Not how I’d have chosen to spend Good Friday if I’d had the option…
…but not a bad way to do so either. I wound up learning a fair bit more about Mormonism and the faith of those who call themselves Latter Day Saints, and even managed to have a quite polite discussion about principles of faith and particulars of Catholic teaching.
In a way, it was even somehow fitting to be defending the Church, and conveying with words the depth and meaning of the Eucharist, on the only day in the Catholic liturgical calendar on which Mass is hostless.
Not that I was able to make it to Mass, sadly. I suppose that’s the inherent danger of being a stranger in any land, even one so relatively close to home as Utah. So I contented myself with the observance of the meatless meal plan, and a bit of theological reading.
My co-worker, himself a Mormon, took me to see a couple of different sights, including “This is the Place,” a historical monument and park dedicated to the memory of the first LDS settlers to arrive in the valley now is the location of Salt Lake City. The second stop was, of course, Temple Square (which we had also visited the night before), the epicenter of Mormonism today.
I’ve never had a bad conversation with a Mormon; they are a uniquely pleasant lot, and the two young missionaries we met in a building called the Assembly Hall were no exception. They were of course happy to welcome a brother in faith (my co-worker), and engaged me in some pleasant Q&A about Catholicism and, in particular, the nature and source of my faith.
Which, of course, is a discussion that begins and ends with the Eucharist. But perhaps I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself.
Mormons, especially the younger ones, have an admirable zeal for evangelism; would that Catholic youth were as strongly encouraged to be so open and so ready to try and spread the message of the true faith that is in the Church. And it was pretty apparent, after just a few minutes, that our two young hosts were trying to probe the limits of my faith.
I wasn’t really LOOKING to have a full-on debate, but I started drawing a few boundaries, and in particular began to focus on the Eucharist after one of the two missionaries drew a parallel between the symbolism of bread and water in the Mormon liturgy and the Catholic Communion.
And, to be fair, there is a large component of symbolism in the Eucharist. But there is also much more than just symbolism — there is Christ Himself, truly, literally, and substantially present in the consecrated bread and wine.
Which was my first objection in the debate. Our two hosts were focusing strongly on the “what if” aspect: “what if” the Book of Mormon is a new, truthful revelation from God? To which my first objection was: in the Eucharist, I already have the fullness of Christ and, as such, the literal entirety of the Word present before me; what other revelation can exceed or add to the totality of Christ?
The granularity of the discussion increased from there, and eventually came to what my co-worker had, the night before, identified as the crucial point of contention between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity. Under Mormon teaching, a great apostasy occurred about the same time that the last of the original Apostles died. Their contention is that, essentially, the transference of authority from Peter to Linus was an apostasy thad led, by measures, to the corruption of the original Gospel by the hand of man, because the selection of Linus was not made by a quorum of the twelve Apostles.
Of course, there’s a problem there, which I noted to our hosts: while Acts does tell of what is essentially the first church council, no book of the Bible that I can think of speaks of the necessity of a vote to approve leaders of any kind within the Church. Granted, that is the practice that now exists, and this has evolved gradually out of Sacred Tradition. But a quorum is, to my knowledge, nowhere mentioned in Scripture at all, let alone in such a way that would make Linus into an apostate.
More to the point, one notes that Christ Himself didn’t exactly put it to the other Apostles when he appointed Peter to be the rock upon which the Church was to be built. That promise of Christ’s is especially relevant here, because it includes the declaration that against the Church that proceeds from Peter, even the gates of Hell itself will not prevail.
If Hell’s own gates are powerless against the Church, how then can mere man prevail against it so as to effect a Scripture-corrupting apostasy which God then waited 1700 years (if not more) to correct?
To be fair to these two young Mormons, they weren’t really there in the Assembly Hall to tackle issues of deep theology. They didn’t have a direct answer for me on the above point, and returned to asking me about the possibility that the Book of Mormon might also be true.
Which, in it’s own roundabout way, brings us back to the Eucharist.
Because really, if the Eucharist is true, and truly Christ’s Real Presence, then there’s no need for the additional revelation of the Book of Mormon, even if it is true. In the Eucharist, there is nothing less than Christ Himself; nothing can exceed that, and nothing need be added to it. Catholics don’t call it the source and summit of their faith for no good reason!
As the conversation wound down, our two young hosts handed me dome pamphlets, and gave me a handful of readings to look up in the Book of Mormon. One of them, a missionary from England (Wales, actually), suggested that it might be possible for me to accept both the truth of the Church and the Eucharist, and also accept the validity of the Book of Mormon.
See what I mean about that zeal for evangelism?
Of course, the attempt to build a bridge didn’t exactly work; it isn’t theologically possible for both the Book of Mormon and the Eucharist to be true at the same time.
But perhaps the reasons why that is true are best left for another blog post.
So anyway, yes: hardly a traditional way to observe Good Friday. One might even say that it was not an optimal way to spend the day. But to be fair, it was impressive and a blessing to be reminded of the centrality of the Eucharist in my faith, and to remember again that everything else — Sacred Tradition, Apostolic authority, and even Scripture itself — proceeds from it.
Because it is Christ, whose sacrifice and death for our salvation from sin and death we mark today.
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Steynian 345 « Free Canuckistan! (April 17, 2009, 8:51 am).
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[...] got into a very interesting and engaging theological debate with a couple of Mormons inside this building the following morning, which just also happened to be [...]