Fr. Erik Reichsteig: A Mormon Who Became A Catholic - The Journey Home (10-15-2007)

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program every week I get this privilege of introducing to you men and women who because of their love for Christ came home to the Catholic Church the journeys are all just a bit different I was fascinating to me now after 10 years of this program to hear all the different stories but yet see the same fingerprints of God on people but yet all a little bit differently God works with us each in an individual way because He loves us each very much and our guest tonight is father Eric Rick's tigey oh I bet that right right father Eric he's a former cultural Mormon in a Mormon he'll describe with that adjectives and importance of the cultural aspect of that but before we get to his interview I want to remind you that you're in its central part of the program so you can call us with your questions at one 800 two two one nine four six all outside North America you can call us at 205 270 129 80 or you can send us an email journey home at ewtn.com father Eric welcome to the journey home Thank You Marcus and you've in fact flew here to Birmingham Alabama right from the teeth of it right that's right I'm a pastor in Ogden Utah st. James Parish say hi to all the folks and it's very this privilege to be here is one of my favorite shows just John down the road from Salt Lake City itself up the road or okay and i will admit that's a beautiful place to fly into i've only been to the airport in Salt Lake City you know it's right time I've been to Salt Lake City but beautiful surroundings you can see why the folk were drawn there of course they were partially pushed there too in the original more than partially okay I might have some questions on that history of Mormonism but let me get out of the way and every week I invite my guests to begin by giving us a glimpse of where you came from spiritually well on truly understand where I came from you have to understand my background on three three quarters of my lineage that goes back to the mid 1800s there were some of the original Mormon converts my father's father was a good Lutheran boy from Chicago who married a Mormon girl from from Provo Utah and ended up converting my dad was raised a practicing Mormon he was a marine artillery officer in the Marine Corps and when I was born he was already over in Vietnam and he ended up being missing in action first and then ten years later they found his remains mom was raised by non-practicing Mormons so she really had no religious upbringing until she met my dad and she ended up being baptized by him well when Dad was m.i.a things were very difficult for a mom for a good many reasons and she stopped practicing the Mormon faith and so I was raised off and on with some more ministers and I always considered myself to be Mormon and heard a lot of the Mormon things from my from my grandparents would there have been like we have in our local parish a CCD program for children a similar thing that you would have got it's similar it's called called primary for the little little ones and I remember going to primary and and hearing some of the peculiar Mormon teachings and then I but I also had other elements in my my family my aunt had married a Catholic fellow and ended up being converting and so I was one of the first times I went to a Catholic Church was when I was staying with them over the weekend and I went to Mass with them and then I had some Catholic relatives my great-uncle nak who is my mother's favorite uncle he died when I was 5 years old I'm convinced he was praying for me all along but I also was a great reader you know I you know you could call me a nerd I read the encyclopedia and I loved movies and things like that and I was always attracted to things about religion and particularly the Catholic faith and so the reading was part of it and I was mentioning to someone earlier today that I had a great debt to CS Lewis and the Narnia series because I think what it did was it plowed the soil in my mind in my heart with Chris in concepts the concept of sacrifice of of just goodness that's interesting I had thought about how Mormons read see is Lewis I mean would they just don't or what would they do with the Narnia tales in general I can't really answer that the other thing to see the concepts there and what Holly would have to but we were read it in school yeah in fourth grade our teacher read us The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and I was just fascinated to begin with because I will always love fantasy and science fiction also I love movies and there are two kinds of movies I love horror movies not the the kind with the maniacs of the chainsaw but the old old-fashioned kind and one of the interesting things about the old fashioned horror movies is there's that stark distinction between good and evil and so for example in the Dracula movies who is Dracula afraid of the priest with his cross and then there were also the other good old movies where the priests were portrayed as heroic figures like in the keys to the kingdom him and so all of these things piqued my interest in the Catholic faith and so I read and the more I read about it the more it simply made sense to me could you talk about anyone not really it was you because didn't have Catholic friends didn't particularly want to talk to it with about it with my Catholic relatives because yeah you're not sure and sorry but would just read and think about it and it became more and more clear to me that the Catholic Church made sense far more sense than the Mormon Church which depends on the idea that Jesus established his church and then after about seventy years that fell into apostasy only to be reinstituted eighteen hundred years later or as the Catholic Church teaches rightly so the Jesus established his church and it's been here continually well if God establishes his church he's gonna do a good job it's gonna last so about that time I was ten years old I decided that I wanted to be Catholic but when you're Ken you really can't do much about it and it took until I was fifteen and about this and I all along I said I want to be Catholic want to be a priest oh you'd already had that oh yeah conviction even before you came into the church now as with many guys when you talk to into their vocations initially it's kind of vague and amorphous and and child it childlike but it grows and so my sophomore year of high school between Christmas and East between on Christmas break I decided to go and stop and visit the cathedral of Madeline in Salt Lake and if you ever get a chance to visit it's just a beautiful church and I walked in there and there was you could smell the incense and it's just a an amazing building but one of the most amazing things about it is that there are Scripture quotes painted on the walls to answer the Mormons questions about Catholicism so for example you have st. Paul's letter to the Galatians though we or an angel from heaven and preach the gospel to you besides that which has been preached to you let him be accursed by the statue of st. Paul by the statue of st. Peter thou art Peter and upon this rock I shall build my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it in what was then the sanctuary is now the Blessed Sacrament chapel you have John 6 and then you have a wonderful quote from my favorite Old Testament book the book of the Prophet Malachi from the rising of the Sun even unto its setting my name is great among the Gentiles and in every place clean sacrifices offered to my name and at that moment I said I've got to do it I've got to become Catholics so I went over to the to the rectory and I I feel sorry down for the secretary and for the priest because you know here's this teenager shows up I want to be Catholic and so I cooled my heels they're waiting for a minute and the pretty first priest I talked to is now a very good friend of mine and so that's quite funny but I said I wanted to be Catholic and then they had me cool my heels for a while and I kept calling and calling finally one of the good sisters who was in charge of catechism for non adults for the RCIA called my mom and asked mom if I could become Catholic and mom said sure he wants to do it that's fine and I took instruction and I was back I was baptized the following Easter and the wonderful thing is I was baptized by Bishop William weekand who's the bishop of Sacramento who was also the bishop who ordained me to the diaconate and to the priesthood and I wanted to become a priest and I had was still you know kind of scared about it because this is kind of a scary he came in at 15 she's doing a while to test that calling while the test it and I'd hoped to enter the seminary right out of high school but then my pastor left the priesthood and it scared me and I also give me an opportunity to say well that's why I don't want to do it but around the same time one of our very good priests who's since passed on his name is father Tom Mears Minh he'd been a bombardier on b-17s and spent two years in a loof Stalag where he got his vocation and he told me said Eric if you're supposed to be a priest and you never do it you'll never be happy and that rolled around in the back of my head and so I went to the University of Utah study philosophy because you have to study philosophy to go to the seminary so I'll just kill a little time when I finished my bachelor's and I got my master's cuz well I'm not still not sure then I went away to Marquette University still studying philosophy working on a doctorate and finally said I've got to do it gotta go to the seminary and that's what I did I was accepted by the Diocese of Salt Lake I went to mount angel seminary and Oregon wonderful place wonderful Benedictine monks the example of the monks was really more of more impact on me than what we were taught even and I was ordained to the priesthood on June the 25th 1994 has been some rough days but I've never regretted it you made the transition right from what you called no why did you call cultural Mormonism why in all honesty I don't think I could call myself a Mormon because I was never baptized I was blessed you know they they bless infants but you're not baptized until you can say yourself at the at the age of eight now how many eight-year-olds can actually say yes is an open question but I couldn't really say it was a Mormon because I was never baptized okay so that's cultural Mormon but even though you had some Catholic relatives mm-hmm you didn't have a lot of Catholic influence in your Mormon culture I mean you really were in an immersed in a comma Mormon culture oh yeah all the kids I went to school with at least my knowledge were Mormon you know most of my relatives were my friends were and so as you know I just assumed I was Mormon it was kind of in the back of my head that I would eventually get baptized maybe go on a mission all of these things that the Mormons are supposed to do any the kid you brought up with who have gone on the long journey of mission work come back and any of those old friends kind of challenge for you know I've never really really met any of them I have some friends from from high school who ended up going on missions and you know they don't understand what I've done what I've done but you know we're still friends now that you made the switch then from Mormonism to Catholicism during that period did you ever considered Protestantism know it for the same reason that Mormonism didn't make sense to me Protestantism didn't make sense if you cannot if it doesn't make sense to you that the church would fall into error in the year 70 why would it make sense that it fell into the error in the early Middle Ages or late Middle Ages and then needed a Martin Luther John Calvin to put it back on right to the right track it's interesting when you look at Protestant groups I think one time I tried to do a little research on this and I came up with about eight or nine different time periods that different Protestant groups go back to to say that the church Jesus established all of a sudden you know became apostate you know those that would look at you know Leal the great honey and their view imposed the Petrin office but none of these things are accurate or Constantine or you know different places in there and you know in the one hand that old saying that were the smoke there's a little bit of fire at least so what we recognize is sometimes in history and there were some things that happened bad under Constantine that maybe you know we got influenced by but I think that the idea that you know what do you do when there are problems in the church you don't just cast it aside and move on and that sort of been the theory of 70 on that would mean everybody in 70 AD who truly either all lost their faith completely and it was died and dead which is such a strange denial of everything else we know from history or they went into hiding and to a certain extent that's kind of the Mormon myth isn't it they kind of went into hiding it says more than that because they believe that the the keys of the priesthood the authority to baptize the authority to do the temple ordinances and even most you know the correct teachings which would be the peculiar Mormon doctrines were all lost they almost told the other day that they have a way to visualize it as they have you know I have a glass on a whole bunch of pencils and which represent the Twelve Apostles will you pull all of those off and the glass falls down and breaks well the Protestant reformers tried to put the glass back together but they couldn't and so it required a prophet sent by God Joseph Smith to put the glass to basically give it a new class and when just to make sure any are non Catholic viewers who I mean we talk about the church being there and we believe that but we don't deny the fact that there were times in the church when there were rough times in the church of course yeah just like there are now that's right it was the fourth century who was it I forget what Jerome said that the church woke up and found itself area you know there in fact some of those st. isn't it true that some of those same heresies that are in the early church are still alive and well and some of these groups like Jehovah Witnesses and the Mormons well the Mormonism has elements of a great many different heresies Arianism because Christ is not this the second person the Blessed Trinity he's a creature there's elements of Gnosticism there are these secret rituals and doctrines that you are initiated in that are necessary for salvation all sorts of different different hairs there might be a chance to ask you why don't you for the audience maybe enumerate some of the most egregious things that are uniquely Mormon that set them apart from traditional Christianity well one of the fundamental would be the understanding of the Godhead what we believe is that there's one God in three persons all the things you learned in catechism and that this God was uncreated and everything was made by him and was created in and is kept in creation by him the Mormons believe that the the god of this world the God the Father was once a human being on another world and he progressed to the two godhood so one way it's been explained is that godhood for the Mormons is not a nature it's an office and that he had many spirit children the eldest of which being Jesus and Lucifer and there was a great war in heaven and a third of the his spirit children rebelled against God and became the devil's and that these spirit children are us we had a pre existence and we come into existence and it's through our material existence that we progress towards godhood hopefully and so we disagree about the God who would disagree about the nature of Jesus and and also Holy Spirit what's the Holy Spirit in the Mormon no one's quite sure they're not really clear on that either either but he was once a human being like us that we are sure of they also believe that we earn salvation it's more of a works oriented by living a certain life and doing the temple ordinances of eternal marriage and and baptism is that why so many of the time management programs were developed by Mormons you ever notice that well yeah I have noticed that one of the reasons why my parish doesn't have a mission statement because I those things just drive me nuts I wonder if there's a connection there there is because you know most LDS they all have a job within their ward which would be the equivalent of a parish and some of them can be quite time-consuming a ward Bishop which is the equivalent of a pastor has his day job and then he's usually working another 50 or 60 hours as bishop and so if you don't know how to manage your time you're gonna be in a world of hurt so the really understanding with the Godhead human our own personhood mmm-hmm would be a bit different and in Mormon view they deny the original sin do they believe in sin I mean oh yes they believe in sin you know but they believe it's only in personal sin not original sin we do not inherit sinner from Adam and then there are a few guys around with more than one wife well that was one of their original doctrines that Joseph Smith instituted what he called celestial marriage and they they still believe that a man who let's say he marries and his wife dies and then he marries again he will have both wives for for eternity in heaven if they were married in that in the temple and that is necessary for exaltation to the highest level of heaven his marriage in the temple his marriage in the temple yeah now that was one of the sticking points to they kept Utah from becoming a state until the 1890s was polygamy and he'll finally Wilfred Wilfred Woodruff one of the presidents of the Mormon Church said we will abide by the laws of the country and for bad polygamy but there are some fundamental they're called fundamentalist Mormon groups who continue polygamy and they've been in the news lately right right what do Mormons your average did your average Mormon realize that so much of the teachings of the church have changed over the years that even DIF this president had different views in this president like acceptance of blacks in Martin I mean what is the average Mormon do they know about that first of all and if they do what do they think some do some don't another big doctrine is they believe God can change we don't they believe doctrine can change so for them to have a revelation that blacks your previously blacks or the children of Cain the the souls who sat out the war in heaven prior to the you know at the beginning and then Spencer Kimball comes along and has a revelation that says blacks can be admitted to the priesthood they would have no problem with that because God can change because God's a man God's well it used to be but he's eternally progressing so God is in their view eternally getting wiser in essence I would say that's fair yeah all right the other thing that again you said a lot of them don't know those changes you think that fun fascinating is that in the last decade or so a couple decades that there have been some major statements proofs released by a very reputable scholar scholars who have demonstrated things that have truly undercut the history of the Mormons of Java's witness I mean the Joseph Smith I mean the evidence is there again does that affect the average Mormons trust in their faith no it doesn't and part of it is because it's more an emotionally based faith so for example if they the missionaries come to visit you and you have taken the missionary lessons they'll give you the Book of Mormon they'll tell you certain passages to read and how and tell you to pray over those and say if well if you pray hard enough you'll receive a testimony from God which is a burning in the bosom and this is your proof that this is true and oftentimes when they're confronted with something that you know a factual challenge that they'll the counseling they'll get is you simply need to pray harder and rely on that testimony that experiential emotional response that tells you but it's the truth it's very difficult to argue with an emotion is that a new concept in Mormonism or was that there from the beginning there from the beginning because that's interesting because a lot of the Christian groups that like the reawakening that happened in there that same time period in the early 1800s those are awakenings are often a reaction against the more intellectual Protestant groups that have gone Unitarian their faith had lost its its its enthusiasm so there were many of them looking for Suzy Azzam as a proof so really in a certain sense Joseph Smith was on the same bandwagon as a lot of these groups of that same time period so right the other thing that I noticed and father Pacwa pointed this out to me in the Book of Mormon and the first book I kept wanting to say it was first knee-high but that's a entirely different title that's a drink in first Nephi Nephi bite me if I'm sorry I've not read this yet there are a lot of references to the Great and abominable church all over the place the Mormons came out of a period you just mentioned the Great Awakening which was you could say a fundamentalist reaction to liberal Protestantism and part of the fundamentalist was a innate instinctual anti-catholicism the Catholic Church is the of Babylon which I heard many times for many people I remember looking through a book that a cousin of mine had and it had a picture of the papal tiara and explained that it was that 666 was written on the the base of the tiara which is an old Protestant saw on against the Catholic Church and you still find that kind of reaction against the Catholic Church not from the official Mormon hierarchy but from the grassroots level and it's but it's in the Book of Mormon it's in the Book of Mormon yeah in fact yeah one quote that father pointed out that let's see this is an example he and it came to pass that I saw among the nations of the Gentiles the formation of a great church and the angel said unto me behold the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches I just quote after quote an answer yeah that's us that's us and they're basically taught it's either us or them that either the authority which Christ came on earth what remained in the Catholic Church or it was reinstituted by the Mormons which is one of the reasons why we get a fair number of converts now I suppose one question also is given all that you've studied about the Mormons in your life not as an X cultural Mormon at least what would you say is the best description of how this book came about of the more I mean the theory was the proposed theory by the Mormons the Mormons maintained that in God's providence the angel Moroni who was actually at once a human being all angels were once human beings are going to be human beings revealed golden plates which recounted the history of a lost Jewish civilization here in the in the new world and that he through the these scene stones called the human and Thummim was able to translate these plates into the Book of Mormon that's the Mormon view now what's given the data what do you think is there are several that Joseph Smith from several sources with with help cobbled it together one of the sources being Reverend Spaulding who wrote a historical novel based on the quite widespread theory on Joseph Smith's time that the Indians were descendants of a Lost Tribe of Israel so that idea predated oh yeah Joseph Smith okay all right so part of it is taking this book and even a little bit from the King James version of the Bible a lot for the King James Version of the Bible okay so word for word is thrown it did I guess what amazes me is that at that time period that that people would buy into it so quickly I mean as you look back in history why why did Mormon doesn't catch on so so fast during that time of American history it's hard it's hard to say people are always hungry for God and if they're not fed with the truth they'll go for junk food I think you could ask the same question about the Quran and Muhammad and there are a lot of parallels between Joseph Smith and Muhammad and between Islam and Mormonism a lot of differences but a lot of parallels SEPA alright we'll probably take a break I think we have at least one email that maybe we're ready to take let's see if my producer can get an email up there for us to look at see if he's picked out a nice one for us there we go let's try this one this comes from prax from Texas dear Marcus and guess I have a Mormon friend who used to be Catholic about a year ago I hate debating but love sharing what is something about the Catholic Church that I can share with her well I would ask her ask I would ask her why she became a Mormon what did she not find in the Catholic Church that she finds in the Mormon Church and and and and try to you know tease that out of her and then talk to her about the fact that the Catholic Church is the true true Church established by Christ while he was here on earth warts and all and I think that would be the way to it to address her to get the dialogue going all right great let's take a break and we'll come back with some of your phone calls and emails in just a moment see bit welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight his father Rick's Tyco and thank you father Eric for for starting to answer some questions already in the first part of the program before we got a lot emails and we got some phone calls I want of goals real quick your thing I think about is being a priest Catholic priest in that predominantly Mormon area what's that like it can be really great or really trying one of the wonderful things about Utah is that we can talk about religion it's out there in the foreground all the time it's and it's not considered bad in bad taste now on the other it can get a bit oppressive at times you know we've we find your kids being proselytized at school and other things like acting and not again it's not the hierarchy of the Mormon Church mandating this it's the local local people you get to be really rough for the kids okay sometimes I just want to pull my hair out all right let's see let's take there's a good email this comes to Stephanie from Colorado hi father how can I encourage my three boys to consider the priesthood as their vocation one of the things that I think is most important is that we talk to our children not about what they want to do but about what God wants them to do as ask kids what do you think God wants you to be when you grow up pray for your boys if you have daughters pray for them and pray for them that they will have that prayerful approach to life and that whatever they do it will be cut because that it's God's will for them not their own will and tell them what father amusement told me if you do God's will you'll truly be happy it's interesting in the sense that I've been reading some devotions by a Catholic a Jesuit priest from living during the time of the French Revolution a father grow who's got some great stuff on ewtn.com go get to the document some wonderful stuff called spiritual Maxim's but he had a little book and so he's writing in the 1790s and he has a book on the true marks of devotion for the true marks of devotion and at the top three were number one it's the glory of God that's what it's all about number two it's your holiness and then number three it's happiness in relationship to the first two and then he says on the contrary the majority of Christians are more interested in salvation and I thought that was interesting because my backgrounds are Protestant it was all about salvation in a sense there's a very self-centeredness when your focus is on salvation even if your focus is on saving others as opposed to the glory of God holiness and then happiness God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves he knows the inmost recesses of our be and if we do God's will he's going to lead us to what will make us fulfilled in this world and happy with him forever in the next and that's what life needs to be about that's salvation from the correct perspective focused on God you do God's will salvation will follow right along very good let's sum up next our first caller Joel from New York hello Joel what's your question for us I'm Marcus great show are there Joan I'm sorry hello Joe hi Marcus yes okay it's a great show I am interested in father Eric in his play I was wondering what the Mormons feel about the Blessed Virgin Mother and the Immaculate Conception and how she brought him back to the church all right so thank you very much well I'll answer the ending at the at the end one of the things my great-uncle Mac did for my mother was he gave her a rosary and she ended up giving it to me and I had the rosary even before I became Catholic I didn't know what to do with it but I had it so I think she was praying for me too the Mormons believe that Mary was simply another woman very important woman but simply another woman and that she gave birth to our elder spirit brother Jesus there was no Immaculate Conception and the whole question of the virgin birth is a little iffy because if you read some of the early Mormon prophets they maintained that God the Father had physical relations with Mary and that's what brought about the the birth of Jesus so no she doesn't have any special place within Mormonism akin to what ourselves in the Orthodox would believe with the Apostles have been just recruits to Jesus I mean there was no family relation nothing oh now they was they believe that Mary and Joseph had additional children and so the patron of my parish in Ogden was his Saint James that just would have been Jesus's actual brother and they the summer early Mormon apostles and prophets also taught that Jesus himself was married to the three Mary's not his mother the other three perks also he was a polygamist yes very good Linda from California email hello Marcus and father I am enjoying the discussion today I often have the Mormon missionary young men come to my door they're wonderful boys very polite want to share their faith with me they have given me literature over the years to read I would love to give them some books that would help plant the seed of the truth of the Catholic Church what would you suggest Thank You Linda well first of all I appreciate you being kind to the missionaries I have several friends from high school who went on their missions and it's it can be a trying time for for 19 year old kids so always always be kind to them even if you don't want to talk to them be polite they're really not supposed to read anything but there's some very set things while they're on their missions so I'm not sure giving them any books what would do any good what I would instead do is pray over the Bible with them get them to read and pray with the sacred scripture and pray with them several LDS people that I know that became Catholic thought that Catholics didn't pray and so if you pray and you show them we read the Bible - that's gonna plant some seeds and those seeds will probably not take root until after their mission I was told also that they they really don't they don't reveal their name when they're visiting you there does address each other as elder their last name okay so I wouldn't say you would be elder Grodi we wouldn't I wouldn't say Marcus so if you asked him that they're gonna if they're they what really was interesting that so they're not supposed to read anything else and probably particularly something from the Catholic faith oh yeah I mean that would be like a sign of attack from the devil to them to try to wean them away from the truth all right but from their perspective you can understand why all right let's take this let's go this caller and from California hello Ann what's your question for us my question is since the cross is a sign of Jesus victory over Satan and our salvation is through Jesus why are there no crosses our Mormon building inside and out thank you thank you man well the Mormon are very anti cross not a year goes by where one of our kids isn't confronted or challenged at school if they're in the public schools about why they were across or crucifix usually the line goes something like well if Jesus was executed in the electric chair would you wear an electric chair which I tell the kids if in order to save us from our sins he needed to die an electric chair I'd wear the biggest electric chair they had they don't focus on that for them the cross really isn't what saved us it was Jesus shedding blood in the garden of your scheme' knees so they don't have the cross and you will never see the cross in a Mormon temple or ward house there might be another backstory to that too I'm wondering because of the time period at which Mormon arose was not long after the Revolution Catholic the Catholic Church was only after the Revolution really allowed in New England which is where Mormonism arose and we know that the Puritans of New England were also against the cross there were no crosses there were no physical symbols in any of the churches in fact there's an old story about in the early days of America some of the Puritan fathers were so offended that there was a cross in the English flag that they cut it out and that caused a big controversy in the mid 1600s well you have it always amazes me when I look in the newspaper around Christmas and some Evangelical Protestant will write a letter to the editor saying why don't we celebrate Christmas the way we used to and they forget that for the first couple hundred years in the history of America the Protestants didn't celebrate any of the religious holidays because they were Catholic when I was in legal to celebrate Christmas and so this idea against the Cross was not just a Mormon issue but all those churches of that time period didn't have crosses for quite a while until things were softened by the Anglican Church after the restoration in England being more accepted here and there's a lot more than that story but there's a bit of a back story there it isn't just Mormon it's a part of that Puritanism that was there in early America one thing that friends of mine comment on when they come to Utah is that just about every non Mormon Church has a cross on it making a statement yes making a statement all right it's here the email adam from ohio welcome home father eric deserting the priesthood did you find that the more you discerned the further you seem to be from making a decision I've been discerning becoming a deacon and find this to be true for me thanks Adam for your email I've talked about this with friends of mine in the priesthood and outside of it too and oftentimes we can discern to death it's like the the committee meeting in your brain if you've ever had any thing to do with decisions by committee it can take forever and finally you just have to someone has to make a decision and say this is what needs to be done we can discern forever you never will never have 100% certainty on what you should do but when you have moral certainty which is I'm pretty sure this is what God wants me to do then pursue it for the Deacon program put yourself forward if the diocese that you're studying for decides that you're not cut out for it they'll help you discern that if you're thinking about going to the seminary get a hold of the vocation director give it a try I had friends in the seminary who decided part way through good solid discernment that it wasn't for them and I don't think and I think very highly of them that they came to that decision and decided to leave give it a shot and really that's part of the wisdom in the church that all the orders of the church have those periods of testing to test your discernment press whether you're seeking to become a nun or a a monk or they're going through these periods of testing well even it even with married married life it's one of the reasons why you date you don't just see someone you like and run off and marry him the next day you date so that you have this time for discernment but you just before a decade supposed to be and also the time of premarital counseling and all of that pre cane and all that stuff that would help you make sure you've made the right decision and sadly of course often in the modern world we don't it's there's not enough preparation that ought to be there and then of course sadly a lot of bad preparation which doesn't allow people to get a good start let's take our next caller Dennis from Texas and old Dennis what's your question are you there Dennis Dennis I kind of hear you to background well maybe I'll come back to you in a second Dennis let's see if we have an email I know we had a couple there we can look at there we go how about this one's from Greg he says father thanks for sharing your story I have a couple of questions is Mormonism a Christian religion or not and what is the Mormon view of Jesus as God that's that's the hundred dollar question right now because of Mitt run Romney running further for the presidency people are saying is he a Christian or isn't he and a friend of mine who's also a convert who's a permanent deacon stationed at our Cathedral says that this is the big red herring question and in a way it is because you have to ask yourself what do you mean by Christian do you mean that they have Christian values well certainly the most Christian man I've ever met was my neighbor growing up who was the director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir he had five daughters the youngest of which had Down syndrome and I the way that family treated that little girl is an example for all of us and there are wonderful people and so if you mean by Christian living the way that Jesus wants us to yeah just like the rest of us there are good people and bad people in every religion and every Church do they believe the same things that we believe no they're their view of the Godhead their view of who Jesus is their view of a great many other things that's so radically different that either they are Christian or we are but we both can't be yeah I was noticing and that this is a actually father Mitch Pacwa Book of Mormon that was on his shelf as I came down here it's full of his notes he's read it cover-to-cover that's why he's such an expert on these things father pack was always got a lot of good things to insite specially in the New Age movement but I noticed that the people who had given him this book back for Christmas 1991 were their picture is in the front they put a sticky in here and it begins on this special holiday we celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ we wish to take this opportunity to bear our testimony to you that Jesus Christ is the son of the Living God and that the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on earth today it is a companion to the Bible well your average Christian read that's when they sound off a Christian to me well they sound it and one of the problems is when I used to teach logic and we talked about the fallacy of equivocation which is using the same word to mean two different things when they say son of God they mean something radically different than what we mean what we mean is the second person of the Blessed Trinity Co eternal with the father who took on human flesh and human nature in the wonder of the Incarnation remaining still true God and true man and will be that till the end of time what they mean is the eldest spirit of God the Father becoming a human like all of the rest of us he's really no different in nature than any one of us here and one of the questions that occurred to me as I was growing up is how could someone just like us who was not also God save us it's not possible we cannot save ourselves how could anyone say save us who was not also God is right why him because he's the eldest who's the eldest spirit relevant yeah and he was paying the debt to the other elder brother somehow well they believed actually that these the sin in the Garden of Eden was a fall upward that it was a necessary exercise of freedom interesting I had not heard that oh yeah rebellion against the father mm-hmm so the human beings were were showing their their strength place a great premium on what they call free agency all right kind of the caller see the Dennis are you there Dennis from Texas yeah can you hear me yes I can then it's great what's your question for today father could I ask you the Mormons appears well first we've been bombarded here in Texas with Mormon missionaries there's 18 19 year old young men riding around on bicycles and they seem to just really want to convert Catholics but how I do not understand where they believe they do not believe in the Trinity is that correct that is correct that there three there are three different entities now that is polytheism is it not I would say yes most people would say yes they would say no because they only worship the father they don't worship Jesus they don't worship the holy spirit they only worship the father that I think the term is henotheism there are other gods but we only worship on okay all right let's take this thing try and get a couple more emails in Alex Alexis from Virginia father what is a mormon sunday liturgy like does Mormonism have anything like the Eucharist if not what do Mormons do with John six thanks Alexis they have a Eucharist and what it is is it's they're very clear that is only a memorial it actually the to begin with they use bread and wine and then they moved on to grape juice and now they use cubed white bread at least ones that I remember and tap water tap water and the the prayers which are said by their priests which are usually fourteen sixteen year old boys are very clear that this is not doing anything we just do this because Jesus told us to and it's a memorial usually they'll they're in church for about three hours every Sunday there'll be the Sunday school for the children priesthood meeting for them for the men Relief Society for the women they'll be have what they call sacrament meeting which is a lot of bearing of the testimonies and talks and so it's quite an extended period on Sundays but nothing similar to what we have at all all right I was expecting we get a call or an email on this but why all the genealogical work I mean I know we talked about this on former programs but case somewhat hadn't heard before I mean they put a lot of effort into that they believe that it's absolutely necessary for a person to be baptized in order to enter into one of the three levels of heaven otherwise if you're not baptized you're in a place called the spirit prison if you're not baptized physically here on earth you will be back you can be baptized by proxy in the afterlife and so one of the duties as a good Mormon is to do your genealogical research and find out the names of your ancestors so that they can be baptized so that they can have an extensive heaven interesting enough that unlike so many of the other Protestant groups during that period that of Rose they have a deep commitment to baptism mm-hmm now we as Catholics don't recognize their baptism there's a decision that was reached by the Vatican a few years ago after about a century worth of study that Mormon baptism is invalid even though it's done in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and with water because what they mean and what they intend by baptism is so radically different from what we and mainline Christians believe that we cannot say that it's efficacious what do they believe happens in Baptism they're not erasing originals you're not erasing original sin it is an ordinance that makes you a member of the church so it's a rite of passage basically okay so it has to happen though it has to happen it has to be by full immersion and it has to be done by someone with the keys to the priesthood here's Kathy from Lewisburg Pennsylvania are you male hello gentlemen thank you for the program if Mormonism believes that God began as a man who do they claim as the creator and how do they explain the existence of the universe Mormonism believes that the universe has always existed and that there are a multitude of gods our God the Father himself had a God and so on and so forth and he our God is simply the god of this world so a bit like we have the son of our universe and his lives other universes and lots other sons exactly he's pretty much that carried down to a human level at that point Father let's um let's assume that there are a few people watching I know from emails that we've had Mormons that watch our program I know that if you were to say you talk to them for a moment what would you do to try and break through those because a lot of it's a barrier of ignorance isn't it to help them consider why they ought to come home to what I would ask them to do you know there's a couple of questions I would ask them to read the Gospels and ask say who does the sacred scripture say that Jesus is does it say he is our elder spirit brother or does it say he is the the son of the Living God Conal especially read the first chapter of the Gospel according to st. John then I would ask what does history tell us about Jesus the great saints of the church the Fathers of the Church and then I would ask you does it make sense that God the all-powerful God and Father of the would establish his church here on earth only to have a disappear but doesn't Matthew tell us that he that Jesus will be with us in his church throughout the ages all right then giving them a book I see missionaries are pretty well trained not to what about your average Mormon I think that the best witness is the book of your own life live your Christian life well one of the things all I talk about is well I see these Catholics but they're always smoking and drinking you know they're not living a good life well if we live our good lot the lives as Christians like we're supposed to that is more powerful than any book ever written the book I would recommend for someone who wanted to really know in a non polemic way the differences between the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church is one written by Isaiah Bennett called inside Mormonism I think it's the fairest both to them and to us and isn't it true that often it is in fact the emphasis on family in Mormonism that draws people to the Mormon Church and you know there are some things I wish we would do they have something called family home evening where every one evening a week none of the kids go out you don't go to the movie dad's not working on his car they get together and they do something as a family usually with a faith emphasis we would do well to imitate that think of what a wonderful world that would be if our 19 year old kids would go out and do two years of volunteer missionary work for the church yeah yeah yeah they put us to shame when it comes to that kind of commitment all right dissing certainly an inspiration to his father thank you very much how about as we close if you could give us a blessing the name of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit may Almighty God bless you may his face shine upon you and may his grace be with you all the days of your lives in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit father thank you very much for joining us on the journey home I appreciate it very much you know we've had over the last 10 years we've had a number of a former Mormon converts to the church on our program and I know that the audience is always very interested in that because we there's a faith that's all around us we see the is it called a churches are called a Hall I mean a be a ward house okay a war house they're on our corners we see that we just don't know the people mm-hm and a lot of people are afraid to make that the move but the encouragement is for us to know our faith better right the noid better to live it better know it live it better don't be afraid to talk about it and don't be afraid to share it alright thank you Father thank you for joining us on the journey home I hope that these programs are encouragement to you just a couple reminders of ewtn.com if you go to the website there's a religious catalog there's a whole library of resources to help you understand the faith if you have questions about the relationship between Catholic Church and the Mormon Church or other churches that there's information on ewtn.com also take this moment to I remind those of you who are on the journey or considering on the journey you might want to go to my website CH network.org it's the website for the coming home network international the reason we're there is to help you on your journey home so god bless you look

Channel: EWTN

Views: 81,231

Rating: 4.7813997 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, Mormons (Adherents)

Id: xfxD0lrTFeg

Length: 56min 21sec (3381 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 29 2015