachel, I'm sorry. We're running
out of time, but I did want you
to tell the audience, because you are
a writer now, if they want to find out
places where you write. So, I am, I write
for America Magazine. And I write sometimes for the National
Catholic Register. And I also have social and political stuff
you can read, if you're into that
kind of thing at: Law and Liberty, the Public Discourse,
The Week, various other,
various other sites. Yeah. Rachel,
thank you so much. Sorry we ran out of time.
I'd love to... Sorry, yeah. I think you're going
to be in a roundtable. So, they're going
to hear about you one of these weeks when you join a roundtable
on philosophy. Oh, right. Yeah, I'm sorry we didn't
get to talk about your... I know,
maybe another time. We'll have that brought up
in another program. Thank you very much,
Rachel. And thank you for joining us on this episode
of 'The Journey Home.' I do pray that
Rachel's journey is an encouragement to you. God bless you. See you next week. [music]
